“Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest”
(Hebrews 2:17).
Hebrews 5:8 says, “Jesus learned obedience by the things that He suffered.” Learning is the process of evolving illumination combined with experiences. When Jesus left heaven and took on human limitation, He left his all-knowing God consciousness behind. Philippians 2:6-9 says, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” We may ask, “But wasn't He unlimited in His operation as the second person of the Trinity--He could walk on water and raise the dead?” Yes, God operated through Him and He was God, but He was God in human form or “in the flesh,” John 1:14. God had to so identify with man, that He had to be just like us. He had to feel like we do and think like we do in order to completely know Himself as a man.
As a child, Jesus grew up just like all the other Hebrew children. I think He was just as surprised as the Scribes were when He knew and understood the scriptures and spoke with great wisdom and authority in the temple at the age of twelve. Then when He told his mother, “I am about my Father's business,” He certainly didn't have the same confidence as His later declaration of “I am the way, the truth and the life.” There was an evolution in the consciousness of Jesus, just as there is in ours.
I wonder about those early thirty years when He was hidden to the world. I wonder if He thought to himself, “Is carpentry all that I am going to be doing? Is this what it means to be God's son?; or even “Am I really God's son?” I think that when He began to hear about John the Baptist, He went out to hear him in wonderment and curiosity. Probably as Jesus began to listen to John, He was pierced in His heart by the Spirit. That is why He made His way down to the place where John was baptizing. As He came into the water that day, He was humbled beyond words as His and John's spirits leaped together with recognition. Then the complete Godhead met in total agreement and confirmed Him as the beloved Son of God. He finally knew without any shadow of doubt who He really was.
Yet even the Son of God could not live on revelation alone. He had to know how He would operate as God's son in human form, and that meant testing. That is why the Spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. He had to learn the one crucial lesson concerning His humanity. And that lesson had to be learned through suffering. Jesus learned that His humanity had no power of its own and was totally helpless in and of itself. Satan taunted Him to perform, while Jesus waited in weakness for the Spirit to answer Satan's demands. “The Captain of our salvation was made perfect by the things that He suffered” (Heb. 2:10). He learned the meaning of functioning as man and God in perfect union as one, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord” (Zech. 4:6). Then, after the temptations were over, His humanity was anointed by the Spirit of God, fully equipping Him for His ministry. (See the chapter entitled “The Temptations of Christ.”)
I find it interesting that in the Gospel of John, between chapters 4 and 14, Jesus is constantly hammering at the same point, “I can of my own self do nothing” (John 5:19&30). He reiterates it 36 times in one form or another through these chapters. This could have been over a period of two years. I know myself that when the Lord gives me revelation on a point, I usually repeat it everywhere I go and as often as given opportunity. Each time I say it, it gets stronger and more clear. I think that Jesus experienced the very same thing. In John 14:9, He was so settled in the function of His humanity that He emphatically said: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” He had learned that the human self had no power of its own, but was indwelt by the power of another, who was His life. The perfect nothing containing and expressing the perfect all.
As Jesus knew the secret of who He was and how He operated as a God-Man, He could share that same secret with His disciples. He first taught and foretold of the indwelling Spirit in John 14. Then, in John 15 He gave them an example of functioning union relationship: “I am the vine, you are the branch; without me you can do nothing, for the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine.” A branch has no life of its own and abides by receiving its life from the vine. Jesus knew that the disciples would not understand what He meant until later, after they had received the Holy Spirit. Then He, the Holy Spirit, would reveal all things unto them.
Finally, by the time He was ready to go to the cross, He was in great faith as He prayed for the oneness that was yet to come--first in His disciples and then in future generations. “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity” (John 17:21&23). Christ paid a great price to bring this fullness to His Body.
This was the evolving process that caused Jesus to know who He was and how He functioned as a divine person living in a human body. I John 2:12-14 tells us that there is the same evolutionary process in us: Little Children know their sins are forgiven; Young men find their true identity and learn how to function as a Spirit person above Satan's assaults; while Fathers co-operate in the redeeming work of the Spirit according to God's eternal purposes.