Category: Life of Jesus

Q. Did Jesus give up all knowing the future just before the creation? (We understand he did at His incarnation.) Could the epic story unfold as Jesus relies on close faith and communication with the Father for revelation and instruction all the way through? Voluntarily not knowing the future, right up to receiving His completed bride (church) and perhaps beyond. His ongoing humility as reliant Holy Royal King and husband. I don’t have any Bible passages yet. Maybe Genesis 32:25 as “the man” wresting with Jacob couldn’t overcome him?

As you note, and as I discuss in this post, Christian theology understands that in becoming incarnate as Jesus, the second person of the Trinity gave up certain divine attributes.  This is what Paul means when he writes in Philippians that Jesus “emptied himself”  in order to be “born in human likeness.”  The Greek term for “emptying” is kenosis, and that term is used in Christian theology to describe Jesus’ act of giving up these attributes. Jesus specifically gave up what are known as the non-communicable divine attributes, that is, the ones that are unique to an infinite God and so cannot be passed on to finite humans: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, etc. Jesus did not, however, give up the communicable divine attributes such as love and holiness, which can be taken on by humans as they grow in godliness.

However, Christian theology would not say that the second person of the Trinity gave up these non-communicable divine attributes just before the creation. In the incarnation, Jesus voluntarily submitted himself to the authority and guidance of God the Father. But in the divine activity of creating the universe, the second person of the Trinity was a full and equal partner with the other two persons of the Trinity. As I discuss in this post, all three persons of the Trinity are involved in every action of the Godhead. At the beginning of Genesis, we see the Father creating by speaking, that is, by the Word, as the Spirit hovers over the unformed creation. So they are all involved. John tells similarly us at the beginning of his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” I do not believe that the second person of the Trinity could have played this role in creation after first giving up divine attributes such as omniscience.

I would say further that in writing to the Philippians, Paul, after describing how Jesus “emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant” in his incarnation, then indicates that after his resurrection and ascension, God the Father restored Jesus to his full prior status: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” So I would not see the voluntary “emptying” of the incarnation continuing into the future after Jesus’ time on earth.

However, I do appreciate your sense of the humility and interdependence with the Father (and the Spirit) that has characterized, and will continue to characterize, the Son’s activities throughout the whole history of creation and redemption. If I would not agree with what you suggest might be the case with his attributes, I certainly agree with what you say about his attitude.

(As for the implications for all of this of the account of the figure who wrestled with Jacob, please see this post: Why couldn’t God defeat Jacob in a wrestling match?)

Q. What were some of the miracles Jesus did, and how should we categorize them (e.g. nature miracles, healing miracles, etc.)? Also, what do these miracles indicate about Jesus? Do they help prove that Jesus is God?

The largest number of miracles that Jesus did were miracles of healing. He enabled people who were blind to see; he enabled people who could not hear to hear and speak. It is recorded that he cured people of fevers, of leprosy, of bleeding disorders, and of diseases that caused muscle weakness or paralysis. Jesus empowered his disciples to do similar miracles of healing, and he told them that when they did, they should declare that the kingdom of God was coming near. So these miracles of healing indicate that Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God, and that in God’s kingdom (that is, when and where things are done as God wishes), there is restoration and health. In other words, these miracles showed that God wants those things for people. We are not there yet, but the kingdom is coming (even as it has already arrived in a sense), and as we work to promote these same things, we declare our faith in what God wants people to experience, and we do our part toward that end now.

Jesus also delivered many people from demon oppression. The gospels clearly distinguish between demon oppression and illness. They do not reflect a belief that all illness comes from evil spirits. Through these miracles, Jesus demonstrated that he had come to bring liberty to those who were held captive, as he said about himself in a sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth at the start of his ministry. I think that we today could extend this principle to include other types of “captivity,” such as addiction, depression, abuse, human trafficking, etc. Jesus showed us that God wants people to be free from all such oppression, and the miracles he did invite us to join in his work of bringing freedom.

