A trick question? Depends on how much theological and logical clarity your thoughts about the question are.
I was reminded of this issue (which, I’ll admit, is one of my pet issues) last week as I had the honor of hosting Doug Bookman at Logos. Doug was one of my three original undergrad Bible professors (Ed Glenny and Mike Stitzinger were the other two). I know now just how spoiled I was. Doug was in for filming a series on the Life of Christ. It irritates me (and him) when Christians don’t appreciate the humanity of Jesus. That point of biblical theology is as important as the deity of Jesus, but the latter gets all the love. But you can’t truly have a high priest and Savior who understands your own temptations, emotions, and needs without a fully human Jesus (Heb 4:14-15). And yet I have known Christians who stumble over some pretty simple realities of Jesus being the “second Adam,” born of a woman as a mortal human (that theological thing we call the incarnation). Jesus learned and experience lots of things as he grew:
- How to talk (he didn’t pop out of the womb speaking)
- How to walk
- How to go potty
- How to eat with a spoon (or whatever utensil they used)
- Puberty
- Arithmetic
- Reading
- Writing
- What pleases God (Luke 2:52)
- Wise behavior / living (Luke 2:52)
- Etc., etc.
In one of Doug’s sessions he brought up John 11 in this regard. It’s a wonderful (and, I think, humorous) example of how the NT itself juxtaposes Jesus’ deity and human limitations in the same context or scene. But I am interested to see if Naked Bible readers can spot the juxtaposition. Go ahead and read the passage and let me know. Hint: female readers will especially find the discovery funny.
In verse 34 Jesus doesn’t seem to know where they put the body of Lazarus, but earlier he knows that Lazarus has died with out being told.
That’s half the equation; nice job!
I assume the issue is people ask why he didn’t stop Lazarus from dying, but go on to witness that he can clearly resuscitate. He is limited by what God allows him to do (as is also made clear by his prayer before raising Lazarus). That doesn’t mean he isn’t deity, but he was only as equal to the Father as God allowed him, being his representative on earth.
nope; something less obvious.
Not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but the fact that Jesus knows that Lazarus has died and knows how the whole episode will turn sounds very much divine. But the fact that He doesn’t know where the tomb is? Yeah, that sounds like a guy! (Although He actually ASKS for directions!)
Bingo! Women ought to love this passage — even Jesus has to ask for directions! And think about the juxtaposition of deity and humanity: “Hey, I’ll raise him if you give me directions to the tomb.”
Hey, Ill raise him if you give me directions to the tomb.
In keeping with the lighthearted intentions of your point, I direct you to comedian Jim Gaffigan who comments about people of Jesus’ time keeping His carpentry skills in mind: “Jesus if you could cure our son’s blindness…and we need some shelves right here!”
(Uh oh, I suppose I’ll get in trouble now, won’t I?)
had to laugh!
Did Jesus really tell the women to take away the stone? It only says, “they took away the stone,” but since the context suggests only the women were believing in him, presumably, the women took away the stone. It seems kind of funny that the man in the group wouldn’t have done so or at least helped.
I love studying the humanity of Jesus. There were often things that he didn’t know or took him by surprise. He was human. He completed his acts of power as a human through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he did this so his followers would know they could do them too.
I wonder if the women’s outward work in removing the stone activated somehow their faith, empowering Jesus; or if they had refused to remove the stone, if Jesus would have removed it and raised Lazarus anyway, since he did just say the death was to glorify God. It seems sometimes the lack of faith in people sometimes prevented Jesus from doing miracles, but other times, the lack of faith didn’t matter, and God moved sovereignly.
Good thoughts, but see my reply to Mr. Lundgren for what I was looking for.
I dont see why female readers would find anything funny about anything in the text. That gives me a lack of confidence about what I will respond here:
Deity:
11:25-26 : Jesus is the resurrection and life. Everyone who believes him will never die.
11:27: He is the Messiah, the Son of God.
11:32: Mary tells Jesus if he had been there, Lazarus would not have died
11:37: Jesus could have kept him from Lazarus from dying.
Humanity:
11:2: Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.
11:33: Jesus was deeply moved
11:35: Jesus wept
11:38: Jesus groaned deeply
Frankly, I dont see anything else unusual.
see my reply to Mr. Lundgren for what I was looking for.
Jesus did not know where Lazarus was entombed. He had to ask for “directions.”
got it! see my reply to Mr. Lundgren for a summary.
Got it! see my reply to Mr. Lundgren for other notes.
