Jesus: His Person and Self-awareness
I've combined earlier bits and pieces in the hope of doing a better job in expresing myself. You who are interested, see what you think.
1. I believe that "Jesus" is God being a man. I believe it is absolutely true that Jesus is God being a man but I also believe that he is God being a man and only a man.
2. In being the man Jesus, God is not being a "God-man" or something other than simply a man. [A teacher told me that Jesus was a God-man just as Tarzan was an ape-man. I reminded him that Tarzan was not an ape in any sense. He didn't get the point.]
3. In being the man Jesus, God is not being a "composite being" that is a mixture or blend of God and man, a hybrid—he is being a man, end of story!
4. But the man Jesus is God being the man Jesus. It isn't an angel or some exalted created being that is being Jesus—it is God, nothing other and nothing less than "very God" being a man.
5. The man Jesus is not God being God—he is God being something other than God, something that God is not; he is the man that God is being.
6. The man Jesus exists because God ceaselessly chooses to be the man Jesus. If God ceased to choose to be the man Jesus then the man Jesus would cease to exist.
7. The man Jesus is not a man being a man—he is God being a man. Peter is a man being a man but Jesus is God being a man.
8. When we say "Jesus is God" we need to fill the statement out with something like, "Jesus is God being a man."
9. When you looked at Jesus of Nazareth you saw what God was being. You saw a man, only a man, nothing more than a man, but you were able to see that man only because God was choosing to be that man. The form God took at the virgin birth and continued to choose was the form of a man. In seeing Jesus you saw the man God was choosing to be; a man and nothing more than a man. Once more: not a "composite being" or "a god" but a man, pure and simple. Different from all other men in all the ages because this is the man God chose and chooses to be.
10. Supposing that to be in the neighbourhood of the truth (however limited) it would follow that Jesus' self-understanding as far as it rose from within himself would be that he was a man, pure and simple. He would not be aware that he was the man God was being—unique and unparalleled—unless he learned it from sources outside himself. That is, given the various streams of testimony Jesus being the sanest man alive would say of himself something like, "I am the man God is being." The man is not God and the man God is being—he is the man God is being.
[11. We're not to forget that the man Jesus is not a man being God but he is God being a man. The initiative was and always is in God's hands for it cannot be otherwise.]
12. The one who chooses to be Jesus of Nazareth is God, fully and completely God and not "mostly" God or a "reduced" God or something "less" than fully God.
13. It is critically important that we maintain that Jesus is the incarnation of God in all God's fullness (compare Colossians 2:9). This is vitally important with regard to atonement, reconciliation and the faithful fulfilment of all God's creation purposes. Jesus is "God with us" and not "God [minus elements essential to Godhood] with us".
14. If God could and did dispense with elements essential to Godhood to become incarnate, then it is not "God" who has become incarnate in Jesus. To jettison elements essential to Godhood would be to jettison Godhood and if the Word jettisoned Godhood then Jesus is not "God" with us.
15. No, it is not the Word without elements essential to Godhood that became flesh—it was the one who was equal with God who took the form of a servant (John 1:14 and Philippians 2:6-7). It is God in all his fullness that chooses to be the man in all his completeness. We're to avoid two extremes. We're to insist on the full deity of the One who maintains an incarnate form and we're to insist on the full humanity of the incarnate form he has taken. Neither truth is to be diluted. [See below on "self-emptying.]
16. If Jesus was a man and nothing more than a man (though he is the man God is being) did he not know he was uniquely related to God as his Holy Father? The NT teaches he did know that he was uniquely related to the Holy Father.
17. I don't think there's enough evidence to tell us when Jesus first became aware of his identity or to a full understanding of who he was though there is something revealing about his surprised remark in Luke 2:49 when he is twelve years old. His mother complains that she and his father (Joseph) had been searching for him (she uses an imperfect tense, indicating the ongoing nature of the search) and he wanted to know why they had to do that, should they not have known that he would be in his Father's house. Understandably, Mary called Joseph his father but Jesus' response is about his Father and about his Father ("my") and not just ours. I think Jesus is claiming a Sonship that's of a different order. I don't think that's an over-reading of the text. I think Luke understands Jesus' words as indicating that by twelve years of age Jesus was aware of his unique relationship with the Holy Father.
Taking that to be the case his self-understanding could only have deepened and been enriched as time went by.
18. But how did Jesus become aware of his unique relationship with the Holy Father? In light of my present Christology at this point I'm compelled to think he learned it from sources external to himself. These would include his mother's witness to his birth, the witness of the OT in which he saw himself described, the heavenly witness at his baptism and transfiguration ("direct revelation"), his anointing and empowerment, his life under God and the flow of his life in his ministry. [Though I'm sure he wouldn't share my way of seeing Jesus outlined above I think this is what N.T Wright is saying when he thinks that Jesus learned who he was by his functioning in his life and ministry in ways ascribed to Yahweh in the OT.]
