What if it were possible to do what Jesus did? What if, like Jesus, we could make a major impact on our world without ever traveling more than a hundred miles from home? What if we could take a group of “unschooled and ordinary men” and equip them to turn the world upside down (Acts 4:13)? What if in just four short years we could create a movement of disciple-makers, just like Jesus? If I told you all this is possible, would you do it?
These may sound like extraordinary claims. But Scripture makes some extraordinary claims, too. In John 14:12, for example, Jesus explains that “whoever believes” in Him will do the works He did during His earthly ministry. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. In the second half of John 14:12, He goes on to say that His disciples will do “even greater things” than He did!
You may find this hard to believe. Jesus did some incredible works, beyond just His miracles. He took ordinary men and transformed them into world changers. So even if you believe that the Bible is true—even if you take Jesus at His word—you may imagine you could never do the things Jesus did, not to mention doing greater things. For many years of my Christian walk, I knew I was supposed to imitate Jesus, but deep inside I believed that Jesus did what He did because He was God. Obviously, I am not! So I worked hard with very little confidence that I would ever succeed. What I know now is that my mistaken view of Jesus was crippling my disciple-making.

FULLY GOD AND FULLY MAN
Ever since I became a Christian, I have held a deep conviction that Jesus was fully God, a conviction that originates in the Bible’s teaching about Jesus. Jesus clearly claimed to be equal with His Father. In John 10:30 He says that to see Jesus is to see the Father. Moreover, Jesus claimed to exist prior to His incarnation. Jesus proclaims in John 8:58, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am.” The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking recognized the phrase “I Am” as referring to the name of God from the Old Testament (Exodus 3:14) and to the theistic proclamations in the latter part of Isaiah (Isaiah 41:4 and 60:16). The Jewish officials understood Jesus’s meaning completely; that’s why they wanted to execute Him for blasphemy! “For this reason,” John explains, “the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:17–18). Of course, the Jewish officials did not believe Jesus’s claim to divinity. They considered Him a “mere man” who simply claimed to be God (John 10:33).
Jesus clearly claimed to be God, received worship as God, and was crucified because of His claims to be God. Furthermore, Jesus’s earliest followers acknowledged that Jesus was fully God. Paul makes this clear in Philippians, where he commends his readers, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped” (Philippians 2:5–6, italics added). He put the matter even more clearly in Colossians 2:9: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”
Can we all agree the Bible teaches that Jesus was fully God?
Jesus’s true identity is complicated by the fact that while the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus was fully God, at the same time the Scripture is also clear that Jesus was fully human. Hebrews 2:17 claims that “he was like us in all ways.” Throughout Jesus’s life and ministry, He experienced emotions and sensations that every one of us has experienced in our lives. He was conceived by and born to an ordinary woman (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:31; Matthew 1:16, 25; 2:2; Luke 2:7, 11). He “grew in wisdom and stature,” which means He grew physically and intellectually (Luke 2:52). He became hungry and thirsty (Matthew 4:2; 21:18; John 4:7; 19:28). He became weary and He slept (John 4:6; Matthew 8:24; Mark 4:38). He felt sorrow and grief, and when a dear friend of His died, He wept (Isaiah 53:3–4; Luke 22:44; John 11:33; 12:27; Luke 19:41; John 11:35).
Even in those situations which we will likely never experience, Jesus demonstrated His full humanity. During His arrest, trial, and execution, Jesus endured all manner of indignities (Luke 23:11). Soldiers spat in His face and punched Him (Matthew 26:67; Luke 22:64). He was flogged with a whip (Matthew 27:26; John 19:1), nailed to a cross (Luke 23:33), and run through with a spear (John 19:34). Jesus’s human body responded to these assaults the way ours would. He was bloodied and bruised and He ultimately died (John 19:30) and was buried (Matthew 27:59–60; Mark 15:46). The New Testament is clear: Jesus fully partook of our flesh and blood (John 1:14; Hebrews 2:14). He was a real human being. In all ways except for our sinfulness, Jesus was just like us (Hebrews 4:15).

THE CHALLENGE OF TWO NATURES
You may be beginning to sense a problem at this point. How can Jesus be “fully God” and “fully man” at the same time? How could Jesus possibly maintain His divine nature at the same time that He lived in a human body?
