The relationship among the members of the Trinity is beautiful, indeed the very font of beauty. Such hasn’t, however, kept us sinners from finding ways to take the beauty and using it to bring the ugliness of division into the church. The Great Schism, theologically speaking, centered around a single word, filioque. The western church affirmed the Spirit is sent from the Father and the Son. The eastern church affirmed the Spirit is sent only from the Father. And behold there became two one true churches. In our own day, though with not quite the dramatic results, bitter debates on the nature of the relationship of the Father and the Son back into eternity have become the most arcane twitter fodder in its brief lifetime.
The church for five hundred years wrestled over the two intertwined questions of the incarnation and the Trinity. They have given us guidelines, fences within which we move, outside of which lies heresy. There is, however, something almost as difficult to fathom about Jesus here on earth. God in the flesh is the granddaddy of all mysteries. But then there’s this- how it is possible for Jesus to be fully human, yet without sin? It is not a stretch to imagine that, touching His deity Jesus could be without sin. Touching His humanity, however, that’s a tough sell. Indeed many attack the sinlessness of Jesus on this very point, suggesting that were He truly human He could not be without sin.
The Bible, long before the ecumenical creeds came along, is quite clear on the sinlessness of Jesus. While we must affirm that Jesus is one person with two natures, we must also remember that each nature retains its own attributes. That is, touching His deity, Jesus was and is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Not so touching on His humanity. Which is precisely why it was possible for Him to grow in wisdom and stature with God and with man (Luke 2:52). When Jesus dazzled the scholars at the temple when He was only 13 it wasn’t because He was tapped into the divine mind. It was because He was without sin. No total depravity to direct Him toward sloth. No noetic effects to misguide His own thinking.
It is a good thing to speak in defense of the deity of Jesus. In an age where He is respected as a great moral teacher we must remember and press the wisdom of CS Lewis who reminds us that great moral teachers do not claim to be God. Jesus does. We must also, however, speak in defense of the humanity of Jesus. He is what we were meant to be. He is the Second Adam, everything the first Adam was before the fall, though in a fallen world. He is what we will one day be, the first born of many brothers.
What Jesus accomplished is precisely why we will be like Him. Not God incarnate, no. We will not be deified. We will, however, become what we were meant to be. Indeed we are headed there even now, growing in grace and wisdom by His grace and through His wisdom.