2.-THE ASSUMED LIMITATIONS OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AS MAN ON EARTH
At the suggestion of A. E. B. John 14:8-13 was read.
C. C.-The Lord says, "I speak not of or from Myself"-that is, He did not speak independently; He was speaking the words that He had received from the Father.
A. E. B.-Here it is "words;" in the 12th chapter it is "commandments." It is the same in principle.
C. C.-He is not alluding to the essential unity with the Father; but as man here He made the Scriptures a study. At twelve years of age He went up to the temple and definitely entered upon His responsibilities as a disciple of the law. And in this He was about His Father's business; it characterized Him through those eighteen years following until He entered on His special work.
H. A. I.-His boyhood was perfect. He was not what we would call a precocious child; there was nothing forward about Him. He is not said to be teaching the elders in the temple. He was hearing them, and asking them questions. Is not all this part of His perfection ?
C. C.-Yes; He was a normal human person in every stage of life, the sinless Son of God, and ever subject to the Father.
B. C. G.-That passage, "as His custom was," is instructive. He was accustomed to attend the synagogue service on the Sabbath day. He was a regular attendant, as we say; thus honoring the law of Moses.
C. C.-And as a student of Moses He would meditate in the law of the Lord and receive instruction through meditation. See Psa. 16:7.
A. E. B.-As in the first psalm, which refers primarily to Him.
C. C.-Yes; and thus He received the words of the Father. Undoubtedly there were communications direct from the Father throughout His entire life also, as at the grave of Lazarus where He was answered by the voice from heaven, and He says, "I thank Thee . . . that Thou hearest Me always."
F. J. E.-On that occasion He waited three days before He went-waiting for orders.
B. C. G.-And so as to the feast. He could say, "Your time is alway ready." But He would not take a step until He received instruction from the Father to do so.
C. C.-It is not only intensely interesting, but most profitable, to study the life of our blessed Lord from this stand-point, to consider His perfect submission to the will of the Father.
A. E. B.-He says, "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me." That is not personality, is it?
C. C.-No; it is community of life and nature, but it was being manifested in a life of dependence, obedience and subjection to the Father.
A. E B..-Seeing one Person we see the expression of all. All are identical in life and nature.
C. C.-He was in perfect accord with the will of the Father. He was characterized by this. He said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." But our present point is that as a man He had to learn that will from day to day. He learned it by meditation in the Word of God and in communion with the Father.
A. E. B.-"According to the volume of the book"-that is, He came according to the outline of the prophetic scriptures.
F. J. E.-It is said that He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. In what sense did He learn obedience ?
C. C.-Before incarnation He had no such experience. But having come into a position where He was the subject one, He learned obedience.
B. C. G.-He did not learn to obey as though there were resistance, but the point is He learned a new thing, experimentally-obedience.
C. C.-He was not one who had no will of His own, as people sometimes say. He had a will as a true man, but He subjected His will to the will of the Father. He never exercised His will in independence. He would not have been a perfect man if He had no will. Think of Him never exercising His will of Himself!
F. J. E.-To the leper He said, " I will."
C. C.-Yes; but in doing that He was exercising His will in accord with the will of the Father.
H. A. I.-And for us this is true Christian obedience. We often hear people say that "God wants a broken will." This is wrong. A man with a broken will is a crushed man, a useless man. But He would have us subject our wills to Himself. If we refuse, He may have to break them. The apostle Paul had a tremendously strong will, but it was subjected to the will of the Lord.
A. E. B.-Do you think that John 14:11 explains the perfect unity ? In Him you see the Father's will fully manifested.
C. C.-Think of the Father looking- down upon the earth and beholding a man (in a scene where God had been so terribly dishonored) who was absolutely subject, who had no desire save to glorify Him! What perfect complacency! His communion with the Father was uninterrupted.
F. J. E.-What of the cross, where He cries, " My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?"
C. C.-There He was being made sin; and as standing in the sinner's place, He could not say, My Father. It is, My God. Even in His abandonment He vindicates God:"Thou art holy," He says (Psa. 22:3).
H. A. I.-Many have difficulty here. They do not see that He was the whole burnt offering, a sweet savor, and the sin-offering at the same time. He was never more dear to the Father's heart than at the very time He was forsaken by God as taking our place.
A. E. B.-It was God as judge who forsook Him, but the abandonment was so real, He could not say, My Father.
H. A. I.-Yet the Father's love was unchanged.
B. C. G.-His communion was unbroken, save when He was bearing the wrath of God, when He was made sin.
F. J. E.-He says, "The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works." What does He mean by the Father dwelling in Him ?
B. C. G.-Is it not communion based on life and nature ?
A. E. B.-It is written of us, "Whosoever confesseth that Jesus is the Christ, God dwelleth in him and he in God." It is life and nature in fullest communion. New birth gives us the very life of God. And we are made partakers of the divine nature. It is communion. It is not putting us-in Deity.
B. C. G.-So we have, "The church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father." That is not putting them in Deity. It is family relationship.
C. C.-Now in Phil. 2 we are told that the Lord "emptied Himself"-"made Himself of no reputation," in the common version. He emptied Himself of the exercise of His divine wisdom, omnipotence, omnipresence.
H. A. I.-Is there not a danger of pressing this too far, as in the Kenotic theory of the New Theologians, who say He so emptied Himself that He was subject to all human limitations, all the ignorance of His times ?
