Jesus shares the attributes of God
a short series on the book Putting Jesus in His Place
We’re looking at the excellent book Putting Jesus in His Place, by Rob Bowman and Ed Komoszewski and have seen that they have developed the HANDS acronym as a handy way to remember key facts about the deity* of Jesus.
Yesterday we had a think about how Jesus is honoured in the New Testament, and how angels and disciples give him the same honour which they give to God. They pray to him, sing to him and worship him as God.
Today we are exploring his attributes. Ed and Rob articulate this carefully in their section which tells us that Jesus is equal with the Father (and the Holy Spirit) because he shares the divine attributes.
They point out that the Bible tells us over and over that no one is like God, while telling us that Jesus is exactly like him! Although he shares all God’s attributes, this does not mean that the Father, Son and Spirit are the same: each of the members of the holy trinity has unique properties. The Son is not the Father, the Spirit is not the Son and the Father is not the Spirit. There is something unique about being the Father who sends the Son, about being the Son who is sent, and about being the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. These properties are not shared.
They also stress that not all of Jesus Christ’s attributes are those of God, but Jesus Christ has all the attributes of God. Huh? Well, Christ assumes our humanity and mortality; the Father doesn’t. They discuss the paradox that Jesus, while divine, and thus knowing all, being all powerful and everywhere present, also as a man gets thirsty and tired and doesn’t know everything and is not (in his body) present everywhere while he is on earth. That’s a hard concept to grasp, but they show that it is clearly taught in Scripture.
In their book, our authors share passages in the Bible which tell us that in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, (Col. 2:9 NIB) that the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, (Heb. 1:3 NIB) and that in every way Jesus shows us what the Father is like, as Jesus says to Philip in John 14.
I was expecting they would discuss the way Jesus loves like God loves, is holy like God is holy, hates evil as God hates evil, and is compassionate and patient with us, just like his Father is. If they did, I missed it! But I’m sure they would not disagree!
I’m enjoying revisiting this important book, and hope you are finding benefit, too.
* How do you pronounce deity? Most people seem to say something like DAY uh tea, but when I was growing up we said DEE uh tea, which I still prefer. I see that the Australian Macquarie Dictionary and the largest one volume Oxford both prefer DAY uh tea, but the 2 volume Shorter Oxford prefers DEE uh tea.