sin:proof

Jesus. Fully God, fully man.
Entirely tempted and tried by all that we are being tempted and tried by. Yet entirely able to withstand all things of this world. Not just withstand, He is able to Overcome all the things of this world.
I hear this “Jesus: fully God and fully man” business and of course I don’t understand it. My mind cannot put the two together, because I know that 1 complete thing added to another complete thing becomes 2 complete things. And something has to be taken away for them to make just 1 complete thing. They have to be meshed together; there can be pieces of both, but they are pieces none the less.
Fully God, fully man.
With this logic, for most of my life I secretly believed that Jesus had to have had some of the fully man part taken out for the whole “Fully God, fully Man” thing to work out.
I thought it as a Clarke Kent by day sort of thing. Jesus looking like an average joe going to work in the carpenter store, but underneath his shirt and jeans he has his ultra-tech Spandex, fire proof, sin and bullet proof suit on that helped him out a little. He was kind of like man but also kind of not. He was a little bit better, having his fully intact ‘fully God’ part helping Him out a little.
This allowed me to read the Bible with almost a certain smugness of knowing a secret. Like the guy in the office who knows Superman’s secret. He knows why he is excellent at his job or why he always gets raises and smirks when others get baffled or try to best him at work. He doesn’t even try because he knows Superman is, well, more super than him.
So I would see verses that talked about how Jesus lived a sinless life and how we were to strive to do this in His example. I would read those and give God a little subconscious wink-wink as if to say I knew the secret. I thought that we could strive to be like Jesus, it was a great way to live our lives, but its impossible to really resist temptation like Jesus. Because underneath our shirt and jeans isn’t that blue and red and bullet proof and sin proof suit. Underneath our shirt and jeans is just underwear and a heart that loves to choose evil over good. A heart that repeatedly chooses that which is wrong over that which is best.
But what if Jesus’ only real help over temptation was this – that He had been in Heaven, the presence of God. He had for the past, well, eternity before He came to earth, tasted and seen that the Lord is good. He had experienced God and knew, He KNEW that God was better. He was fully man being tempted by the fully tempting things of this earth, but He was able to remember that God was better.
And this evens out the playing field a little more. This takes away my ability to “wink-wink” and “nudge-nudge” away God’s call to holiness in the example of His son. This calls me to pursue God, to fully experience His presence so that I can fully resist temptation knowing that HE IS BETTER. That is our super power.
What if we really tasted God, tasted and seen and known that He was better than the things of this world. I still don’t understand fully the finer theological points of the hypostatic union. I still don’t get how 1 plus 1 can equal 1, but in the point of Jesus resisting sin, I’m not sure that’s the real point.
Hebrews 4:15 calls me to a higher standard that is doable. It is not God being condescending. I know can believe 2 Peter 1:3 when it says that He has given us all we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us. He has given us Himself.
Let us experience Him, let us resist sin in a way that looks supernatural.

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