Jesus, as you noted, also did “nature miracles.” In what we might call a “negative” sense, he calmed a raging storm at sea, made a fig tree wither, passed unnoticed through a crowd, and appeared inside a locked room. “Positively,” he fed thousands of people from small quantities of food, turned water into wine, enabled the disciples to make huge catches of fish, and even directed Peter to find a coin in a fish’s mouth that would pay the taxes for the two of them. These miracles show that God wants people to be safe and well provided for, and once again they invite us to join in working for the same things.

Jesus even raised people from the dead, and he rose from the dead himself. These might be considered miracles of healing, or nature miracles, or miracles in a class of their own. But they show us that death is not final, and so even though we grieve when we lose loved ones, “we do not grieve as those who have no hope,” as the Bible tells us elsewhere. These resurrection miracles also show that God’s power is even greater than the ultimate enemy that we humans must all ultimately face and that we can never conquer on our own: death itself.

So do these miracles, and especially the resurrection miracles, prove that Jesus is God? I would say that that is actually something that cannot be “proved.” It is something that we must recognize and believe by faith. Moreover, as I say in this post, Jesus was actually able to do miracles on earth not because he was God and therefore all-powerful, but because he was completely yielded to his heavenly Father and so was a perfect conduit of divine power. (As that post discusses, Jesus gave up certain divine attributes, including omnipotence, when he “emptied himself” and became human.) So the miracles that Jesus did do not prove that he is God. However, they should certainly make us ask, as people did in Jesus’ own time, for example, “Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?” That question can lead us, by faith, to recognize and believe that Jesus truly is God.

Q. What does it mean to say Jesus is the Son of God? In what sense is Jesus God’s Son? What does it mean to say Jesus is the Logos?

The Bible speaks of Jesus as God’s Son in two different senses.

The first is what I would call the minor sense. The title “Son of God” means “Messiah.” The phrase in this sense comes from Psalm 2, a royal enthronement psalm, in which a king of Israel, presumably David, says, “I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.'”

Even after Israel was no longer a kingdom, this language of being God’s Son was applied to the expected Messiah, who would resume the royal house of David. In his sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, Paul applied this language to Jesus. He said: “What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.'” So to say that Jesus is the Son of God means, for one thing, that he is the Messiah.

But there is also what I would call the major sense. In a way that is difficult for the human mind to appreciate fully, there is an organic relationship between Jesus (the second person of the Trinity) and the first person of the Trinity. Since that relationship can be well understood, according to the Bible, along the lines of the organic relationship between a child and a parent, the first person of the Trinity is called God the Father and Jesus is called God the Son.

However, there is an important difference here. An earthly parent has a child at a given time. Before that, the child does not exist. But in the case of Jesus, he has existed from all eternity, even though he is also in an organic relationship with the first person of the Trinity that can well be described with the language of a father-son relationship. That is why Christian theology speaks of Jesus being “eternally begotten” of the Father.

This brings us to the question about what it means to say that Jesus is the Logos. In his gospel, John uses the language of logos, a complex Greek term, to describe Jesus and his relationship to God the Father: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning.” The word logos could mean an inward thought, or speech that expressed an inward thought, or just speech. Therefore it was particularly well suited to describe the relationship between the second person of the Trinity and the first person of the Trinity, since in one sense they are separate persons (“just speech”), in another sense they are part of the same Godhead (“an inward thought”), and in yet another sense they have an interdependent relationship (“speech that expresses thought”).

This is admittedly complicated. The relationship of the persons of the Trinity (I haven’t even brought up the Holy Spirit yet!) is certainly a mystery beyond human comprehension. But I think the take-home message for us can be the reassuring conviction that at the essence of God is community and relationship in which individuality is nevertheless affirmed and flourishes. Making that the model for our own lives is enough of a welcome challenge that we do not need to try to sort out any other issues definitively.

