But there it was in the Bible. Jesus, God the Son, was “astonished.” Surprised.
And not just once, but twice. Matthew
8 contains the account of a Roman centurion who came to Jesus to ask Him to
heal a servant suffering from a terrible sickness. Jesus offered to go to him immediately, but
the centurion said “Lord, I am not worthy to
have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be
healed. For I too am a man under
authority, with soldiers under me. And I
say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my
servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (Matthew 8:8-9, ESV).
When Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who followed
him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.” The Greek word translated marveled is the word, θαυμάζω (thaumazō), which means to “wonder” or “wonder
at.” It has the element of the
unexpected or surprise. It’s a word often
translated, “astonished.” Jesus, God the
Son, was astonished! I don’t know how
many times I noticed this verse and wondered how God could be astonished
or surprised. But I never stopped long
enough to understand it – until a few days ago, when the Holy Spirit focused my
attention right there.
Because it is in this astonishment
that the power to live life is to be found.
There was another time when
Jesus was astonished: Mark 6:5-6
And because of their unbelief, he
couldn’t do any mighty miracles among them except to place His hands on a few
sick people and heal them. And He was amazed at their
unbelief.
How can God be amazed, even surprised?
The Holy Spirit led me back to Philippians 2:7, a verse I’ve
studied and quoted many times.
5Let this mind be in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7But
made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and
was made in the likeness of men:
8And being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross (Philippians 2:5-8).
The phrase, but made
himself of no reputation, could be literally translated, but emptied himself. The Greek word is κενόω (keno), a word with means “to empty,” “to make
empty,” “deprive of force” or “to make void, hollow.” Jesus emptied himself. Of what?
His rights as God? Indeed. But the word means to make completely empty
or hollow. Note especially
that it means deprive of force.
Jesus completely emptied Himself of His power as God[1]. I had never realized this, nor grasped its
enormous significance.
Jesus voluntarily
emptied Himself of His power as God. He
gave up His power to walk on water. He
surrendered His power to heal the sick and restore sight to the blind. He emptied Himself of His power to raise the
dead. He relinquished His power to tell
the wind and waves to be still. He
forfeited His power to resist temptation![2]
But He still did
all those things. He walked on water, He
healed the sick and restored sight to the blind, He raised the dead, the wind
and waves were quiet and still at His command, and although He was tempted in all
points like we are, He did not sin. How?
Jesus gave us a
profound clue in John 5:30. He said, "I
can do nothing on my own." The word
translated “can” in this verse is the Greek word, δύναμαι (dynamai). You might recognize this word. The English word, “dynamite,” is a
derivative. It’s the word for power.
Jesus said, “I have the power to
do nothing.” What? Jesus had no power?
But don’t miss the next three words: on my own.
Jesus still did all those miraculous things. So where did the power to walk on water and
raise the dead come from? Jesus
explained that in John 14:10, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my
own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”
Everything
Jesus did and said while in the flesh on earth He did by the authority and by
the power of the Father Who was doing His works in and through His Son. God the Father and God the Son were working
together.
Jesus
wasn’t only dying for me so that I could experience the forgiveness of my sins
and have eternal life; He was living for me
to show me how to live that life. As the Apostle Paul stated, “we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”
But there was more than reconciliation.
We are “saved by his life,” Paul explained. Jesus made peace with God for me by His
death, but He showed me how to live this new life by how He lived His life.
This is
why Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my
Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” This is what Paul understood when he wrote, “It
is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Paul got it!
He wasn’t living for Christ. Jesus was living in him!
In his book, HearingGod, Dallas Willard profoundly explains the difference between having faith
in Jesus and having the faith of Jesus.
Once, in the middle of the Sea of
Galilee, the disciples’ boat was almost beaten under by the waves while Jesus
slept calmly. His disciples woke him
crying, “Lord, save us! We are
perishing!” (Mt. 8:25). Jesus
reproachfully replied, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” (Mt.
8:26). Now the disciples obviously had
great faith in Jesus. They called upon
him, counting on him to save them. They
had great faith in him, but they did not
have his great faith in God. It was
because they did not have his faith
that he spoke of how little faith they had.
Some Christians too commonly
demonstrate that the notions of “faith in
Christ” and “love for Christ” leave
Christ outside the personality of the
believer. These exterior notions of
Christ’s faith and love will never be strong enough to yield the confident
statement, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal.
2:20). They can never provide the unity
of the branches with the vine, where the life that is in the branch is
literally that which flows to it through the vine and is the very life of the
vine to which it is attached (Jn. 15:1-4).
“Our additional life [the
second birth],” Dr. Willard concludes, “though it is still our life, is
also God’s life in us: his thoughts, his love, all literally imparted to us, shared with us, by his word and
Spirit.” Note his word,
“literally.” Somehow I don’t think I had
quite fully grasped this. God the
Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit literally,
actually make their home within me and desire to literally express their existence through me.
That’s why Jesus said, ”apart from me you can do nothing”
(John 15:5). That’s exactly what He
said about Himself: "I can do nothing on my own." I can
do stuff. In fact, I’ve done a lot of
stuff without Jesus, sometimes claiming to be doing it for Jesus. And in the end,
that’s exactly what it was: nothing.
On one occasion Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
To His disciples who were “exceedingly
astonished” Jesus explained:
“With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things
are possible with God” (John 15:27).
So, those are my choices.
I can live a life doing stuff on my own, using my natural abilities to
do things some might even think are spectacular, but which will in the end,
amount to nothing. Or, I can cooperate
with God to let Him do those “impossible” things only He can do using me to
draw people to Himself and into the same quality of eternal life He has given
to me.
Is the life I’m living today Jesus living His life in
me? That’s the issue. As Dr. Willard also notes, “Once the new life
begins to enter our soul, however, we have the responsibility and opportunity
of evermore fully focusing our whole being on it and wholly orienting ourselves
toward it. This is our part, and God will not do it for us.”
So, if it is God’s design to live in us and through us like
He did in and through Jesus, does that mean we can have the power to walk on
water, heal the sick, raise the dead, restore sight to the blind and resist
temptation? If it accomplishes the
purposes of God as it did in Jesus’ life, absolutely. According to Jesus, absolutely yes.
“Truly, truly, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than
these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).
So why don’t we have that power today?
Because we must begin with the very same purpose and at the
very same place Jesus began: empty.
Completely empty.
[1]
This does not mean or suggest that Jesus surrendered his deity. He was still fully God, God in flesh, a
subject for another time.
[2]
That Jesus forfeited His power to resist temptation is very important to
understand. James (the half-brother of
Jesus) wrote, “God cannot be tempted” (James 1:13). If the one being tempted cannot be tempted,
then temptation is not temptation. But
Jesus emptied Himself of His power to resist temptation, which means that He was tempted. We are told of only three specific
temptations, but Jesus was tempted in the desert for 40 days and nights. We can be certain that He was indeed tempted in all points and ways like we are, and
that these temptations were real. Jesus
successfully resisted them all because
the power of God the Father was available to Him, just like it is to us.
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