letters to surfers

do you think jesus was ever wrong and made mistakes as we do?

by robert brow


Dear G.,

I am sure Jesus had to learn like any of us. "He learned obedience by the things he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8, see also 2:17 & 4:15), which at least means he was sometimes disobedient to his parents as a boy. He wasn't a goody goody from birth ! I don't think he learned the full meaning of love and life in the Spirit till after his baptism. There is a perfection of the bud and the perfection of development to the flower. And there is a further development by resurrection from the perfection of a caterpillar to the perfection of the butterfly.

In Clark Pinnock's Flame of Love (reviewed on this web site) he points out the implications of Jesus doing all he did in the Kingdom by the Spirit. The eternal Son of God even had to depend on the Spirit to raise him as in Romans 8:11. This suggests that in becoming fully man he went through all the struggles of learning and growing that we have to face. And each struggle was won only by the power of the Spirit, which means that he had no resources that are not available to us.

Bob.  


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