C. C.-Yes; but we need to see that as man He governed Himself by the Word of God. He did not draw on His essential knowledge.
B. C. G.-He knew all things, yet He did not act from that standpoint, but He received instruction from the revealed Word.
F. J. E.-Have we not something like that in the Old Testament? God said to Abraham, "Now by this I know;" yet in another sense He always knew.
N. T.-So the Lord says in one place, "I know that Thou hearest Me always, yet because of those that stand by I said it."
F. J. E.-In Phil. 2, "Made Himself of no reputation," does not fully meet the case, does it ?
C. C.-No; it does not go far enough. It is one word in the original, and it means to empty, to divest, oneself. He divested Himself of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He laid aside the majesty that was properly His, and He assumed a servant's form. He became a subject man, and was ever guided by the word of God.
B. C. G.-He came out of the circumstances of glory and came into other circumstances, but He was the same Person.
N. T.-On the mount of transfiguration, what glory was it that the disciples beheld ?
A. E. B.-His official glory was there manifested.
B. C. G.-It was not His essential glory; it was not a question of glory shining out, but rather of glory conferred upon Him. "He received, from God the Father honor and glory."
F. J. E.-Is it correct to say that He left the bosom of the Father ?
C. C.-He came forth from the Father's bosom.
W. H.-Was He not there still while on the earth ?
C. C.-Coming forth is not the same thing as leaving.
B. C. G.-The expression "leaving the Father's bosom" is taken as referring to affection. He never left His place in the Father's affections. He came forth from the circumstances in which He ever had been.
C. C.-And as having thus come forth and taken a servant's form, He voluntarily became dependent on revelation as to how to live in this scene. This comes out in the temptation. He lived by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. He met the tempter with Scripture, and He would not act apart from a definite word from the Father. This was characteristic of His whole life. He assumed the limitations of one daily being taught by the Father. Take that much-disputed ;passage in Mark 13:32. He says that no one knows the day nor hour of His second coming, not even the angels, no, nor the Son, but the Father only. We have no difficulty as to angels; God had given them no revelation as to it. But neither had He given such a revelation to man. Now Christ was here as man; in human condition He learned by revelation. Think of Him as a student of the Scriptures:He could not find any word there to tell the day or the hour of His second coming.
H. A. I.-It is a great mystery how the eternal wisdom could be veiled in flesh, and as a man He increased in wisdom as He increased in stature.
C. C.-People cannot understand it, and we are told sometimes, "No man knoweth the Son but the Father;" so people say, Be careful, don't speculate. That is good; we need care here; but we do not need to be afraid of what God has revealed. We do not need to hesitate to follow the Word of God wherever it leads.
B. C. G.-There will always be a limit beyond which we cannot go. Scripture sets that limit.
C .C. – And so in Mark, they were asking for a revelation, they wanted to know the hour of His return. He replies, It has not been made known. The Father has not communicated it yet. He would not use His personal divine knowledge; He would not draw on His essential knowledge as God to communicate what was not a subject of divine revelation. He did not have that knowledge as a deposit.
W. H.-No one in creature-condition could have it unless God revealed it.
C. C.-It was a part of His perfection as the self-emptied servant not to know what the Scriptures had not declared, nor the Father revealed directly to Him. So He can truly say, " Neither the Son." But of course we have to recognize the fact that we cannot solve all mysteries connected with the person of the Son of God. He is a supernatural Being, and we cannot explain Him by any principles that apply to other men. People say, "Why is the Bible so written that we cannot clearly understand everything in it?" It is written to test our hearts. It is so written that he who will not be taught by it stumbles over it.
A. E. B.-The Lord says Himself, "The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth;" and He was the perfect servant. So He reveals all that God reveals to Him; but this one thing was not revealed. He had not received it from His Father.
A Brother.-What answer would you give to one who claimed from such scriptures that the Lord was limited_ in knowledge ?
C. C.-He was self-limited. He divested Himself of His prerogatives.
H. A. I.-I like that word divested better than emptied. It seems to me it is not so likely to be misunderstood. You empty what is within. You divest yourself of what is without. He did not cease to be God when He became man, but He divested Himself, as you have said, of His prerogatives of Deity. He took a servant's form and place.
A. E. B.-He chose not to use His omniscience and His omnipotence, just as having emptied Himself, He had laid aside His omnipresence. As man He could not be omnipresent. So with all His prerogatives.
C. C.-Yes; it was a great descent on His part to become flesh, to become man. He was not "made" flesh, as our Authorized Version says. It was voluntary. He became flesh.
F. J. E.-What would you say of Gal. 4:4, "Made of a woman, made under the law ? " You say He was not "made" anything. Some might have a difficulty as to this passage.
A. E. B.-J. N. D.'s version reads, "Come of a woman, come under law." It was voluntarily so. Again, in Phil. 2 it reads, "Made in the likeness of men." It should be, "Taking His place in the likeness of men"-His voluntary act.
B. C. G.-And the blessed truth for our souls is that He who thus stooped so low for our redemption is the One "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
C. C.-Yes; He did not cease for one moment to be God, though He took the servant's place, and became a learner, guided as a man on earth by that same word of God which guides the steps of every subject one to-day. He was the pattern, dependent man. His delight was to do the Father's will as He learned it from the Scriptures and the Father's direct communications. Beyond that He chose not to go.