Day 30

“Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you through Him.” — Acts 2:22

Jesus is God. That is an unequivocal truth in Scripture. He is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is the pre-existent Creator of everything that is and in Him, all things hold together. But, if Jesus is God, how do we explain several discrepancies between biblical statements about God and Jesus?

John 1:18 tells us no one has ever seen God. Yet thousands upon thousands saw Jesus. James 1:13 says that God cannot be tempted. But for forty days in the wilderness Jesus was tempted by Satan and He lived every day subjected to the same temptations we are. The Bible makes clear that God is omniscient; that He knows everything, yet Jesus had to learn obedience through suffering, and He had to “grow in wisdom, stature and in favour with God and man”. God, alone, is immortal, says Scripture; He will never die, yet Jesus died. All this is declared to be impossible to God yet was true of Jesus. How do we reconcile these apparent discrepancies?

The answer is that Jesus Christ, while never less than God as far as His Being is concerned, lived as though He was never more than a man, as far as His doing was concerned. He behaved like a real man! How are real men designed to behave? In complete dependence on God! Jesus claimed to not be responsible for His words or His works. In John 5:19 He said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself.” In John 5.30, ‘By myself I can do nothing’ and in John 8:28, “I do nothing on my own…” So how do we explain his miracles and words? He tells us in John 14:10, “… it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”

As Jesus’ own testimony is that He did nothing Himself, but the Father did His work in the Son, so He tells us that we can do nothing ourselves, but it is to be Christ who does His work in us. That doesn’t make us passive. Christ always did “those things which pleased the Father” in active willful obedience, but His obedience was in the spirit of dependence on His Father who, alone, would be the explanation for what He accomplished. So it is with us. The most important thing is where we place our dependence. To place it wholly on God is to experience His working.

Prayer: I am so grateful, Father, that through the life of your Son, living on earth, we are shown what you can do in us and through us. Thank you for Jesus and for the gift of your Holy Spirit who is my enabling and sets me on a Christ-like path.

To reflect upon: On an everyday basis, am I constantly aware of living in union with Christ? Am I drawing on the power of His Holy Spirit in me to weather the storms and accomplish His agenda in my life?