Consider this example:
Does God know all things? Of course! The Bible teaches clearly that God is omniscient, that there is nothing He does not know. But was Jesus, the human Jesus, omniscient? Scripture indicates that He was not. He did not know the time of His return (Matthew 24:36). He did not know “who touched me” until someone told Him (Luke 8:45). He did not know that His cousin John had been beheaded until someone reported the news to Him (Matthew 14:8, 12). The fact that Jesus grew “in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man” demonstrates that in His humanity He did not know all things automatically but had to learn, just like you and I. As a matter of fact, Jesus clearly said, “everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Just as you and I learn, Jesus learned about His Father and His Father’s will through Scripture, prayer, and the Holy Spirit.
In other words, as God Himself, Jesus should know all things. But as a human being, His knowledge was limited, just as ours is. Are you beginning to scratch your head?
Here’s another example: God is omnipotent—He is all-powerful and He can do all things. But was Jesus able, in His humanity, to do everything He needed or wanted to do? Mark records one episode in which Jesus visited His hometown and, “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mark 6:5).
Let me offer one more example. Scripture tells us God is omnipresent—He is everywhere and sees all things. But Jesus, in His humanity, was not. In fact, Jesus experienced grief—and caused His good friends grief—precisely because He was not omnipresent. While Jesus was teaching in one town, Jesus’s close friend Lazarus passed away in another town. When He arrived to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, Lazarus’s sister told Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21).
Do you see the problem? How can Jesus be “fully God” and “fully man” at the same time? How can He know all things in His divinity and yet not know all things in His humanity? How can He be present everywhere and yet not present everywhere? How can He be all powerful and yet have real human limitations?

THE KENOSIS OF JESUS
In Philippians 2:5–11, the apostle Paul gives us a glimpse into the solution to the problem of how Jesus can operate both as fully God and fully human. Paul uses the Greek word morphe, which means “nature” or “substance,” twice in this passage. He uses it first in verse 6, where it refers to the nature (morphe) of God. The second time he uses it is in verse 7, where it refers to the nature (morphe) of man. Both verses are describing Jesus. This Jesus, Paul writes, “being in very nature (morphe) God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature (morphe) of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
In other words, Jesus is fully equal to God in every way. Jesus shares the same essential divine nature (morphe) as God the Father. But incredibly, Jesus also shares with us a human nature (morphe) because He chose to become like us. Paul tells us in verse 7 that Jesus, even though He is fully God, “emptied himself” or “made himself nothing” taking the very nature of a servant!
How did the Son add humanity to His deity? Theologians, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., struggled to articulate how this could work. Up to that point there were those who denied the deity of Jesus (Ebionites and Arianism) and there were also those who denied the humanity of Jesus (Docetism and Appolinarianism). Each of these faulty views had been defined as heresy. The members of the council drafted a statement that finally refuted these heretical views, summarizing the views of Christians before them and setting the standard for Christological orthodoxy for many years to come. The Chalcedon statement reads:
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhood and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable (rational) soul and body; con substantial (co-essential) with the Father according to the Godhood, and con substantial with us according to the Manhood: in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhood, and in these latter days for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeable, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning (have declared) concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.”
In an attempt to explain how Jesus could be fully God and fully man at the same time, the theologians at Chalcedon came up with a statement that has stood the test of time. They stated that Jesus decided in eternity past that when He added humanity to His deity, He would veil His deity so that His humanity could find full expression. The theologians who met at Chalcedon knew that we cannot affirm the humanity of Jesus in a way that sacrifices the deity of Jesus.
Jesus, the Son, became human—fully human—but He did so in a way that preserved His deity. To accomplish this, something drastic had to happen. Philippians 2:7 tells us what that was: “God made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.” God chose to temporarily cloak His deity, to veil it, in order that His humanity could find full expression. By adding humanity, He chose temporarily to restrict the full expression of His deity. Never less than God, He chose to live His life never more than man. As Bruce Ware has said, “His Deity was unexpressed, so that His humanity could find full expression.”
Imagine with me for a moment a king who rules a vast kingdom. This king had everything a king should have: servants who waited on him, a rich wardrobe, and vast banquets for every meal. Everything that he ever desired was brought to him. One day, as he was surveying his kingdom, he observed beggars in the street. He felt pity and wanted to help them. But how? The only way to really help these homeless people, he realized, was to become like them. So while still remaining king, retaining every right, authority, and all the riches of his kingdom, he took off his royal garments and put on the clothes of a beggar. Then he left the comforts of his castle and became a vagabond.
