"But Jesus Was God!"

Hebrews 4:15

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet he did not sin."

Every once in a while, you'll find yourself at a place in life where things just plain suck. Things that don't seem to be getting better. Inevitably for the Christian you will likely be met with the consolation that even Jesus went through rough times. Very rarely do I ever feel any sort of relief from that. In fact, it almost always irks me.

Jesus was God. I mean, he still is God but I'm speaking specifically to His life on Earth. At the same time, He was also fully man. As such, He felt the pains and temptations of sin that plague every one of us. But did He really? I find myself asking this question frequently. If Christ felt temptation to sin yet was still perfect and pure in nature, was there any real temptation to be had? He was aware of His own divinity. Wouldn't He also be aware that He would never succumb and, therefore, never needed to be concerned? This is where I get annoyed.

Until recently, it never occurred to me that my questions and frustrations are exactly what makes Christ so far beyond our understanding. The Bible says that He faced temptation and always conquered it and I believe this to be true. I've never given pause to think that I could be interpreting this verse incorrectly. For all the times I've stressed contextualizing scripture, I found myself falling to the same mistake that again and again I've had to address.

So what if Jesus faced temptation? That doesn't need to be the draw of Hebrews 4:15. The point is that "he did not sin". Picture a time in the past when there was something that you really wanted to do, agonizingly so, but knew that it was wrong and that, in your conviction, you would never do it. Now take that and apply it to Jesus with every single temptation in His life. Imagine the emotional and even physical toll that would take upon a man. An ever-increasing burden made worse with the knowledge that He would be taking all of mankind's sins with Him in the most horrible death imaginable. It's no wonder He was sweating blood.

I could very well be misinterpreting this verse. My knowledge of hermeneutics is limited, however much I find it enlightening. But I have little doubt that the conclusion I've made is consistent with the character of Christ. The value in that is something that has brought me comfort in a way that it never had before.

-L. Travis Hoffman

7/23/2015