The Human Struggles of Jesus while being fully God

The Human Struggles of Jesus while being fully God

(A reflection on the Gethsemane experience of Jesus)

As we pass through the Holy Week remembering the sufferings, death and the resurrection of our Lord, I share this reflection to highlight the importance of believing that Jesus was fully human while he was fully God.

In the first few centuries after the birth of the Christian Church there were many debates on the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. Those who first met him face to face knew him as a human being who was their Rabbi. But as time went on in the life and ministry of Jesus, those who were very close to him began to discover that Jesus was more than a human Rabbi. In Mark 4:14 The disciples who were absolutely terrified at the calming of the storm by Jesus in the sea of Galilee asked, “Who is this man? Even the wind and waves obey him!” –  The disciples who knew Jesus the man, discovered that he was more than man.

The first generation of Christians who began to believe in Jesus as God, little by little tended to struggle with the fullness of his humanness. The first heretical teaching that the New Testament Church had to counteract was that Jesus wasn’t truly man (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7). Even after two thousand years, the pendulum keeps swinging between the Divinity and the Manhood of Jesus. His opponents continue to reject his deity while too many of his worshipers are slow to own the extent of his manhood. St. Paul in grappling with this made the most profound statement about Jesus the divine and human being “ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men  (Philippians 2:6,7). When Paul says “He emptied himself” how do we understand it in the light of the entire New Testament? Jesus, though he remained in the fullness of God, yet he appeared as if he had been empty; for he veiled his fullness of deity, at least from the sight of men”

When we closely examine the Gethsemane experience of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, we clearly see the form of God in him is emptied or veiled and the form of man in him becomes nakedly visible.

The first struggle he had in Gethsemane is found in Matthew 26: 37,38 (a) -  He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

o   These were the expressions of Jesus’ human agony. They were spoken by Jesus to denote the total dejection, shock, anguish, and horror of mind.  Jesus the man was “surrounded with sorrows, overwhelmed with miseries, and almost swallowed up with terror and dismay.”

o   The heaviness of sorrow was so excessive, it could even kill him or drive him to the point of death much before his death on the cross.

o   His human sorrowfulness could not be hidden and it became visible to those around him.

·       The second human struggle Jesus had is recorded in Matthew 26: 38(b) -  “Stay here and keep watch with me.”

o   Jesus made this request from the same three disciples who were with him at the Transfiguration. The kind of acclamation Jesus the divine had at that glorious moment struck them with awe. But now the same three disciples are seeing how lonely Jesus the human being was with the imminent death.

o   All this time Jesus had been preparing them to face the reality of his death. But now he looks for company during his own preparation to death which was a struggle for Jesus the human being.

·       The third human struggle that Jesus had is recorded in Mark 14: 35,36 -

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible, the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

o   The intent of Jesus to do the will of his Heavenly Father becomes crystal clear in the following that is recorded in John 6:38 “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” While being an authentic human, Jesus had an infinite divine will which is the will of his Father. All this time his will had perfectly synchronized with, the divine will.

o   But in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus expressed his human will of not wanting go through the cruel death.  It confirmed that he had a finite human will which made him truly experience the weakness of the flesh that struggled with the infinite will of God.

o   When Jesus found that his best friends had fallen asleep instead of praying, he said “the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”. It was not a sarcastic comment that he made of the disciples but, he said it out of his own experience of struggling between the will of God and the will of man.

Having wrestled between the will of man and the will of God Jesus finally prayed “Not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39). It is that wrestle between the two wills which enabled Jesus to say to his disciples “Rise, Let us go! Here comes my betrayer” (Mark 14:42). Such courage came upon Jesus when he had fully attended on his own struggle as a true human being before he submitted to the divine will of dying on a cross.  After the resurrection of Jesus, His closest disciples, who knew his humanity so well, began to worship him as God (Matthew 28:17)

“Jesus took a human body to save our bodies. And he took a human mind to save our minds. Without becoming man in his emotions, he could not have rescued our hearts. And without taking a human will, he could not save our broken and wandering wills.”

 He became man in full, so that he might save us in full. Halleluiah what a Savior!!!

Rev. Asiri P. Perera

Easter 2020