The king lived exactly as the beggars lived, surviving on the generosity of strangers and sleeping in the cold streets. People passed by him, mocked and spat on him. The king suffered greatly. As king, he could have called for his army at any time to retaliate against the people who treated him unjustly. But he chose not to, for if he did he could not fully experience life as a beggar. The homeless can’t call for the royal army to protect them. The king never stopped being king, and he never relinquished his authority over his kingdom. Nevertheless, to fully experience the beggar’s life, he refused to exercise the rights that were his as king.
This is a picture of what the incarnation is all about. Christ, who is eternal God, became flesh and dwelt among us. Though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor. He did this so that through Him, we who were poor might become rich.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
Haddon Robinson has said that most errors in Bible teaching are not made in the exegesis of a text but in the application of the text to life. With this caution in mind, we have to ask, What does this work of Jesus mean for us? How does it affect our Christian journey to know that Jesus was fully human while He remained fully divine?
1) Jesus did not dip into His deity to live out His humanity. Like the king who set aside his royalty to live among the poor, Jesus never took advantage of his divinity to live out His humanity. If He had, He would not have been fully human. He would not have been like us in every way (albeit without sin). He would have been less or more (depending upon your perspective) than human. But Scripture is clear that Jesus “shared in our humanity” and that He was “made like his brothers in every way” (Hebrews 2:14, 17).
Imagine a credit card. Imagine Jesus carrying the ultimate MasterCard, the God card. The number on it is 777-7777-777. The expiration date is eternity. The credit limit is infinity, for He owns it all and made it all. Jesus had the God card when He lived on this earth, because He was fully God. But in order to be like us in every way, He chose never to use it. And thank God that He didn’t! If Jesus had not lived a truly human life, He could not have redeemed us from our sins. “If Christ did not become fully human,” wrote Gregory of Nazianzus, “then His redemption of man could not have been fully complete.” Satan seems to have understood this, because when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he tried to convince Jesus to use the God card. “If you are the Son of God,” Satan taunted, “tell these stones to become bread” (Matthew 4:3). Jesus replied the way all of us should—by acknowledging that our strength and hope come only from the Word of God.
What a profound thought! Jesus, who was God Himself, experienced all of life just as we do. He did not utilize His divine power to live out His human life on earth. Yet He lived a life free of sin. From the first minute of His life, all the way to His final breath on the cross, Jesus lived in reverent submission to His Father and obeyed Him in all aspects! He did it all without dipping into His deity to live out His humanity! The first human being, Adam, had the chance to live a life without sin. But he failed when he broke fellowship with God. Jesus was the second Adam, and He accomplished what Adam failed to do, remaining obedient even to death on the cross (Romans 5:12–20).
You may be thinking, Surely Christ’s miracles are proof that Jesus used His God card. Jesus could not have done all of His miracles without using His divine powers, right? Not necessarily. Christ’s miracles were not proof of His deity. Instead, they are proof of His Messiahship (Luke 5:24; Matthew 11:4–5). The Israelites expected the Messiah to perform miracles to help people recognize who He was. Think about it: the apostles in the book of Acts duplicated most of the miracles Jesus performed. They healed the sick and raised the dead, just as Jesus had. They even performed miracles Jesus never attempted, such as speaking in tongues (Acts 2:7–8). Doing all this did not prove that they were divine. Moses performed miracles. So did Elijah. Working wonders does not prove that a person is divine. It proves that they are yielded to what God has chosen to do through them for His purposes.
Jesus’s miracles were proof that He is the Christ sent from His Father (John 10:25). Jesus tells us in His own words that He did nothing by His own power. Everything He did was done by the Father and in submission to His Father’s desires. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19). Jesus was clear that “By myself I can do nothing” (John 5:30). Even Jesus’s teaching was not His own. It “comes from him who sent me” (John 7:16). Jesus wanted His disciples, and even His opponents, to recognize that His miracles were testimony not to His own power or authority but to the power and authority of God the Father: “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves” (John 14:10–11). At the end of His ministry Jesus was confident that His disciples, at least, recognized that the source of His miraculous deeds was God Himself (John 17:7).