I have heard the doctrine or teaching that Jesus couldn’t perform miracles until he was anointed with the Holy Spirit . What are your thoughts on that ? To me Jesus could perform miracles at any time (He is fully God as well) . Is how Jesus performed miracles based on how we understand the Trinity ?
For those not yet informed I want to point out that the mere writing/expressing of such ‘vulgar’ [common] of Jesus as those above, applied/written/spoken/expressed of the ‘prophet’ Muhammad would result in riots, governmental condemnation, violence, and probably death in many parts of our globe.
To the exact topic, this again gets on one of my main nerves which is “practical modalism” that I see at every turn in the modern evangelical/semi-charismatic/non-aligned/interdenominational/storefront-popup christianity in the west and west-friendly territories. “Jesus” is the title for the composite Deity that seems to want unification. Is it laziness? discomfort with God/YHWH our Father? a desire for a GOD who is non-complex? and I’m including here post-graduate-graduates of big seminaries….
The resurrection of Lazarus, four days after his death. Are we looking for Jesus’ interaction with Mary and Martha, his being deeply moved in his spirit, and greatly troubled, being in the place Mary found him, or something else? Lots of things happening in the passage!
See my reply to Mr. Lundgren.
I’m not sure that I’m getting the precise juxtaposition you mean (and I am a woman), but this post reminds me of something I only finally realized a few weeks ago. I was having a particularly discouraging day, and it happened (not coincidentally I’m sure, as I know our God provides for us) that my daily Bible reading was of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest (Matthew 26).
On that day, I was feeling particularly badly because I was feeling guilty about being sad and depressed; I kept thinking, “You should only ever be positive and happy. That’s what God would want for you.” And then I had my reading, and, for the first time, the words of Christ hit me. He was sad and depressed in the garden! He was struggling with his emotions and feeling sorry for himself. Granted, facing his crucifixion was nothing compared to what I was struggling with, but I finally understood – Jesus was perfect, and even he felt bad sometimes. I cannot tell you what an encouragement that was to my spirit, just the realization that what I was going through was a totally normal human response. Furthermore, it showed me how I should handle the feelings. I couldn’t wallow in my own self-pity and let it consume me, but I needed to follow Christ’s example and ask for God’s help and then get on with the program.
It’s still hard for me to understand how Jesus was both fully God and fully man, but at least now I’m truly beginning to understand that he knows my troubles because he really has been there. He is perfect, but he was also a human with messy emotions from time to time.
Good thoughts, but see my reply to Mr. Lundgren.
I was thinking that perhaps it was here:
35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews were saying, See how He loved him! 37 But some of them said, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, [i]have kept this man also from dying?
So, we have Jesus experiencing the grief of Death while he is simultaneously the Resurrection and the Life. The comments afterword… well… St. John is totally into irony.
I probably missed it, but I miss a lot of things. Sometimes, I think I’m reading a different story!
Take a look at my reply to Mr. Lundgren.
I screwed up on the last post by not putting my contact info in there.
35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews were saying, See how He loved him! 37 But some of them said, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, [i]have kept this man also from dying?
I’ve also thought that Jesus was human enough to pray to God (the Father) . As a human he would pray for his needs just like we do .
Maybe I am hard headed. It seems like saying Jesus “needed” directions is reading into the text because we are then reading His mind. The text does not say Jesus did not know how to get to the location. Just because someone asks a question does not automaticaclly presume they do not have the answer in mind already. A parallel to what I am talking about is in Genesis 3:9 where God asks Adam where Adam is. Does that necessitate God did not know where Adam was?
I am not saying for sure Jesus DID know either. I am suggesting that Jesus request for directions because He did not know may be reading into the text. Whether Jesus needed directions or He was just prompting them to move to the tomb could be open for debate.
Since Jesus didn’t know other things (like the time of his return), got tired, got hungry, etc., things like asking where the tomb was seem to me quite normal and unsurprising.
Jeff understood the same as me. So we are two stiff necks 🙂
Mike, you are repeating my point:
“things like asking where the tomb was seem to me quite normal and unsurprising”
This is a bit of cherry picking, however, since God in the OT asks questions he should know the answer about. The reverse is true as well. In this case, Jesus is confident that he will be able to resuscitate Lazarus, nowhere does it say ( that I can see ) that he knows all the details of the end result. The reverse is true, why assume that Jesus did not really have any idea where he was ( and I believe that he did not know where he was ), and asked “where was he laid?” There is nothing usual about this kind of juxtaposition, that I can see, nor the examples I gave above. There are other examples of such juxtapositions that are far more cogent and explicit than this.
