Jesus: Human and Divine
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate. In Jesus, God became one of us, a human being. Jesus is a Divine Person who has taken upon Himself our human nature, such that His Divine nature and His human nature are united in one Person. As classically expressed by the ancient Church Council of Chalcedon, Jesus’s human and Divine natures are united, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” Jesus is not partially human and partially God; He is fully human and fully God. This is the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, which lies at the heart of historic Christian orthodoxy.
Needless to say, this doctrine of the Incarnation is an extraordinary and staggering idea. The idea that the infinite and eternal Creator of all that exists would love us so much that He would be willing to humble Himself and enter into our finite, human condition in order to be with us is simply astounding. Indeed, many people find it hard to believe, and skeptics have raised numerous objections to the coherence of the doctrine.
The basic objection skeptics raise to the concept of Incarnation is that Divine nature and human nature are radically different in many respects, so it seems impossible that Jesus could be both at once. God is uncreated, while humans are created, so Jesus would be both uncreated and created. God is eternal, while humans are temporal, so Jesus would be both eternal and temporal. God is omnipresent, while humans have finite bodies, so Jesus would be both omnipresent and spatially limited. And so on. Doesn’t this show that the very idea of the Incarnation is simply incoherent?
This objection misses the mark because it fails to recognize that Jesus’s Divine and human natures remain distinct and retain their respective properties, even as they are united in the one Person of the Incarnate Word of God. Jesus’s Divine nature is uncreated, eternal, and omnipresent, while His human nature is created, temporal, and finite. Thus, we can say that, with respect to His Divine nature, Jesus is uncreated, eternal, and omnipresent, while with respect to His human nature, He is created, temporal, and finite. This is not a self-contradictory claim, since Jesus’s Divine and human properties are attributed to their respective natures, not to the same nature. In Jesus, God, without ceasing to be God, has entered into the human condition, living as one of us.
Since the Incarnation is something that is completely unique, it is impossible for us to fully wrap our minds around it or to fully understand how it works. One possible analogy for helping us to make sense of it is the relationship between human bodies and minds. Our bodies are physical objects which can be sensed with all five human senses. Our minds are immaterial entities which are undetectable by all five human senses. Our bodies and minds have different properties. Yet, each human person exists as a union of body and mind. Of course, this analogy is imperfect, but it can at least give us some sense of how a single person could exist as a union of two natures with different properties.
Jesus’s Divine and Human Wills
Skeptics who object to the idea of the Incarnation often focus especially on questions surrounding the relationship between Jesus’s human will and the will of God, especially as it relates to Jesus’s temptations. According to the New Testament, Jesus was tempted to sin (Matt 4:1-11; Heb 4:15). But, if Jesus is God, and God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), how can this be? In order to be tempted in the first place, doesn’t a person need to desire evil and thus already be morally imperfect? (Jesus Himself taught that a person can sin in their thoughts (Matt 5:22, 28).) But God is supposed to be morally perfect. In any case, if Jesus’s human will was able to give in to temptation and sin, that would mean God is able to sin and thus is not morally perfect. On the other hand, if Jesus’s human will was not able to sin because His Divine will overrode it, then it would seem like He was not actually tempted and was just pretending to be. The idea of Jesus being tempted thus seems quite problematic.
First of all, yes, God considered as God cannot be tempted to evil. But God Incarnate can, with respect to His human nature, be tempted. This is parallel to how God considered as God cannot suffer or die, but God Incarnate was able to suffer and die. The Divine nature is immutable, and thus unable to be tempted, suffer, or die. However, having entered into the human condition in the Incarnation, God was able to be tempted, to suffer, and to die with respect to His human nature.
Secondly, no, being tempted does not mean that a person has already sinned. Christians have always made a sharp distinction between temptation and sin. Temptation does not require a person to desire evil, because no one ever desires evil for its own sake. Evil is not a substance, but a lack of goodness. Every existing thing is actually good. Sin, or moral evil, is when a person acts on a disordered love for something good that conflicts with the love of God. Thus, every temptation involves a desire for something good.
With this understanding of temptation in place, we can see how Jesus could be tempted while at the same time being morally perfect. Jesus was tempted by a desire for good things (food, fame, power, etc.) and felt the full force of the natural human desire for those things. Yet, because of His perfect love for His Heavenly Father, He was able to choose not to act on those desires when He knew that this would conflict with His obedience to His Heavenly Father’s will.
Because He is God, it was not possible for Jesus to give in to temptation and sin. But this does not mean that He was just “pretending” to be tempted. He did feel the full force of human temptation. But He always chose to align His human will with the will of His Heavenly Father.