Jesus, as the second Adam, in reverent submission to His Father, became a conduit of the power of His Father, as everything He did was done in acknowledgment of His Father’s work. In the same way, Jesus instructed His disciples that they should relate to Him the way He related to His Father. Just as Jesus modeled total dependence on the Father, He told us, “apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus’s disciples, in the book of Acts, followed Christ’s example by acknowledging every miracle as coming from God working through them. After healing a crippled beggar, Peter clarified that he was not the one who worked the miracle. “Men of Israel,” he said, “why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?” (Acts 3:12).
If Jesus’s miracles do not prove that He occasionally used His God card, then what about the special knowledge He demonstrated? Jesus predicted events before they happened. He read people’s thoughts and peered into their hearts. Don’t these acts prove He used His deity to live out His humanity?
Not necessarily.
Eleven different times in the Gospels it is recorded that Jesus knew something that others did not seem to know. On five occasions He knew people’s thoughts (Matthew 12:24–25; Luke 5:22; 6:7–8; 11:16–17). In Mark 2:6-8, for example, “some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts.”
It may seem that Jesus used His divinity to read His opponents’ thoughts. But there are other ways He could have known what they were thinking. His Father could have revealed their thoughts to Him by the Holy Spirit. Proverbs tells us that the Lord takes the upright into His confidence (Proverbs 3:32). Amos 3:7 reports that the “Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants.” Surely the Spirit of God could have given Jesus a discerning spirit to know men’s hearts.
There is, of course, another option. Perhaps Jesus sensed something in the teachers’ countenance or the posture of their body. Jesus was sinless and had perfect discernment. Couldn’t this discernment give Him a quick understanding of their thoughts and intentions? On three occasions it says that Jesus “knew all men” (John 2:23–24) or “knew their hypocrisy” (Mark 12:15). Any mature believer who understands the Scriptural teaching about human nature could make the same observation. Surely we can conclude that Jesus “knew what was in men” because He understood the Scriptures profoundly.
The Bible tells us that Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). In other words, just like you and I, Jesus developed intellectually, physically, spiritually, and socially. Like any human, Jesus studied the Scriptures, grew in wisdom, and allowed the Spirit to guide him into all truth. He was not downloaded as a little baby with biblical data. He learned as He lived among us (John 15:15). The Scriptures and the Holy Spirit were all available to Jesus in His humanity, just as they are available to all Christians today. This leads us to another astounding conclusion about the humanity of Jesus.
2) The resources that Jesus had available to Him are the resources available to you and me. Even though Jesus never used the God card, He nevertheless had access to some incredible resources. In fact, throughout His ministry, Jesus had access to four resources to which all Christians also have access.
The first was the Holy Spirit. Every aspect of Jesus’s life was saturated with the Holy Spirit. We are told that He was conceived by the Spirit (Luke 1:35), anointed by the Spirit (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38; Isaiah 11:1–2) and even “filled with the Spirit” (Luke 4:1, 14; John 3:34). Jesus was also sealed by the Spirit (John 6:27) and led by the Spirit (Luke 4:1). In Luke 10:21 we are told He “rejoiced in the Spirit” and even “performed miracles by the power of the Spirit” (Matthew 12:28). Paul records in Romans that Jesus was “raised by the Spirit” (Romans 8:11). If the living Son of God, in all His greatness, chose not to live without the constant help of the Spirit for even one moment, how can we do any less?
Second, Jesus relied on prayer. More than forty times Scripture tells us that Jesus “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). Jesus’s ministry began after forty days of fasting and prayer (Luke 4:1–11), and Jesus ended His ministry in prayer (Luke 23:46–47). It was while Jesus was praying that the Spirit came upon Him (Luke 3:21–22). It was after a season of prayer that Jesus walked on the water (Matthew 14:25), chose His twelve apostles (Luke 6:12), showed compassion on a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–10), and faced the horror of the cross (Matthew 26:36–46). For Jesus, prayer was a source of strength to resist temptation (Matthew 26:41) and an opportunity to learn His Father’s desires (Mark 1:38) and listen to His Father’s words (John 12:49–50).
Third, Jesus had access to the written Word of God. On over ninety occasions it is recorded that Jesus quoted the Old Testament Scriptures, referring to seventy different Old Testament chapters. He knew the Scriptures, studied them, and used them in the everyday events of life. The Word had center stage in Jesus’s life and ministry. Three times in John 13 it is said that Jesus “knew” that the time had come, that the Father had put all things under His power, and who was going to betray Him. Why? Because He studied the Scriptures. Jesus knew the events before Him because He clearly studied and knew the Scriptures must be fulfilled (Matthew 26:54, 56; Mark 14:27; Luke 22:36–37; John 19:24, 28).
