{"id":6879,"date":"2014-12-17T04:22:51","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T09:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=6879"},"modified":"2016-07-02T15:46:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T19:46:22","slug":"did-jesus-have-faith-in-god-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/did-jesus-have-faith-in-god-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Jesus have faith in God? – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JesusIn “How Jesus\u2019 Not Having Faith In God Affirms His Deity<\/strong><\/a>” at the Thinking Christian<\/a> blog, Tom Gilson argues that the New Testament, by not teaching that Jesus had faith<\/strong> in God, implies that Jesus is God himself<\/strong>. Thus, even the synoptic gospels implicitly teach that Jesus is God.<\/p>\n

Here, I’ll comment on his first post<\/a><\/strong> in the series; next time, his second post.<\/p>\n

In part Mr. Gilson says (emphases added)<\/p>\n

…didn\u2019t Jesus have the greatest faith ever known?<\/p>\n

No, he didn\u2019t, at least not according to the Gospels<\/strong>. Jesus uses the word \u201cfaith\u201d 41 times in the Gospels (English Standard Version), and in every case he was speaking of someone else\u2019s faith (or lack of it). He never used the term in the first person, speaking of his own faith. No other writer in the Bible spoke of Jesus\u2019 faith, either.<\/p>\n

Contrast that with Paul, for whom faith was definitely a first-person experience..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again,<\/p>\n

…the Bible tells us Jesus is God incarnate<\/strong>. While it might make sense for you or me to speak of having faith in ourselves, it\u2019s absurd to think of God as having faith in himself. We talk of faith in ourselves because we know there\u2019s reason sometimes to doubt. God knows there is never reason in himself to doubt.<\/p>\n

When we trust in God, we trust in another<\/strong>, who has promised to act on our behalf in accord with his character and his promises. Jesus doesn\u2019t look to God to act on his behalf.<\/p>\n

… The only way that makes sense<\/strong> is if he thought he was exempt from the need for faith; and the only way any person could be exempt from the need to trust in God would be if that person were God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I want to argue that Mr. Gilson is mistaken<\/strong>. First,\u00a0I’m going to just state and then lay aside the important point that his reading of the New Testament is incoherent, because if Jesus and God are one and the same, they can’t differ – but the New Testament assumes and asserts them to have differed in many ways. I’ll stick to this point: the gospels don’t need to say<\/em> that Jesus had faith in God,\u00a0because\u00a0they clearly portray<\/em> Jesus’s faith in God<\/strong>. Yes, he is a main object of<\/em> faith in the New Testament.But he’s also a hero of faith, an exemplar of faith<\/em>, a man who trusted God to the utmost, indeed, to and through\u00a0his own\u00a0death<\/p>\n

First, all prayer requires faith<\/strong> in God – that he exists, and that he hears and answers prayer. Jesus prayed. You see his great faith most notably in his\u00a0prayer at Gethsemane<\/strong><\/a>. Terrified of the fate he’s believes\u00a0that God has ordained, yet knowing that God hears and answer his requests, he asks God to be spared. The reader is to infer that either God declined to answer, or he said no, and that \u00a0Jesus accepts this answer, trusting God. He acts with courage and resolve at his trials.<\/p>\n

Second, Hebrews 12\u00a0implicitly but very clearly asserts that Jesus is a model of faith<\/strong> for us. And note that it comes and the end of big list of heroes of faith – Jesus is the capstone of that list.\"Jesus<\/p>\n

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith<\/strong>, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2, NRSV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s the pioneer, the trailblazer whom we are to follow in the path of faith.<\/p>\n

Before and while it was occurring, Jesus’s crucifixion\u00a0seemed<\/em> like<\/strong> a gigantic, horrible, humiliating, embarrassing, painful loss to Jesus \u00a0– loss of his life,\u00a0his ministry, his privacy, his dignity, his family,\u00a0his friends, his hopes. But he trusted in God through it all, never cursing his fate, his God<\/a>, or his enemies, but expecting God’s vindication – which at the time was nowhere in sight. Mark 15:34 says\u00a0that he prays Psalm 22<\/strong> from the cross. (Read the rest of it.<\/a>) He must have focused on what he had before heard from God, that he would be raised and exalted on the third day. \u201cFather,\u00a0<\/strong>into<\/b> your<\/b> hands<\/b> I commit my spirit!\u201d (Luke 23:46) Those are words of faith. This whole death is the greatest example of faith, not a picture of a being (perfect, self-sufficient God) who has no need of faith. We are to follow Jesus in that sort of faith, which we see the apostles doing, in all but one case, to their own premature death.<\/p>\n

I’m sure there are other passages we could discuss\u00a0as well, like Philippians 2; but it seems to me that these two are sufficient.<\/p>\n

Next time: his second post.<\/a>\u00a0 (Here’s a link to all five of my posts <\/a>in this series.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “How Jesus\u2019 Not Having Faith In God Affirms His Deity” at the Thinking Christian blog, Tom Gilson argues that the New Testament, by not teaching that Jesus had faith in God, implies that Jesus is God himself. Thus, even the synoptic gospels implicitly teach that Jesus is God. Here, I’ll comment on his first… Read More »Did Jesus have faith in God? – Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,11,61,21,15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-art","category-atonement","category-bible","category-christology","category-quotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6879"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37814,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879\/revisions\/37814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}