Christ was fully human and he suffered

Open Forum
#1

I think at this time we may discuss the crucifixtion and resurrection of Christ and humanity. I find the following quote (I can supply the source if requested) illuminating:

So why then did Christ die on the cross? Because of his faithfulness to his divine mission, McCabe answers—namely, to be human, truly and fully human, to live into existence perfect love:

Well, then, did the Father want Jesus to be crucified? And, if so, why? The answer as I see it is again: No. The mission of Jesus from the Father is not the mission to be crucified; what the Father wishes is that Jesus should be human. . . . And this is what Jesus sees as a command laid on him by his Father in heaven; the obedience of Jesus to his Father is to be totally, completely human. This is his obedience, an expression of his love for the Father; the fact that to be human means to be crucified is not something that the Father has directly planned but what we have arranged. We have made a world in which there is no way of being human that does not involve suffering.

Jesus accepted the cross in love and obedience, and his obedience was to the command to be human.

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#2

Maybe not planned but inevitable? From square one Christ teaches that He will die and on the third day be raised, Does that not imply that His death was part of the plan? You cannot have a resurrection without a death. I suppose it would depend on how you see the whole package of the Easter weekend (even Holy week as well).

Rather than me preach, I would prefer a discussion here.

Richard

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#3

Citation please.

#4

Because PEOPLE demanded it.

Yes. I believe the cup referred to in His garden prayer is the cup of Socrates. Jesus would not back down any more than Socrates had.

Complicated! If God wanted this then wasn’t Judas doing the will of God? It doesn’t sound like it when Jesus says it would be better if such a man had never been born. And yet Jesus came to the conclusion after praying three times in the Garden that this was indeed the Father’s will.

But I believe that Jesus was God. And I don’t believe that prayer was simply human weakness. I have seen too many people who would give without limits for the sake of others without hesitation to think being human requires such a thing. I can only conclude that there were other possibilities, BUT they required His disciples to stay awake and pray with Him. When they couldn’t even do that, Jesus concluded that such other possibilities wouldn’t work. It would seem Jesus realized His disciples needed the kind of inspiration and revival they would find in the Pentecostal experience of Acts… more than they needed His continued teachings and presence.

#5

Im just gonna write that i disagree with putting the blame only to s.Thats all im gonna say

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#6

My only thought is the premise presented seems to be based on the wrong sacrifice. The one below may help frame the idea you’re after.

The initial sacrifice was Jesus’ own will in all things, doing only what our Father has told and showed him.

These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does

A proper question to ask is,
When Jesus did something, whose will is being done?
When the bible quotes Jesus, who is speaking?

As to Jesus being counted worthy and given authority over all powers and dominions, Who can resist the will of God?

#7

Do you credit him with humanity as well?

And why do you think it important that Jesus was/is human? Is there any divinity in Him for you?

In the creeds Jesus is described as fully human and fully divine. I personally do not have a problem with this but…

Richard

#8

100% God 100% human. But the latter doesn’t mean the dregs of humanity but the best of it – an example for all to aim for. And 100% God 100% human is possible because God has no limitations, and can be whatever He chooses with whatever limitations He chooses to accept. Power and knowledge is no more a requirement for God to be God than a man ceases to be a man because He loses memories or the power to walk. So …

Philippians 2: 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

#9

Oh dear, we seem to have an agreement. I hope this is not upsetting.

There are those who would be running for cover now, but maybe you are not Trinitarian?
(again no criticism intended here)

RIchard

#10

No doubt… too many Christians prefer a God enslaved to their theology. They want to be the ones who dictate what God is, what God can be or can’t be, and what God can do or can’t do.

I am Trinitarian and I consider that to be definitive of the Christian religion. But perhaps there are details which I might dispute – too many have strange understandings of the Trinity. For example, I do not believe that God is three. I just believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons and only one God.

#11

Forgive me for smiling. You have trotted out the perfect response. I won’t insult you by asking for clarification about what constitutes a “person” in the Trinity.

We have more in common than maybe you would like to believe. But the way we reach it…

but I am not one to concern myself unduly about such things. I accept that as individuals we cognisise, reason and conclude on an individual basis.

Richard

#12

Grin
Others may rest on titles and definitions,
having one will in all three is what matters to me.
He only does the will of the Father.

#13

I found this at eclectic orthodoxy and it seems an interesting topic for discussion: If Atonement Ain’t Penal, Why the Cross? | Eclectic Orthodoxy

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#14

I think that everything that Jesus was and is, is important as this is what Christianity means.

#15

Jesus thanked God that none of his disciples (but for Judas) were killed during his arrest - some of them had prepared to do battle. Yes, there are many ways to understand these events. The central theme is that Christ set a path for us to be humans as God had intended, and he showed us that we could follow him. His death was obviously determined by us human beings who cannot deal with the truth he brought. It is also valid to point out that since he was without sin, death could not be justified, since the law states only those who sin suffer death. The resurrection was inevitable as a result.

