Greg Laurie daily devotion - Feb. 8, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Fully God and Fully Man
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. —Hebrews 4:14-15
Before there was a world, before there were planets, before there was light, before there was matter, there was Jesus. Coequal, coeternal, and coexistent with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Jesus was with God—and He was God. John 1:1-2 tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."
We cannot pinpoint the moment in time when there was the beginning, because John was going back in time to eternity past. He was going back further than our minds can imagine.
Jesus is God, and He left the safety of heaven. He entered our world and breathed our air and shared our pain and walked in our shoes. He was fully God and fully man. This does not mean that Jesus had the capacity to sin; this could not and would not happen. Yet He was a man. He was in a human body. He felt human emotion. He faced physical limitations. He felt real pain. It was actual blood coursing through His veins. Yet He was deity. He was God in human form.
Jesus did not become identical to us, but He did become identified with us. In fact He could not have identified with us any more closely than He did. As Hebrews 4:15 reminds us, "We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin."
It was total identification without the loss of identity as He became one of us without ceasing to be himself. He became human without ceasing to be God. Jesus left heaven, lived our life, and died our death. He has walked in your shoes—and then some.
Copyright © 2011 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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