Calvary Baptist Church

Calvary Baptist Church, Grenada, MS, USA

Holding to the truths embraced by Baptist for centuries.

Possessed of the omnipotence of deity, He could have wrought His miracles without dependence upon the Holy Spirit. His casting out a demon from a blind and dumb man (Matthew 12:22) had precipitated the charge of league with Beelzebub. The central point in the sin of His accusers was blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in casting out demons — ”But if I in the Holy Spirit am casting out the demons” (Matthew 12:28). His doing this “in the Holy Spirit” means in the sphere of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit furnished the power and direction. This dependence upon the Holy Spirit was a part of His self-emptying.

Scripture does not warrant one to say that never did His deity display itself in His miracling. This story just cited is indisputable proof that He wrought the miracle in the power of the Holy Spirit. One cannot delve into the inner workings of interplay between the divine and human elements in His person. One, however, can cite this instance to show that He emptied Himself of the exercise of the power of deity except under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

What was the quality of Jesus’ teachings? Some hold that He never taught an error; some hold that He taught several things which moderns know to be untrue. In several areas of the beliefs and teachings of Jesus, this crucial issue could be treated. Most liberals choose to cross swords with evangelicals on His thinking about demons, and the truths may as easily be set forth on this point as on any other.

What did Jesus think about demons? He evidently believed that demons really existed. He evidently thought that He cast them out. No one doubts His keen insight into human nature and frailties. No evangelical would undervalue His keen psychiatric understanding and ability to cope with psychical problems. The only issue is as to whether this exhausts Jesus’ dealing with demons. The terms of the Scripture demand more. The liberals own this much by their theory about Jesus’ belief in the existence of demons.

Rawlinson represents this liberal view that Jesus “shared in the beliefs of His time . . . since it was plainly involved in the fact of the Incarnation that His human mind should be that of a Palestinian Jew of the first century, and that He should not be in possession of miraculous information as to the physical or psychological causes of disease” (A. E. J. Rawlinson, Westminster Commentaries: The Gospel according to St. Mark, p. xlviii). The problem does truly become a Christological problem and strikes deep into the real meaning of His incarnation.

Rawlinson, however, befogs the issue on two counts. He supposes that the “human mind” of Jesus was “that of a Palestinian Jew of the first century.” He was truly a man, but no Scripture statement limits Him to the level of “a Palestinian Jew of the first century.” He often took issue with the Palestinian Jews; He showed no tendency to fall into their narrowness and prejudices. It is manifestly unfair to limit thus the “human mind” of Jesus. He was uniquely the Universal Man, the Perfect Man.

Rawlinson's second error stems from his first error. The quality of Jesus’ knowledge was not dependent upon the “possession of miraculous information as to the physical or psychological causes of disease.” As man, He achieved sinlessness. His humanity must be weighed apart from His possession of “miraculous information.” Did He learn error and teach error? That is the issue.

A trilemma arises. First, Jesus shared the views which He held because He knew no better; this would convict Him of ignorance.

Second, He shared these views because He knew better but passed over denying them because He would not antagonize His hearers since He wanted to teach more important truths; this would, though one may own some truths to be more important for their purpose than others, convict our Lord of insincerity. Both of these horns of the trilemma strike at the moral perfection of our Lord. One other horn of the trilemma remains.

He shared these views and taught them because they are true; this would exonerate His intelligence and sincerity. The evangelical has no option but to accept the moral perfection of his Lord. Only the liberal is content to worship an imperfect Lord Jesus.

Let us face the outcome. If He taught error, then He was sinful and a sinner. If one claims that He taught ignorantly, then His sin of ignorance would need atonement. If He taught insincerely when He knew better, then another would be needed to atone for His insincerity.

Some argue that He could as easily limit His knowing as His doing, His omniscience as His omnipotence. The analogy does not hold. The limitation of the exercise of Jesus’ omnipotence resembles God’s allowing any resistance to His holy will. This is based largely upon God’s choosing to make man a free-acting, destiny-determining creature. But two limits are to be remembered — man cannot overpower God, and man cannot entice God to exercise power in a manner inconsistent with His holy nature.

It is sometimes urged that He volunteered not to know. His deity could not deny that which He spontaneously and underivedly possessed — that is, perfection of knowledge. His humanity progressively came to know. It is not a question of learning or refusing to learn; it is the crucially all-important question of the quality of His knowing.

The quantity of His human knowing, like man’s knowing, is limited in attainment and progressive in its acquisition or growth. The quality of His human knowing, like all the facets of His moral perfection, could not be limited. To limit moral perfection equals moral imperfection. For Him to have misperceived moral truth and to have approved error would have made Him a sinner. It was at this very point that He achieved in all things moral perfection, the Sinless One.

Again, if we admit that Jesus taught one untruth, how shall we argue that He did not teach many untruths? Who is to specify what teachings of Jesus are truth and which are untruth? How are we then to be assured that He was not in error about His claims to Messiahship? By what principle of reasoning are we to deduce that His promise of salvation is not among His possible errors?