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#16

Certainly they are one in many important and essential ways. But Jesus does not elaborate very much beyond this (John 10 verse 30) except to say that He is in the Father and the Father in Him (verse 38).

But perhaps what @RichardG was thinking about is the clarification that different persons does not mean different parts, or different modes, or different aspects. Or another way to put it is that Jesus is God not part of God, and the Father is God not part of God, and the Holy Spirit is God not part of God (and likewise the same using the words “a mode” or “an aspect” instead of “part”). He has probably taught this in ministry a few times and was tempted to test me, but resisted the temptation. LOL

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#17

There are several traditional views of the atonement, penal being but one. Catholocism concentrates on the suffering side of the cross. The reformation looks at an empty cross.

Many look at it as substitutionary, that is Christ died in our place. So we deserve the death but Christ replaced us.

The article seemed to think that penal had something to do with suffering and threw in a criticism of human penal justice that it does not make people suffer enough. Christ definitely suffered more than was necessary. The idea of a quick death is morally appealing but is not part of this discussion really. Crucifixion was the method of choice just as electrocution, injection, shooting, or hanging might be depending on where you are. The mocking was just part (Unofficial) of the system, it is only the extra lashings that were particularly unusual. But is death a punishment or just an inevitable climax to life? Early death may seem unfair but most do not look on it as divine punishment.
The most comfortable view is that the death was needed for the resurrection to occur. This rather glosses over the suffering part. Christ was raised to conquor death and show that there is life beyond it.
Any sort of sacrificial system is often viewed as morally wrong. As the Jewish atonement is based on animal sacrifice it is/was logical to juxtapose christ for a lamb, and Scripture does seem to use this viewpoint. Animal sacrifice is bad enough but human sacrifice?

I do not think that there is a really comfortable way to look at Easter. It defies human morality and justice. We can fall back on "my ways are not your way"s says God, but that is only dodging the issue. Somewhere along the line we have to accept that it was the way God chose to rectify the gap between sinful man and spotless God. If death is not a punishment or something to be feared then the crucifixion is reduced to the suffering element rather than the act itself. Perhaps we need to look at the consequences rather than the act itself?

The proclaimed consequence is that we should not fear death and be assured that death is not the end of our existence. Maybe that is enough? Perhaps all this concentration on sin and justice is self-defeating? I am not saying that the end justifies the means but maybe it is not our place to try and judge what God did? And maybe we spend too much time worrying about sin and hell and forget to live the life on earth that we have.

Richard

#18

When I read this I hear all the times Jesus simply said “Your sins are forgiven, so go and sin no more.” In those words, I do indeed see Jesus quickly negating any “worrying about sin and hell” to shift the focus to the future and what you going to do from now on.

…that is… we have more in common than YOU thought. But I already suspected this.

Frankly you have these soapbox reactions to simple words like “sin” which triggers all this antipathy to things others have taught that you disagree with never realizing that I reject the same things but simply say it in a different way.

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#19

One point that I would make is that Christ suffered and died as a result of how humans (all of us generally) reacted to him. The Gospel gives many instances of Christ healing and showing compassion, and in almost all of these, there were people (usually priests and other important people) who opposed Christ. They would find a reason (healing on the sabbath, forgiving sins, etc.). I take this to mean that our carnal nature fears and wants to kill acts that show mercy, forgiveness, faith, because these show another nature - the nature of Christ as fully human.

@RichardG “I do not think that there is a really comfortable way to look at Easter. It defies human morality and justice.”

Thus, we humans killed and caused Christ to suffer, because he shows us our fallen/diminished nature. He however, trusted God and as a sinless human being, conquered death, and also shows us how we can be saved. I am touching on the Christian doctrine (which requires a lengthy discussion), but as this season celebrates, Christ lived amongst us, called us sinners to repent, forgave us, and the cross and resurrection provides a means by which the carnal man dies, and the new man lives in Christ, by the grace of God.

#20

It’s just some guy’s blog rhetoric, trying feebly to avoid the elephant in the room, an elephant hijacked by PSA.

The divine, the Trinity always fully participates in incarnation which has to result in its hypostatic unions being sacrificed to prove divinity in a cosmos devoid of any other evidence.

Jesus had no choice but to be human; that’s how He came in to existence. Like the rest of us. He theoretically could have freely chosen to invoke His divine right with no loss to Himself but our continued complete ignorance of God.

As an enculturated, and therefore helplessly ignorant human, He fully humanly ignorantly saw His mission in the OT, when it isn’t there. But knowing from Mary and ineffably by the Spirit and His own unique consciousness of two natures that He was divine, with His primitive human epistemology, He got the message. The right message.

The Trinity arranged all this. It has nothing to do with us as Its’ helpless victim. It made the world in which there is no way of being human that does not involve suffering. These are Its’ only theistic activities. Grounding being from eternity, being incarnate.

It’s the only way that Love can find a way to demonstrate Itself in nature. The hard way.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6

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