I think you’re taking this a bit too seriously. It seems you’re reading the simple question against a backdrop of omniscience (and the God of Genesis was not incarnated, under the self-imposed limitations that would entail).
Same as above under Jeff.
Is it fair to say Jesus knowing and then not knowing would be kinosis doctrine in action?
It’s not always so easy for me to know the difference. Like walking on water, was that Divinity or was that humanity in 100% confidence in The Father. I ask because Peter also walked on water until he looked away from Jesus.
he’s both; that is the tension.
Think about your question for a second … what is it about humans that makes us so special?
Nothing apart from the fact we were created in the IMAGE OF GOD.
The second greatest commandment (love thy neighbour) IS a call to love the image of God in creation, not to love thy neighbour in some humanistic sense (which is yet another form of idolatry)
So when you say it bugs you people love Jesus’ divine side, and not his human side – what your saying is that it bugs you people love God more than they love ‘the image of God’. The image of God has value only because of what it reflects. Because Jesus was the perfect likeness if the invisible God, and in that sense the reflection and the thing being reflected are indistinguishable it doesn’t much matter.
To love the divinity of Christ IS to love the humanity of Christ because he was the reflection of God as God intended.
No, it bugs me that people do bad theology. The humanity of Christ is crucial to biblical theology; as crucial as the deity of Christ.
I’m a leader in a new church plant… and I just typed this in an email to other leadership team members… “Remember, even Jesus asked for directions!”
I love that. Good post.
made me chuckle too
I’ve read all the posts so I know the answer you had in mind. I did come to a different conclusion before looking. I thought the answer was in Jesus’s following statement:
Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.
I thought that this statement implied that Jesus would not have been emotionally willing to let Lazarus die if Jesus were actually present and witnessing his suffering, despite the prior statement Jesus made concerning the fact that the death of Lazarus was for Jesus’s glorification via the miracle of resurrection. The implication here being the human emotional aspect of Jesus (perhaps more appreciated by women?) would override the opportunity for glorification.
It seems to me that there is a lot made out of Jesus asking questions and drawing the conclusion that He did not know. There is also the incident of the woman with the hemorrage who touched His garment and He asked “who touched Me” Didn’t He know who touched Him? He also knew that power had gone out from Him. How did He know that? And whose power was it? God asked Adam in the garden of Eden.
“where are you Adam?” “Did you eat from the tree I told you not to eat from?” Based on the discussion of Jesus not knowing certain things because of His humanity which was lacking His attributes of Deity, what about God in the garden of Eden. Didn’t He know what Adam and Eve had done????
There is a difference between a rhetorical question (the Genesis incident) and not knowing. I can ask my kids “where were you?” even when I know (do you have teenagers?). I’m giving them the chance to do the right thing and tell me the truth. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to know which is in play.
This whole discussion on the humanity and deity of Christ has been discussed for centuries. There has to be a balance. As I understand the position of Christ giving up His independent use of His attributes and relying totally on the Holy Spirit and not acting on His own has some holes in it. In Mt. 11 the disciples of John the Baptist asked Jesus if He was the ” One, or shall we look for someone else?” Jesus replied by laying out His miracles and from the prophecies concerning what the Messiah would do when He came; healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, cleansed lepers, raised the dead, preached the gospel. Jesus was explaining to them how they could know He was the Messiah, it was by His works. If the miracles and works that He did were not His own and it was by the Spirit working through Him, why did He claim them for His own? Jesus was not just like a prophet or an apostle through whom the Spirit of God worked miracles. In Acts 3,4 when Peter healed the lame man, he was questioned about the miracle. He said ‘by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead – by this name this man stands here before you in good health’ Peter did not claim this miracle as his own. If Jesus did not do miracles on His own, it would be disingenuous of Him to claim they were His. The passage in Acts brings up another question. How was Jesus Christ raised from the dead? Acts 4.10 God raised Him from the dead. Rom. 8.11 the Holy Spirit did. Jn.10.17,18 Jesus says He will lay down His life and He will take it up again. It looks to me like the Trinity is involved in this whole process. It is difficult for me to see how we can separate out the work of Christ from the Father and from the Spirit. In the effort to emphasize the humanity of Christ, I am of the opinion that this position has taken it further than can be substantiated by Scripture.
Jesus has to be 100% human or else NT theology is rogue theology when compared to 3/4 of the Bible (the OT). But he also must be 100% deity for the same reasons. You’re right that articulating this is difficult. My point is only that Christians can say pretty squirrelly (sp?) things in the name of keeping Jesus more God than human.