Guillermo: You wrote:

Anyway, “The Last Temptation” does rise a point that has come to my attention again very recently, I’d like to read your opinions:

During His earthly life, Was Jesus Christ aware that He was God Incarnate? And of course, this is NOT a Yes/No question.

And does the answer to this question has any Practical Christian Life implication?

My response: I like your question During Jesus earthly life was he aware that he was God incarnate?. I remember having a discussion on this subject some years ago on this same group.

It isn’t a point that can be settled with positive evidence. Nothing in scripture that I know of definitively says that Jesus knew he was God incarnate. But I would wade in on the side that says he didn’t–certainly not at his birth, nor at the age of twelve and perhaps not even when he was dying on the cross. Let me tell you why I think this.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who hs been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.” (Heb 4: 15)

If what the writer here says is actually true–literally true–than you have to ask the question how Jesus could have known he was God incarnate and still been tempted IN EVERY WAY JUST AS WE ARE. For that phrase to be true, Jesus would have had to have been susceptible to the temptation. That is, the temptations were real with the possibility of his responding to them by succumbing to them. Anything short of that would have, IMHO, made a farce of the above passage of scripture.

Was Jesus aware that he had a special mission? Yeah, probably. At the age of 12 did he know that the path would lead to Calvary? I’m inclined to think not. When did he begin to know? Well, surely sometime during the last six months of his life he was becoming more and more aware that he would probably be put to death. During the last week of his life he surely was aware of that. But imagine this. Suppose he had known that he would die, and that he was in fact, God incarnate, meaning that he could pick his life up again anytime he chose. Then his suffering in the Garden is a sham too. Instead of praying, If it is possible remove this cup from me,” he would have been saying, “Father, I understand I’ve got a few hard days ahead of me, but it’s only three ugly days. Knowing what glory awaits me when I am again with you, I figure I can handle it.”

I don’t mean to be flippant here, but the point I am trying to make is that a Jesus who knew he was God incarnate isn’t going to suffer as a human being. His suffering is going to be mitigated by his knowledge that he is the Son of God–God incarnate. And if his suffering is mitigated by anything that is beyond the realm of humanness, then even if it has some similarity to my own suffering, my own temptation, it isn’t the same. Then even his cry “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me,” is not real, for how could God forsake his own incarnation. Or to put the question another way, how could Jesus as God incarnate, actually experience God forsaking him. I mean, how can God forsake himself??

I take great comfort in the knowledge that Jesus in all of his humanness, experienced everything that I experience, and that he did so without succumbing to sin. His life was lived entirely within the will of his father. Not as a divine being, but as a fully human being. So now, when I look to him, I see what God wants me to be and more importantly even, what he made me to be. In Jesus I see what my humanity can look like–was meant to look like. In him my humanity can be made perfect. But only if his humanity was fully real–not simply a part of him–but all of him. His experience as Jesus was fully human–God became man. Phillipians 2: 6 & 7 speaks about being in very nature God but gave up all that (divinity?) and took on the very nature of a servant “being made in human likeness.” Not part human likeness, because that wouldn’t make sense. All of human likeness, just like me and in that human likeness he found it possible to bring the presence of God into his life so that he lived without sin. And by his power, that becomes my goal if not my precise reality.

Like I said, people have a lot of different views on this issue, but for me, if Jesus wasn’t fully human, meaning that he was unaware of his divinity although he may have been aware of his close relationship to God his Father–then he doesn’t really have much to say to me in terms of being able to “sympathize with our weaknesses.” And that is not only a key but a critcally key component of his being not just my savior, but also my example and my comforter–the One I can come to with my weaknesses who will say, “Yes, I understand for I was there where you are now.” And because I believe that, I approach him with confidence–even with boldness–and ask for his help in leading me through this life which he knew as I now am learning it.

One last comment. God didn’t have to become human so he could learn what our life was like–he already knew that–he had to become human so that we would understand that he knows–not in some make believe way as a God/man–but as a very real live human human. This is the true mytery of the Incarnation. Paul refers to it as the “foolishness” of the gospel in the eyes of man. God becomig man? Give me a break! But the glory of the gospel is that this foolishness–this mystery that men will consider nonsense–was real, not make believe, not God playing a role for thirty three years, but living as an honest to God human being, confronting life as I confront life, living in God’s presence in such a way as to live without sin, not in some supernatural manifestation of human flesh, but as the real thing. Just like you and me Guillermo.

Just my thoughts.

Rick R