Tag Archives: Perfect

John 2:23 Now when he [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. 

When Jesus was a man, “many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.  But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.” It’s so easy to assume Jesus’s perfect response to His in-the-flesh life was a foregone conclusion.  He was fully God and still retained His shared knowledge with God but make no mistake about it, Jesus’s life in-the-flesh wasn’t a pretend life, set up to create a pretend identity with man.  It had real risk and a real purpose.  The reality of Jesus in-the-flesh life was risking the suspension of all His Sovereign rights to complete His identity with all people.  “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation [to ease the anger or disturbance of a superior being] for our sins.”^a

God felt the painful reality of what Jesus would endure in-the-flesh as if it were His very own…because it was.  He was watching a part of Himself struggle to cope with living in a broken world trying to overcome the very flesh that had given Him life without those Sovereign rights.  God did not miss the effect of fear, hunger, fatigue and temptation on His Son.  The real purpose to Jesus’s life in-the-flesh that bears witness to His complete identity with all people is “Although he [Jesus] was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”^b

Obedience to God in the circumstances of life completes our identity with Jesus and still has the power to move God’s heart from Law to Grace on our behalf.

^a 1 John 4:10
^b Hebrews 5:8