The dilemma is simply this — we must give up trusting Him as a reliable Savior or own that His sinlessness and reliability pervade all His knowledge, all His thinking, all His feeling, and all His doing. In all things He is the Sinless One or He is the Sinful One. No one ever made such a claim as did He. If He made mistakes in His knowledge, then He is the Arch Blunderer.

In a sense, the transfiguration of Jesus reversed in part His self-emptying and looked toward His exaltation (Philippians 2:9-11). The word “transfigured” (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2) is rich indeed. It must be interpreted along with Philippians 2. It means to change into another form. It refers to the intrinsic and essential, the inner and permanent form. A synonym could have been chosen to indicate a change of form. This word emphasizes the outward, accidental, and transient. Paul used the root of the weaker word for his “conformed to this world” and the stronger word for his “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

To understand the transfiguration crisis in the life of Jesus, one must look backward and forward. The glory that had been manifest in eternity and veiled in His “in-flesh-ment” shined through the veil. The inner form of reality, His deity, broke through for the time being and made the change in His garments. Luke’s words are literally, “The appearance of His face became different” (A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures, on Luke 9:29).

All three of the Synoptic Gospels exhaust language to convey to us the dazzling whiteness which appeared. It reminded them of the dazzling white of the lightning flash, the downpour of the brilliant Palestinian sun, the whiteness of the snow, and the best efforts of the professional clothes cleaner.

This short encouragement to Jesus anticipated the glory of His resurrection and the eternal glory that is now His, to be manifested in His glorious return for His saints.

Until the last week, Jesus acted freely and only under limitations determined by His own decision. He had escaped being thrown over the brow of the hill at Nazareth. Though He was so tired out that His disciples lifted Him into the boat, yet He arose and rebuked the waves and winds lest He and His group be engulfed in the Sea of Galilee. When the Jews sought to stone Him, He hid Himself and passed safely through the midst of the people to heal the man born blind (John 8:59; 9:1). After the majestic raising of Lazarus and the crystallizing of the opposition against Him into a decree of the Sanhedrin not to let up until this high court of the Jewish nation could destroy Him, He had withdrawn to Ephraim lest He precipitate open conflict before the time.

Up to now, He had been master of events, controller of circumstances, and guide of developments. Now that their hour and the power of darkness had come, He relinquishes all this. He walked forth in the Garden of Gethsemane and yielded Himself to their plots.

The power of deity that made them fall backward for a while shows what the All-Powerful One could have done. He rather used His power only for the safety of His own. He calmly walked forth to declare His identity as Jesus of Nazareth and the Messiah of God. He demonstrated that He had power to lay down His life. No man could take it from Him except by His voluntary choice of the outcome.

He cautioned Peter to sheath His sword. Jesus could have called twelve legions of angels to defend Himself. On the other hand, He had determined not to use angelic power not human power nor even His divine power to rescue Himself from the shame and the suffering of death.

With Paul, the shameful death of the cross climaxed the reach of the self-emptying of Christ Jesus. There His foes taunted Him about His supposed weakness. “He saved others; Himself He cannot save” expressed their contempt of His weakness. He really did save others, but they meant that He had pretended to save others. Since He would and did save others, then He must not save Himself. That is the mystery and the glory of His self-emptying, but to them His not saving Himself was their greatest argument against Him. In unbelief, they challenged Him to come down from the cross if He wished to gain their faith in Him as the Messiah. They perceived not that His self-emptying had all along intended this voluntary giving over of the Omnipotence of Christ Jesus to die on a cross so that men could be saved.

The misunderstanding and the slanders heaped on His highest act of self-emptying show three things —(1) the matchless wonders of His condescending love, (2) the depths of human sin, and (3) the unfathomable depths of the shame to which He stooped to save sinning men.

Earlier I touched upon the marvelous way in which He entered most fully into our infirmities. This is a part of His being made in the likeness of sinful flesh.

The Epistle to the Hebrews more fully develops this idea than any other New Testament book. His sufferings perfected Him to fulfill the role of the captain of salvation (Hebrews 2:10). That does not mean that He had to be purged from moral imperfection. Hebrews 4:15 and 7:26 emphasize His sinlessness.

The trying human experiences through which He passed gave to Him a deeper sympathetic understanding of man’s weaknesses. The Savior must be able to know and to feel the tug of temptation that He might be our Savior and Redeemer. “For in that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted” (2:18). “For we have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin” (4:15).

Not until glory itself can we know the full benefits of His self-emptying. As we tarry at the throne of grace, however, we learn increasingly His tender understanding and earnest heart-concern for us.

I would fain not close these words on the mystery of mysteries in the incarnation of our Lord without quoting the opposite picture as Paul set it over against his delineation of Christ’s emptying Himself. Hear its triumphant and strong-throated tones “Wherefore God also highly exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”! (Philippians 2:9-11).

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