44 Days Through the New Testament – Day 8

Mark 15 – Luke 1

One of the most sobering moments throughout all of scripture is found in Mark 15.

And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” (Mark 15:12–13, ESV)

It is so easy for us to pass judgement on the people who were gathered together shouting, “Crucify Him!” However, in doing so, we are really passing judgment on ourselves!

It was our sin that put Jesus on the cross. It was our sinful desires that gave way to His sacrificial death. When we sin, when we choose our own way instead of God’s way, we are essentially joining the crowd, shouting “Crucify Him!”

He doesn’t know what is best for me. Crucify Him!

He is standing in the way of me doing what I want to do. Crucify Him!

I am Lord of my own life, I don’t want Him to be LORD over me. Crucify Him!

We join the crowd every time that we fail to acknowledge that Jesus is LORD of all -including LORD of our own lives. The good news is that Jesus willingly laid down His perfect life for the crowd that demanded His death. He died for us. 

He died for me. He showed a kind of amazing grace and love in His death that compels me want to live for Him.

Luke 2-4

I love the gospel of Luke. If i had to choose a favorite gospel, it would be Luke’s. One of the things that makes the gospel of Luke stand out is the fact that he goes back to the beginning of the life of Jesus. It is in Luke’s gospel that we get a much clearer picture of the humanity of Jesus. I think that sometimes we forget that Jesus was fully man. (Yes, He was fully God, but He was also fully man.) We think that Jesus was born, pre-programmed with infinite Bible knowledge and perfect understanding of all things. That is simply not true.

We see a glimpse of the humanity of Jesus towards the end of Luke 2:

And the child [Jesus] grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40, ESV)

Jesus literally had to grow up and become strong. Luke tells us here that the boy was “filled with wisdom”, which is true, but it is not the kind of “filled” that we may be tempted to think of. You could say that someone is “full” of wisdom, figuratively, but they would not be “full” of wisdom, literally. In Luke 2:40, the writer is telling us that Jesus was figuratively full of wisdom. He was growing and showing Himself to be wise. Luke is not trying to say that there was nothing more for the boy to learn.

How do I know that is true? Luke 2:52 makes my case pretty clear:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52, ESV)

How could Luke mean that Jesus was literally “full” of wisdom in the 40th verse, but then tell us that Jesus “increased in wisdom” in the 52nd verse? It doesn’t work like that.

Luke is telling us in the 40th verse that the boy Jesus was full of wisdom, in that He was very wise, but not that He knew everything. In the 52nd verse we see that the boy Jesus, who was already very wise, continued to grow in wisdom.

This is incredible! Jesus was completely human, just like us. He was God, yes, but He did not operate in His divinity. In fact, Paul (Luke’s buddy) later tells us:

…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8, ESV)

Wow!! This idea of Jesus setting His deity aside and living fully as a human -never pulling His God-card, is referred to as the Kenosis of Jesus. He literally relinquished His divine nature in being born as a human. He lived His life fully as a human. None of His miracles, knowledge, or abilities came from Him being God -they came from Him being connected to God the Father through prayer and being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the amazing news is that the same Spirit who lived in Jesus and raised Him from the dead, and the same Father whom Jesus constantly communed with through prayer, is available to us today!!!

Wowie, wow, wow!!!

Does this mean that we can actually live like Jesus, walk like Jesus, and do the same things that Jesus did?

Actually, it means that as we connect with God the Father and walk in the power of His Holy Spirit, we can (and should) do even greater things!

“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, ESV)