(This post is part of our “Theological Conversations“ series. These short writings address key theological topics and questions and we invite your feedback and interaction in the comments. These conversations are “in-development” and we appreciate the dialogue you might offer.)
The question about whether Jesus had unusual power is clear. Most Christians agree that he had power when he walked on the Earth 2000 years ago. But what kind of power did he have? Could he leap tall buildings in a single bound? Was he able to bench press a donkey? If he wanted to could he pull a rabbit out of a hat? To get at the answer of Jesus’ power, we have to ask the question, “Who exactly was Jesus?” And to many, what the Scriptures reveal, might be a bit surprising.
We are exposed to a lot of stuff about Jesus, and we think we know all there is to know about him. Every year, we hear about Him during Easter and Christmas. On TV, we hear athletes and celebrities talk about Jesus and thank Him for their successes. We see lots of books that mention His name in the title. Plus, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, right? So to ask the question, “Who was Jesus?”, might seem unnecessary. However, the reality is that most of us have been overexposed to the cultural idea of Jesus that it has become easy to lose sight of the Biblical perspective of Jesus.
When I was in college, our campus minister taught on John 4, where Jesus interacted with the woman at the well. Jesus basically reads her private life back to her, knowing intimate details about her life that only those who had lived in her village would have known. The minister explained to us that Jesus was fully man and, therefore, was not simply doing this because He was God. He shared how Jesus walked in the weakness of humanity and had to depend upon the Father revealing these things through the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus didn’t keep some of his God powers, like being all-knowing, so that we could eventually “read this woman’s mail” in Scripture.
After this teaching, there were many of us, all who had been raised in the church, that were thrown for a loop. We couldn’t get our minds around Jesus being really human. We had always envisioned Jesus as a human who floated six inches off the ground, much like Bruce (Jim Carrey) in Bruce Almighty. In that movie, we saw Bruce walk on water and manipulate traffic simply because God (Morgan Freeman) gave him the power to do so. Bruce did not operate out of faith or love. He did powerful things; because he could. This is not the kind of Jesus we find in the Scriptures.
This kind of speculation about Jesus, as a powerful “GOD man”, is not new. Throughout history, Jesus has been depicted as something a little bit more than human. At times, he has been viewed more like Superman than the human revealed in the Scriptures.
The Gospel writers fully assumed they were talking about someone who was 100% human. Jesus was never represented as a magician or as having superpowers so he could show people the “power” of God. The Scriptures don’t portray Him as a spiritual mystic, who had a certain kind of religious spirituality, that made Him better than everyone else. Nor was he a guru or a wandering preacher. Instead, Scripture presents Jesus as the son of a carpenter from Nazareth. He was a common looking Jewish man, probably about five feet two inches tall, the average height of the time. There was nothing outwardly spectacular about Him that would reveal that he had any superpowers.
At the same time, he was spectacular. He revealed the unique, and unexpected, power of God. This can be so difficult for us to actually “get” about Jesus. Many of us (including myself) are not wired to think about God’s power the way Jesus displayed it. As a human, he came with a power that the world had not yet seen and has not seen since. This man (not superhero) walked the Earth revealing God and God’s Kingdom, and he did so with what the Gospel writers identify as “power” and “authority.” It was a power rooted in relationship with the Father and self-sacrificial love for people. It was a new kind of power, and it’s the power he gives to us.
How have you viewed God’s power and how it impacts your life?
5 comments
JC December 31, 2010
This is somewhat a convoluted topic. Christ was obviously unique. Even though he was totally human he had a connection with God that no other human has ever had, and I believe he came here to show us that we, as humans, can have that relationship with the father as well.
Obviously his power came from the father, and according to scripture that same power is accessible to us if we believe.
Now, to your point on Christ at the well with the woman you are speculating that the Holy Spirit gave him the information about the woman, but you don’t really know if that is the case. The only thing the scripture reveals to us is that Christ knew this information, but doesn’t elude to how he knew it. One could speculate that if we have a similar relationship with the father that Christ has we may also have access to information about people we meet when we meet them for the first time.
There is much evidence that the Apostles had similar powers bestowed to them after Christ’s death and resurrection. The apostles often talked about “being in the spirit”, which is somewhat of a mystery to us, but during those times they were privy to information they weren’t aware of prior to those moments.
I guess to sum up my thoughts here Christ was the ultimate Superman, but chose the opposite path to fight evil. Instead of crushing his enemies, and tossing them around like Superman does, he chose to let them do the tossing to him so he could save the world through his death and resurrection. He’ll always be my hero!
