Why did Jesus Christ pray to the Father when He was the God Himself?

      We can see Jesus praying to the Father, why does He have to pray if He is God Himself?

 

Matt 14.23

Standing in the position of man (Mat 4.4), the heavenly King, as the beloved Son of the Father (3.17) needed to pray privately to His Father who was in the heavens, that He might be one with the Father and have the Father with Him in whatever He did on the earth for establishing of the kingdom of the heavens.  He did this not in the deserted place but on the mountain, leaving all the people, even His disciples, that He might be alone to contact the Father. 

 

Mark 1.35

To fellowship with God, seeking God’s will and pleasure for His gospel service.  The Slave-Savior performed the evangelistic service not by Himself, independent of God and according to His own will, but according to God’s will and pleasure by being one with God to fulfill His purpose

 

Again in Matt 4, we see Jesus was led up into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil.  As the Son of God, Satan cannot stand against Him to challenge, but as the Son of man, The Lord Jesus intended to follow every human limitations to make His life, death and resurrection a successful mission.  In Matt 4.3, we read that the newly anointed King fasted in His humanity, standing on the ground of man.  On the other hand, He was also the Son of God as God the Father had declared at Christ’s baptism (3.17).  Thus under this criteria, He had to accomplish His ministry for the kingdom of the heavens.  He had to defeat God’s enemy, the devil, Satan as a man as He was the sacrificial Lamb of God for the redemption of Mankind.  Hence, He stood as the Son of man to confront the enemy of God.  The devil knowing this clearly tempted the Lord time and again to leave the standing of man and assume His position as the Son of God.  At the start of the forty days wilderness period, the subtle tempter took the declaration of God the Father that Jesus was His beloved Son to be the ground to tempt Him.  If Christ had assumed His position as the Son of God before the enemy, He would have lost the criteria to defeat Him and save His creation. 

 

Later we read that on many occasions, the evil spirits tried to expose the Lord as the Son of God.  However, Christ’s mission was to accomplish where the first Adam failed by becoming the Second Adam.  As the Second Adam, He submitted to every human limitation, endured trials, and prayed as a man on earth.  This also set a pattern for us today in our walk with God to be like Him. 

 

Summary

Jesus praying doesn’t diminish His glory, but as the incarnation of God on earth, His mission was to accomplish what we couldn’t due to the Law.  He stood on the grounds of human limitation and thus prayed within that limited premise to know the will of God the Father and go on with His mission.

Need for Christ's Crucifixion?

          Why was their the need for Christ’s crucifixion when God can forgive the sins of the people from His throne itself?

a)      God is an all powerful, infinite Being perfect in everything and there is none like Him.  All the positive things that we can think about, God possesses that attribute in perfection.  For example, let us consider love; everybody loves, but God’s love is perfect and infinite.  Among all the attributes of a divine Being, love, mercy and righteousness are three major attributes in my understanding.  If God can forgive any sins of men, then he is infinitely merciful, but if the sins are not dealt with justice or compensated, then though God is merciful, He is compromising with His perfect righteousness.  For a just and perfect God, He cannot forgive sins and overlook it by simply commanding it from His throne in heaven.  Having said that we know that our God is an infinitely loving Being.  In the Old Testament, we can see time and again, that our God is rigid against sins like disobedience, idol worship etc.  He is uncompromising and deals harshly with people who have sinned.  He simply cannot overlook the sins, because of His perfect nature.  Christ’s life, death and resurrection are crucial steps for our God to be perfect in all aspects.  With the crucifixion of the Son, God can love and show mercy to sinners without compromising His perfect righteousness, because every sin was paid by the blood of the Lamb.  God can now be merciful and at same time uphold His perfect righteousness.  The fact that our God came in the flesh, lowered Himself to our level and suffered and later rose again, shows us His perfect love for His creation.  Thus Christ’s crucifixion is also a requirement of our infinitely righteous, infinitely merciful and infinitely loving God to deal with His creation.

b)      We understand from the Bible, the Second Person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ was from the beginning (John 1.1).  However, He took on flesh and manifested to us in the old creation as the Second Adam.  In His resurrection, He became the firstborn Son, which means there will be many more sons to follow Him.  Hallelujah.  This happened after His resurrection.  Now, we in this age needs to be in the resurrected Christ to become the brothers of Christ.  This corporate entity will culminate into the final glorious New Jerusalem (Rev 21.2) which will be the bride of Christ.  The whole point of the Lord’s life and death is to produce the New entity the church which will issue in the New Jerusalem, which will be the partner of the Lord for eternity.  Again, we can see that the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ is accomplishing this.  Hallelujah to the wisdom of the Lord.

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Love is Living

Love is a Living Being

Bible Reading 1 Cor 13:4- 13:7

We see the true definition of Love in the above Bible passage.  Among the greatest of all gifts of the Spirit, Love has the first place.  Instead of looking at Love as one of the characteristics of a good Person, we should understand Love as a living being.  The phrase, 'God is Love and in love He had created everything' is familiar to us which explains love as the Person of God.  We need to be imitators of this love, which means we should become love to love others.  

In the beginning of the verse from the above passage, we read 'Love suffers long.  Love is kind; it is not jealous.  Love does not brag and is not puffed up;.....This makes sense, when we look at Love as a living entity.  Love itself has characteristics of its own.  It makes even greater sense when we replace the word love with our names.  Understand the above portion of the scripture by replacing your names with the word 'Love'.  This is what you should aim to achieve in the Lord in your Christian life.  

Do not love others with your natural love which will sooner or later is destined to fail.  Love others with Jesus Christ, who is the Love of God.  When we love others with the Love of God, it will never fail and we will bring glory to God.  Under such a setup, the demands of the love as mentioned in the verse, will not be a burden to us, but it will be so natural to us that we will not feel even the slightest pain.  Such a love will be flowing from a Christ filled life effortlessly as a natural response.  The bottom line is that we should aim to gain more Christ which will result in a natural flowing of pure love like fountains of cool spring in an arid desert from us.  Hallelujah.