But to summarize, the second thing we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God is that while he became fully human on earth, he is also fully God, eternally begotten of the Father.

Q. What were the names of Jesus’ sisters? Or how many sisters did he have?

Matthew records in his gospel that when Jesus taught in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, the people there “were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offense at him.”

Much could be said about this passage in confirmation of the statement that Jesus made at the time, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” But for our present purposes, the significant part of the passage to focus on is the statement by the people in Nazareth, “And are not all his sisters with us?” The language suggests that Jesus had at least three sisters. However, Matthew does not provide their names, as he does for the brothers, and the names are not given anywhere else in the Bible—perhaps.

There is a later Christian tradition that the names of two of Jesus’ sisters were either Mary and Salome or Anna and Salome. Some interpreters have identified this Salome with the woman whom Mark mentions in his gospel as an eyewitness of Jesus’ crucifixion and of his resurrection. So we have the very interesting possibility that at least one of Jesus’ sisters accompanied him from Galilee to Judea on the last trip he made there and was consequently a witness of his crucifixion and resurrection.

What makes this possibility even more intriguing is that as the various gospel writers describe the women who were at the cross and the empty tomb, they mention different women by name. Interpreters believe that this may be because the gospel writers name the women they knew personally and whose stories they heard and verified, or else because they name the women who would have been familiar to their audience. If the latter is the case, then this Salome, whoever she was, may have been known to Mark’s audience in Rome, suggesting that she could have had a wide ministry.

Nevertheless, we do not know for sure. The Bible does not tell us the names of Jesus’ sisters, or exactly how many sisters he had, and we do not know how reliable the later tradition is. We are left with what I find to be a historical puzzle that contains a very intriguing possibility.

Q. How long did it take the three wise men to finally reach baby Jesus? And I see you say they probably only stayed in the stable for a week, so where was baby Jesus when the three wise man found him?

The wise men themselves told King Herod that the saw the star that announced the birth of Jesus two years before they arrived in Jerusalem. However, we don’t know how long it took them to decide to travel to worship the newborn king and how long it took them to prepare for the journey before they left. Given the transportation standards of the time, they could have made the trip in a matter of weeks or at most months. (They would have had either to walk or to ride on horses or camels.)

In the other part of your question, you are referring to this post: How long did the baby Jesus stay in the manger in the stable? In that post, I indeed say that he and his family probably stayed no more than a week. After that, they probably returned to Nazareth. Matthew tells us in the account of the wise men not that they went to Bethlehem after the priests and teachers of the law quoted Micah to say that the Messiah would be born there, but that they followed the star to “the place where the child was.” Then, Matthew says, “They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother.” So when the wise men found Jesus, he was in the house where his family was living, most likely in Nazareth.

By the way, while we traditionally speak of “the three wise men,” Matthew does not tell us how many of them there actually were. Since they gave three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—readers over the centuries have inferred that there were three of them. But we don’t know for sure.

Q. After the 40 days of fasting, Jesus is tempted. In His response to Satan, why does Jesus quote from Deuteronomy and not another book and why are all three responses from just the one? Is there more here that I’m not getting?

This is an excellent and very perceptive question. When Jesus was baptized, a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Most interpreters take this to be an announcement that Jesus was the Messiah, and they understand this to be the moment when what had been a growing realization crystallized for Jesus that he was the Messiah. He immediately went alone into the wilderness to understand what the implications of this were.

In the temptations, the devil was basically saying to Jesus, “So, I hear you’re the Messiah. That’s great. Have you thought about what kind of Messiah you’re going to be?” (“If you are the Son of God …”) The temptations were to see his primary role as that of meeting the physical needs of people; to do dazzling daredevil feats that would win admiration and an audience; or to try to achieve his purposes by obtaining political and military power. Interestingly, later on Jesus actually did feed people miraculously, and on many occasions he was delivered spectacularly from dangers, although he definitively rejected pursuing political and military power.