Jeffrywith1e January 2, 2011
I believe Jesus’ supernatural abilities became exponentially more powerful after his resurrection. In a small document (a gift for someone) I listed the powers as evident from scripture…
“Jesus’ Super Powers
The curious part of that is some of the abilities Jesus seems to have after his resurrection. He appeared and
disappeared at will (Luke 24:30-36), he entered through locked doors (John 20:19), he kind of could control nature (John 21:1-6). There are more things that he did after his resurrection that seemed strange. If it’s true that Jesus is what Adam and Eve were like than it may be reasonable to ask if Adam and Eve also had these abilities. Of course the Bible isn’t clear about that, but it is an interesting thought.”
Jeffrywith1e January 2, 2011
btw, I LOVE that image! Wonder Woman, He-Man, Wolverine and Superman! Jesus outclasses them all.
kaneopua January 3, 2011
This is a great topic (thanks wh church) and depending on your view point, your Christianity will generally be defined.
(Are we assuming that we are like God and know all things, or are we constantly dependent upon the Holy Spirit to show us what is true in every circumstance we find ourselves)
I believe that Jesus did lay aside His omniscience as well as the rest of his divinity to become human as He even expressed in Mark 13:32. In John 5:18-30, just after Jesus’ experience with the woman at the well we find Him explaining to the Pharisees the source of all his wisdom and power which he accredits everything to the Father.
Heb. 2:17 says that, “…. in all things He had to be made like His brethren…”
The key is that Jesus “saw” the heart of the Father clearer than any human (even Adam and Eve) ever has (Luke 10:22). Which is why Jesus never sinned (1 John 3:6).
Thanks for the thoughts! :)
Bruce Crossan January 7, 2011
Jesus was both fully God and fully Man or so we are taught. Like the Three in One of the Godhead, it is an area that we, as only humans, have no direct experience that we can use for direct comparison. So what if he was only a man: The love that God has for all mankind must have been channeled through Jesus’ manor and actions to such a high degree, that people could not help but feel the power that was just below the surface.
Greg seems to have forgotten that in his writings on Open Theism, he has said that just because God may have the ability to do something really powerful, doesn’t mean that He will choose to do it (like we probably would) just because He can. The same can be said of Jesus. Maybe he could leap tall buildings in a single bound (the buildings of that time period were of course, much smaller, making them easier to bound over) but fighting bad guys one at a time, like comic book super heroes do, isn’t and effective method of defeating evil once and for all. To truly defeat evil, you have to die, enter Satan’s realm and then bring yourself back to life three days later. That is a really super power: Power over death.
But I have a theory, about when Jesus was actually fully human without a DSL line direct to God. To illustrate, I have to tell a quick story (or a quick version of a long story). March 5th, of 2003, I made a 911 call; thought I was having a heart attack. The last thing I remember was the one EMT saying to the other: It’s not his heart, look at the EKG (fade to black). I had a bad case of hemorrhagic pancreatitus. A doctor named Ranson developed a series of 11 questions to predict survival rates, after you’ve been in the hospital 48 hours: One point for yes, no points for no, add up the points. Five to Six= 20% survival; Seven to eight= Dead; I scored a 10. Statistically I was 33% deader than dead. Then the MRSA infection got a hold of me. Nearly a year after all this started, the clinical depression hit like someone giving you a load of bricks to carry but they don’t stop adding more bricks. So I feel like I can say, with some authority, that there is an Express elevator down to hell. But if the Devil won’t let you in you have to take the stairs back up; and it’s a looonnnggg ways back up. Plus, you never know where the door is going to dump you when you finally get there.
So why the story? Easter is coming up. All across America and around the world, Pastors, Priests and other assorted clergy will be showing Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ” and preaching on how he bore all of this pain and bled (don’t forget the blood) for our sins. But I think that they miss the whole point, at least from Jesus point of view. I’m not saying getting beaten like Jesus did is fun. It’s not. But I think I know something about pain, the physical kind and the mental kind. From my experiences, I have to say that the physical pain is nothing compared to the pure hell on earth of a good case of clinical depression. Jesus didn’t suffer from depression; however, there is that moment on the cross, right before he dies. You know, in Mark and Matthew I think, where Jesus says: Eloi, eloi, llama llama rama ding dong (okay the last part isn’t an exact quote). My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!
You see, if God (being a Three in One), created the universe because he wanted to share his perfect love with us, as Greg has said elsewhere, and if Jesus still had this kind of contact with the other parts of the trinity, as I believe he did, then this moment when Jesus cries out to God and the veil in the Temple rips in half, is the moment when that special contact between Jesus and the other members of the Trinity is broken. For the first time, a part of the Godhead, that has shared perfect communion for all of time, is alone. Just as Man who has lost his direct connection to God because of his sin, a part of God now knows what it feels like to be totally alone. Drawing on my experiences with depression, I have to think that this hurt much more than the physical beating the Romans gave Jesus. He knew this would happen but because he loves us more than we can know, he went ahead and did it for us. Knowing that I would do just about anything to avoid falling back into depression, Jesus actions shame me and make me bow my head in humility and gratefulness. bc