19. Some people think that Jesus might have remembered his pre-incarnate state but that wouldn't be possible if Jesus was simply and solely a man (as I presently hold) because as a human he would not have existed prior to Bethlehem and Mary's womb and therefore would not have had memories of a pre-existent state. The Word existed as God prior to the incarnation but Jesus of Nazareth did not—he was the human that God became at Bethlehem.
20. In keeping with the above, when Jesus said "I", at some point he would have had to think of himself as no ordinary human. He would have known he was fully human in the way other humans were human (compare Hebrews 2:14) but he would also have known he was a unique human (the only human that God was being). He would have thought something like: "I am the man that God is being. God took on my form at my birth at Bethlehem. I am the man that God has chosen and continues to choose to be."
21. But if that's true, he would have known that his existence and continued existence as a human was God's doing. He would have connected himself with the Godhead. "I am the man I am because God is choosing to be me." But in his self-awareness he was aware that he was not the Holy Father being him; but if he knew he was not the Holy Father being him and yet he was God being him it seems he was well aware of what we would call "distinctions of person" within the Godhead.
22. As it's usually stated I'm pretty sure Jesus would have denied the Trinitarian doctrine [on the other hand he might have asked what, exactly, it meant] but I can't help noting that he distinguishes himself from the Father and the Spirit when he speaks of a pre-incarnate relationship—John 17:5. That passage can't be professing that the mortal man, Jesus had glory with the Father before the world began for the man began at Bethlehem in a virgin birth. But in the realisation that in him the pre-existent One has taken human form he's also aware that it is a relational pre-existence and glory. That is, he seems to have known enough to say the glory was "shared" and it was "with" the Father. So some form of the Trinitarian doctrine is involved (when we add the Spirit's presence and "personhood" from other texts). All of this he would have learned and deduced from the many various streams of evidence.
23. Being holy to the uttermost degree and as a consequence, seeing God as only a sinless one could see and understand him and combining his pure vision with other streams of testimony, the speed of Jesus' self-understanding of the purpose and character of God would have been accelerated and refined.
24. I accept the fact that the phrase "the son of God" might mean something less than what we usually mean by it when we speak of Jesus (we usually use it to refer to his divine nature). The phrase the "son of God" can be equivalent in some cases to "Messiah" which has no divine overtones in it but those 1st century Jews would have been well aware of that and yet when they heard Jesus call God "his" Father they accused him of claiming more than Messiahship—they said he was making himself equal with God (John 5:17-19).
25. The only point I wish to make here from John 5:17-19 is that 1st century Jews heard Jesus say something about God being his Father and they understood that that claim to Sonship went way beyond mere Messiahship. If 1st century Jews could think such a thing a 1st Jesus could also think it and be in step with his time. I repeat, I only want to make the point that they construed what he said as being a claim of equality with God.
26. The Gospels tell their story about Jesus in distinctive ways but they all connect Jesus with the hope of Israel and present him as one who recaps Israel's history, reflecting the nation in its various prominent individuals as well as the nation as a whole. He is brought home from Egypt (see), is proclaimed as God's Son, enters the Wilderness as Israel did (after its baptism—see 1 Corinthians 10:1-2) and is led by the Spirit while there (Luke 4:1 and compare Isaiah 63:12-14) . The illustrations are numerous.
27. At his baptism by John, Jesus is anointed and becomes Israel's Messiah and representative (note that that's where Peter begins the story in Acts 10:37-38). He is personally the Son of God but he is identified as embodying Israel's hopes—Israel, God's son (see Exodus 4:22-23). I mention all this to say that there is more than one layer in the story of Jesus as it's developed in the Gospels.
28. The Holy Father—as Mark 1:11 records it—speaks to Jesus and says, "You are my Son…" Here, if nowhere else, we have an external witness borne to Jesus about who he is. In Luke 1:32 his mother is told that her child would be "the Son of the Most High" and what would make us think she didn't tell him of this? [And if she did tell him would that not affect how he read OT texts like Psalm 2 and other sections about the "coming one" who was Bethlehem born, of the house of David, who would arrive on the scene in the days of the fourth kingdom (the Romans), and so forth?] Now Jesus hears for himself a voice from heaven—a Father's voice—speaking to him and confirming that what his mother (probably) told him again and again and again was true. This might mean that he didn't know this within himself simply by God (within him as part of him) telling it to him all along. That is, if Jesus knew all along that he was the divine Son of God ("the 2nd person in the Godhead," so to speak) it might appear that the heavenly witness was redundant. Be that as it may, he now has a witness external to himself that what he knew all along by various forms of testimony was indeed true.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.