But on this occasion, it would have been wrong to do any of those things as primary to his Messianic vocation, particularly at the suggestion of the devil that this was the kind of Messiah he should be. And just as interestingly, Jesus rejects all of these temptations on the basis that they would involve doing something that would be wrong for anyone to do—seeing life as consisting primarily of meeting physical needs and desires; putting God to the test; worshiping anyone but God. In each case, Jesus cites scriptures to show that this would be wrong.

It makes sense to me that all of these scriptures would come from the Torah or law of Moses, because that is where the normative principles for godly conduct are stated directly in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, while Jesus spoke a few times of “Moses and the prophets,” and once of “Moses and the prophets and the Psalms” (“Psalms” likely meaning the final section of the Hebrew Bible, the “Writings”), in general he spoke and taught about “the law” or “what Moses wrote” or “the law of Moses.” Principles for godly conduct can be inferred from the narratives, songs, etc. in other parts of the Bible, but they are laid out directly in the law of Moses.

That said, is there a reason why Jesus would have quoted all of these principles specifically from the book of Deuteronomy, rather than from some other book of the Torah? We could say that it was simply a coincidence that they were all found there. But perhaps, as you say, there is something more going on here.

Deuteronomy is a single long discourse by Moses. In the gospel of Matthew, the temptations are followed by the Sermon on the Mount, a single long discourse by Jesus, in which he explains the deepest meanings and applications of the law. In Luke, the equivalent Sermon on the Plain comes not long after the temptations. So perhaps we are to understand what Jesus does in those discourses as an echo of Deuteronomy.

Matthew in particular portrays Jesus as a “new Moses” in many ways in his gospel, that is, as someone who will be a teacher and giver of a law that brings freedom. We may actually see Jesus entering into his vocation as this “new Moses” in the temptations themselves, as he articulates the meaning and application of “what Moses wrote” for the situations that the devil is describing. This would be a delightful irony. In the process of trying to get Jesus to be the wrong kind of Messiah, the devil provides the occasion for Jesus to step into his vocation as the right kind of Messiah. As that happens, the farewell speech of the first Moses provides the inaugural content for the new Moses.

Q. Why did the soldiers who crucified Jesus go beyond Pilate’s order?

I have to admit that I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking here.

Perhaps you are noting that Pilate declared Jesus innocent and said he would release him, and so you are wondering why the soldiers crucified Jesus anyway. Pilate said to the people who were accusing Jesus, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. … He has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.” So when we read this, we may be surprised to discover that the soldiers put Jesus to death anyway.

However, before the soldiers took Jesus away to execute him, Pilate actually changed his mind, at the urging of the crowd. The account of Jesus’ trial continues and it says: “But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand.” So the soldiers actually did not go beyond Pilate’s order to punish Jesus when they crucified him. Pilate changed his order and told them to crucify him.

Or perhaps you are asking why the soldiers, in addition to actually executing Jesus, mocked him and insulted him and perhaps taunted him by offering him something to drink in his great thirst but then not giving it to him. These things, unfortunately, were actually a regular part of crucifixion, whose purpose was not just to execute a condemned person, but to humiliate them and make them suffer as much as possible. The soldiers who mocked, insulted, and taunted Jesus were doing what Roman soldiers did to every person they crucified.

What is amazing is that Jesus knew he would be treated that way, in addition to the great physical suffering of crucifixion, and yet he still said to God beforehand, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Hallelujah, what a Savior!

Q. Who was Jesus’ biological father? How did His mother Mary die? When? Where?

Christians believe that Jesus had no biological father. Rather, his mother Mary conceived him while she was still a virgin. This was a miracle, and so it is unclear how it actually happened. Even the angel who spoke to Mary about it described it in a figurative poetic parallel: “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” So this is a mystery of the faith that Christians believe and accept by faith.

As for the later life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, please see this post.