TEEN TREE OF LIFE
THE DOCTRINE OF KENOSIS
August 13, 2017
Part 2
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).
We are studying the Doctrine of Kenosis which teaches us that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ emptied Himself of his proper function in order to Carry Out God The Father’s Plan for Salvation. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords but for us, he made Himself nothing!
We are in the middle of looking at the fact that the true Doctrine of Kenosis is illustrated by the Humanity of Christ in facing evidence testing. Evidence testing is Satan’s cross-examination of every witness presented by God in the Angelic Conflict. Only mature believers have the capacity to be presented as witnesses.
Now, Jesus Christ as God is Infinite, Eternal, Immutable, Omnipotent, and the Creator of the universe, which Satan recognized. Our Lord had the power to turn the entire universe into bread after fasting for forty days, but under the Doctrine of Kenosis, He never once used His Omnipotence independently of His Father. He refused to function independently of The Father’s Plan. He refused to rely on His Own Omnipotence at any time during the Incarnation.
It is FALSE to say that Jesus Christ surrendered His Omnipotence; this is not true at all. He had it all the time; He simply did not use it. He used only The Omnipotence of The Father and The Holy Spirit, just as we have the option of doing! Our Lord continued to be hungry and met Satan’s temptation with a quotation from DEU 8:3: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” By this, Our Lord established the fact that Bible doctrine had #1 priority in His Life and He used the Power of Bible doctrine. This is our example. This is the application you are to remember from the Doctrine of Kenosis. Never forget that.
Satan’s temptation was intended to lure Christ’s Humanity away from reliance on The Father’s Omnipotence for His logistical grace and on The Omnipotence of The Holy Spirit for His Power. Had our Lord used His Own Omnipotence to turn the stones into bread, He would have operated independently of The Father’s Plan. His Humanity would have received food, but He would never go to The Cross. Our Lord used the Bible doctrine He had learned inside the Pre-Designed Plan of God to meet the test. This is taught in LUK 2:52: And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. This verse in LUKE is a reference to His humanity inside the Pre-Designed Plan of God for His life.
Let’s now look at the false things being taught about Kenosis. The traditional view says that the Divine Attributes of Christ were surrendered during the Hypostatic Union. Some theologians hold that Jesus Christ, though retaining His Divine Self-Consciousness and His Imminent Attributes (Holiness, Love, And Truth), Surrendered His Attributes (Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence). Some religious sects deny that Christ had a real body or that His Body was made of some heavenly substance instead of human flesh. All of them are absolutely and unequivocally wrong. It is impossible for deity to surrender an attribute without changing the character of the essence from which it came.
MAL 3:6, backs up this fact: “For I, the Lord, do not change…” HEB 13:8 says: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The point is that God cannot change; therefore, to rob God of any Attribute would destroy His Deity. If Christ did not possess all the Attributes of Divine Essence, then He did not Possess True Deity in the first place. It is impossible to subtract any attribute without destroying the total essence.
During the His Time on earth, Jesus Christ was both Undiminished Deity and True Humanity in One Person; therefore, as Undiminished Deity, Christ did not surrender His Divine Attributes or Empty His Deity. However, Christ voluntarily restricted the independent use of His Attributes in compliance with The Father’s Plan for the Incarnation. This was the issue in His wilderness temptations. Therefore, Christ did not use His Divine Attributes for His Own Glory. He didn’t give up His Deity, but voluntarily surrendered the independent expression of That Deity when it would it would hinder The Father’s Plan. To execute The Father’s Plan for the First Advent, the Humanity of Christ relied on the Pre-Designed Plan of God, logistical grace, The Ministry of God The Holy Spirit, and the Bible doctrine in His Soul. (Logistical grace is everything you need to fulfill God’s Plan for your life.)
Christ voluntarily took on Himself the form of a servant, in order to redeem man from sin, reconcile man to God, and satisfy The Father. In fulfilling the mission of the First Advent, Jesus Christ did not exercise His Divine Attributes to benefit Himself, to provide for Himself, or to glorify Himself.
Christ gave up the Outward Appearance of God, but not the Essence of God and voluntarily took upon Himself the likeness of mankind. For this reason, He prayed for glorification of His True Humanity: I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. (JOH 17:4-5) Jesus Christ had not emptied His Deity or His Divine Glory, but at that point He had not yet achieved the strategic victory of the angelic conflict; therefore, in JOH 17:5, Christ was praying for battlefield victory for His Humanity, not for restoration of His Divine Glory, which had never been taken from Him.
Part of Kenosis is the sustaining Ministry of God the Holy Spirit to the Humanity of Christ. Isaiah prophesied that a power system would come; and that God the Holy Spirit would indwell a human and fill the soul. Jesus Christ was the first one to receive this ministry: “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.” (ISA 42:1) And Jesus Christ was constantly filled with the Spirit from birth: For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. (JOH 3:34)
It is important to note that the two Natures of Christ maintain Their Complete Identity through being joined in personal union forever. The Characteristics of His Human Nature belong to the Human Part of Him; the Characteristics of His Divine Nature belong to the God-Part of Him. Each Nature has its own attributes that adhere to that nature. In other words, there is no mixture of the two natures. He is never half-God and half-man or half man and half-God. Sometimes He Operates from His Human Nature only. Sometimes He Operates from His Divine Nature only. And sometimes He Operates from both Natures together but never mixed.
For example, in His Humanity He became hungry: And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He [a]then became hungry. (MAT 4:2). But in His Deity, He never hungers: Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” (JOH 6:35)
In His Humanity, He would say such things as: “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (JOH 14:28) And then in His Deity, He would say: “I and the Father are one.” (JOH 10:30)
The Doctrine of Kenosis is an important subject to master. With this truth, you become armed to withstand the attacks made by cults who don’t believe Jesus Christ is God, and to defend the faith in Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.