How could Jesus be omnipresent God, yet not be in more than one place at a time? How could Jesus be eternal God and yet clearly be limited by time? How could He be omniscient yet learn? Omnipotent but tired? Tempted yet untemptable. How could Jesus be sovereign God, yet be beaten & crucified?
You may have some answers for some of these. Some are easier to deal with than others. But stop and really think about these questions. They really are quite amazing in what they show us without our even answering them! What I mean is this: When we really think about these questions. When we recognize the truth of each of the realities addressed, we should at bare minimum be filled with awe and wonder over what we contemplate – the glorious Christ! While we will try to make a little sense out of these things, in the end, we will still be shaking our heads in bewilderment over thoughts that are truly too glorious to fully understand. But that's OK, just let the remaining bewilderment spur you on to worship the glorious Christ who is beyond the scope of our human understanding!
So, how could Jesus continue to be omnipresent God and yet not be in more than one place at a time? A human body can only be in one place at a time right? But then, Jesus stated when He ascended to Heaven that He would be with us to the end of the age. How can He be with each of us in a physical body when we are not all in the same place? But you object, “It was His glorified body, it was different.” But, recognize that it was still a physical body that could be touched!
Perhaps we need to think of it this way. God chose to demonstrate His presence in unique, physical ways in the past. He met with Moses at the burning bush. Latter, God put Moses in the cleft of a rock and passed by Him, covering Moses with His “hand” as He passed by. This may not have been a literal physical hand, but in both cases, there appears to have been some physical demonstration of the presence of God. God uniquely demonstrated His presence. He did this other times. When He uniquely demonstrated His presence in these locations, did He cease to exist elsewhere? Of course not. And perhaps this is how we can correctly understand how Jesus could be physically located in a human body while remaining omnipresent. It makes it a bit more understandable but I know we still can’t really get our heads around it. But, that should not stop us from embracing the belief that Jesus retained His divine attribute of omnipresence during the incarnation and beyond. Maybe we just need to accept it as two truths that seem contradictory (omnipresence and a human body), a paradox.
How could omniscient (all-knowing) God learn? He can’t. But man can. How could Jesus not know something? He chose not to know it. In fact, there were times when Jesus demonstrated His ability to know all things. Really, Jesus demonstrated His omniscience many times. Remember that Jesus “saw” Nathaniel under the fig tree when He was not physically there with Nathaniel (John 1:48)? This is either a demonstration of divine omniscience or divine omnipresence. Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him and that Peter would deny Him. (Mat. 26:26-31)
A third issue that has received quite a bit of attention is how Jesus could be tempted as man and yet, “God cannot be tempted with evil (James 1:13).” Certainly scripture makes it clear that Jesus was absolutely sinless. But the question is whether it was even possible for Him to sin. If it was impossible for Him to sin, would any temptation even be real. If you can’t do it, where is the temptation? But Hebrews tells us, “For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.”
Were the temptations real? This verse seems to answer that quite clearly. Yes, they were real temptations Jesus faced. So, could Jesus have sinned? Millard Erickson answers that question this way. As God, Jesus could not sin; it was impossible. As man, Jesus could have sinned. The unique combination of deity and humanity assured that Jesus would not sin.
What does this mean? It means that Jesus really does know what it is like to face intense temptation. He really can understand what you’re going through when you are tempted, and He can enable you to resist as He did. You don’t have to sin any more than He did.
Next: (46) Summary
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