Jesus demonstrated the depth of His understanding of the Scriptures after His resurrection when, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained the entire Bible to a couple of His disciples. “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). With His disciples later on, Jesus reiterated this truth: “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).
Finally, Jesus had access to supportive friends and family. Even though Christ’s brothers were not initially supportive of His ministry, Jesus gained strength from His family and parents. Mary and Joseph were obviously a source of strength when Jesus was younger. Even up until His crucifixion on the cross Jesus was concerned for Mary’s care. Jesus’s twelve disciples were a source of both great joy and great sorrow. But in Jesus’s own words they moved from just followers (John 1:43), to servants (John 13:13, 16), to friends (John 15:15), and then brothers (John 20:17). Hebrews 2:11 tells us that Jesus was not ashamed to call us His brothers.
Every aspect of Jesus’s ministry was relational. To Jesus, relationships were not a strategy; they were part of being fully human. Just as God the Father is in community in the Trinity, so God the Son established a community of brothers. Jesus drew strength from those relationships (Matthew 26:36–38) and told us not to “give up meeting together” but to “encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:25). The early church in Acts clearly understood this resource (Acts 2:42).
3) Jesus is my model for life and ministry. Bruce Ware, Professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary, explains the significance of Jesus’s earthly obedience in this way:
So many people minimize or demean the obedience of Christ by saying, ‘Of course He obeyed. He was God and had God’s nature in Him. He had no choice.’ Scripture does not let us draw this conclusion. It presents Christ as a man who faced every temptation and succeeded not because He relied on His divine nature, but because He relied upon the Word, prayer and the Spirit. And He succeeded all the way to the cross, even to death on the cross.”
The beauty of Christ’s life is that He modeled how to live life in total dependence upon the Father. Jesus showed us how to live as humans: fully dependent, fully obedient, fully reliant upon the Word of God, Spirit of God, and prayer. Ian Thomas, founder of Torchbearers International, used to say, “Jesus was man as God intended man to be.” Sure, Jesus was sinless and we are sinful. But as we mature, we should sin less. When in doubt, don’t ask WWJD (what would Jesus do). First study to see WDJD (what did Jesus do). Jesus showed us how to live in a sin-soaked world, and He did it perfectly. Our ultimate goal is to become like Him in every thought and deed.
4) We underestimate what God wants to do through us. Jesus is my model for life and ministry. He is alive and wants to lead us today! He leads us through the very model of His life written in His Word, the power of His resurrected life interceding for us, and the very presence of His Holy Spirit indwelling us. Because of this resurrected power and His indwelling presence, we tend to underestimate what God wants to do through us.
On seven different occasions Jesus rebuked His disciples for their lack of faith (Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 13:58; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20; Mark 16:14). Twice He challenged them saying, “Are you still so dull?” (Matthew 15:16).
In Matthew 17, a man brings to Jesus his demon-possessed son. The man says that he had asked the disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not. Jesus, with grief in His heart, said:
“You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly, I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
I personally believe that the greatest grief we bring to the heart of Jesus is our lack of faith in what He wants to do in and then through us. We underestimate what God wants to do!
In the upper room on the night before He was crucified, Jesus’s last words to His disciples were peppered with a simple command: “ask.” Six different times Jesus tells His disciples to simply “ask” (John 14:13, 14,16; 15:16; 16:23, 24)! We so often underestimate what God wants to do through us. And because of this, we look at the mission of Jesus as beyond our ability. This is a mistake. Grasping the greatness of the command to simply “ask,” we can now approach the mission Jesus has given us with great joy and anticipation, because we know now, like Jesus in His humanity, that the power is not within us, but within the resources that He has made available to us!
Empowered with these resources, we are ready to embark on His mission, motivated by His love, to make disciples according to His model.




 5. What questions do you still have about Christ’s humanity/deity? How would you articulate the relationship between Jesus’s divine and human natures?





 6. How does this chapter change or challenge your understanding about Jesus and the mission He has given us?





 7. Read Hebrews 2:8–18 and Hebrews 5:7–10. How do these verses reinforce what this chapter is saying?






Dann Spader, 4 Chair Discipling: Growing a Movement of Disciple-Makers (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2014).