By L. Mackenzie
Consider an Olympic triathlete becoming a paraplegic or the world’s greatest scientist diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. What is more tragic than someone with so much potential suddenly becoming limited or cut off from what they were created to be? They suffer, and the world suffers with them.
When something great becomes severely limited by earthly circumstances—this is tragedy.
What of Jesus? He who was infinite, outside of time and space, over and above all, knowing and in control of every aspect of the universe, was born an infant child. How can the infinite take on a limited form? How can the unrestrained power that created everything be placed inside the tender, corruptible, delicate, and vulnerable body of a human being?
Imagine the limitations and the suffering Jesus endured as a mortal. He left Heaven to become something that was below angels. In his flesh, he was tempted.
He suffered insults, death threats, betrayal, abandonment, and capital punishment, yet he spoke not a word in his own defense. He endured a criminal’s punishment and was insulted to the end.
He was crucified that he might destroy death and so God would forgive our sins. Nothing, not even a cure for the worst disease, is greater than what the champion of our faith did to save us from sin and eternal death.
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14, 15).
He was the perfect sacrifice. We need not fear death because the eternal One suffered it for us. We are no longer slaves to fear but are children of God. Remember this as we share in the Lord’s Supper.
Leigh Mackenzie serves as ministry assistant at The Crossing, a multisite church located in three states across the Midwest and is a writer who blogs at The Church Girl Writes: Jesus in Everything (leighmackenzie.com).
Amen.
This reminds me of when Calvinists reject free will because of “sovereignty.”
Well, as the article says, God is able to limit his attributes.
Jesus was full of glory for all of eternity before he was born in Bethlehem. But during his earthly life, Isaiah says in 53:2, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
So he limited his glory.
Jesus had all knowledge for all of eternity before he was born in Bethlehem. But during his earthly life, there were times when he was surprised. He said he didn’t know when his glorious return to Earth would be.
So he limited his knowledge.
And as Mackenzie says, even the fact that he died shows how God is able to limit his attributes.
Imagine the power to lay down or limit your attributes, and then take them up again!
What a wonderful God we serve!