Clarity or Trust (part II)

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction (evidence) of things not seen” (He-brews 11:1; NASB; emphasis added).
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Dear Fellow Travelers,
In following up on yesterday’s perspective, my question is this: In light of the fact that Jesus trusted His Father, even His predetermined plan for His life—absolutely, unequivocally—how do we explain His bizarre behavior? On the one hand, we know that Jesus was fully God and, consequently, He knew what God was going to do, when He was going to do it, how He was going to do it, where He was going to do it, and why He was going to do it; this cannot be denied. On the other hand, Jesus was fully man; albeit, a man, who unlike every other man, perfectly trusted His Father. Even so, His will was often in opposition to His Father’s will (“For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38; NASB; emphasis added); “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet, not My will but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42; NASB; emphasis added). To say that another way, Jesus did not allow His being God, to strengthen in any way His being a man. In fact, He was tempted, just as we are, yet, and thankfully, He never sinned (“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15; NASB; emphasis added).
Before I go any further with this, I do want to make this disclaimer: Although Jesus was fully man, He did NOT bear the seed of Adam; otherwise, in our new birth experience, He would have simply passed those sinful seed on to us, and, consequently, He could not have been our Redeemer, He could not have rescued us from sin and death because He would have been a sinner Himself.
In my opinion, we sometimes place so much emphasis on Jesus’ Deity, that we forget His humanity. Somehow, we do not seem to be able to enough make room in our belief systems for Jesus to have been a real, honest-to-goodness man; One who struggled to overcome temptation, just as we struggle; One who did not always easily submit to God’s will. In the end, then, we have a very difficult time explaining His aforementioned “bizarre behavior”!
You think about this and I will continue on the morrow-