Dear Pastor John,
You write in the Father and Son book** that the Son of God came to earth when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and after Jesus came out of the water, the holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove. Now, I have believed that we are made up of body, soul and spirit, and since we were made in the image of God, God is the same way, and He created the Son the same way, too. If I’m drawing the right conclusions, apart from his heavenly body and the Spirit (God’s kind of life) that the Father gave him, the Son also had a soul, or in other words, a consciousness. Like you wrote in the Father and Son tract,* “You are you, and I am I. We will never become one person, and neither will Jesus ever become the Father, or the Father become Jesus.”
Assuming I’m in the right train of thought, when Jesus was born from Mary, he didn’t yet have God’s kind of life, he only had a human spirit, and he also had his own soul, his consciousness that made him Jesus, the son of Mary, separate from every other creature (just like each one of us are separate persons from each other). So the question that came up in my mind is this: What did Jesus receive when the Son of God entered his body, or as the gospels put it, when the holy Spirit descended on him? Did he “only” receive God’s kind of life, or did he also receive the consciousness of the Son, or, in other words, his soul? If it’s the latter, then did the two persons (the Son of God and Jesus, the son of Mary) become one person? When the Son emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7), what happened? Did the Son (meaning his soul, his consciousness) leave his heavenly body, and entered Jesus’ body, also bringing God’s kind of life with him? Assuming this is what happened, was the Son entering Jesus’ body a once in history event, when two persons (or two souls) became one?
Now, as I was writing this, I was thinking about my own life, and how receiving the holy Ghost did actually give me a new consciousness. It’s not that I don’t have my memories from before my new birth, but I, indeed, have become a new person. (Doesn’t it even say in Revelation that we will receive new names, or a stone with a new name on it?) So maybe the same thing happened to Jesus? He received “only” the spirit of the Son which created a new consciousness in him? In that case: What happened to the body and the soul (the consciousness) of God’s Son who existed in heaven from the beginning of creation?
Some of these questions might sound too technical or theological, but they did come up in my mind, so I thought I would ask you, whether there are definite answers to them.
Thank you, and God bless you, Pastor John.
Zoli
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Hi, Zoli.
You are seeing Jesus’ baptism rightly. The Son of God divested himself of his heavenly glory and came to the body which God has prepared for him, as the scripture says: “When coming into the world, he said, “Sacrifice and offering have not pleased you, but a body you have prepared for me” (Heb. 10:5).
Your question concerning the blending of Mary’s son with God’s Son when the Spirit descended on Jesus is one I have pondered over many times. I know that we, too, receive the Son (and the Father) when we receive the Spirit (Jn. 14:23), but it seems that something more than that was happening when the Spirit came down like a dove upon Jesus, for another person (the heavenly Son) was taking possession of a human body.
As I show in my online book, God Had a Son before Mary Did ** from that time on, God’s Son and Mary’s son had become one and, as one, shared two histories. Here is an excerpt from that book:
The People’s Confusion: Two Sons
Everyone who was acquainted with Mary’s son knew where he came from:
Matthew 13
- When he came to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue, and they were astonished and said, “Where’d he get this wisdom and miracles?
- Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mariam, and his brothers, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
- And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So, where’d he get all these things?”
The Jews of Jesus’ time had been taught that when the Messiah appeared, no one would know where he came from, and since they knew where Mary’s son came from, they were certain that Jesus could not be the Messiah: “We know where this man’s from, but when the Messiah comes, nobody will know where he’s from” (Jn. 7:27). And in the very next verse, the Son of God admitted to the people that they knew where his temple came from: “You know me, and you also know where I’m from” (Jn. 7:28a). However, every . . . time the Son spoke of coming from God in heaven instead of from Mary in Nazareth, his words provoked turmoil:
John 7
28b. “I haven’t come on my own, but the One who sent me is true; Him you do not know.
- I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent me.”
30a. Then they tried to seize him.
It is little wonder that even Jesus’ relatives thought he had gone insane:
Mark 3
- And his kinsmen came out to take him, for they were saying, “He’s lost his mind.”
Persecution notwithstanding, the Son of God never stopped testifying that he came from heaven instead of from Nazareth and from God instead of from Mary, which completely bewildered those who had heard him say previously, “You know me, and you know where I am from”:
John 8
14b. Jesus answered them and said, “You don’t know where I come from or where I’m going.
. . .
- Then they began to say to him, “Where is your father?” Jesus answered, “You don’t know me or my Father; if you had known me, you would have known my Father, too.”
So, according to Jesus’ own words, the people knew him and his father, and they did not know him and his Father; and they knew where he came from, and they did not know where he came from. So, what can we say about this, except that the people were confused and that they were not confused? They knew what they thought, but what they thought they knew was right only when speaking of Mary’s son. Of God’s Son, they knew nothing.
Jesus understood their predicament. And he loved them.
So, Zoli, these things indicate that what happened when God sent His Son to Earth to enter into the body of Jesus is beyond human comprehension. The mystery of the holy Faith of Jesus Christ is not the Trinity, as Christians say; rather, the mystery is how two persons, Mary’s son and the Son of God, became one. We know that it happened when Jesus was coming up out of the water after being baptized by John, but beyond that, what happened is just a mystery.
Yours were thoughtful questions, and they deserve thoughtful answers, which I have attempted to give, but there is only so much anyone can say by way of explanation. That said, however, I will add the following relevant information from the apostle John, which has arrested my attention frequently over the years.
The opening verse of John’s gospel is familiar to many: “In the beginning, the Word was there, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But the opening verses of John’s first epistle say the same thing in different words: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld, and our hands touched: the Word of life. And the life was revealed, and we saw it, and we are bearing witness and showing you the eternal life which was with the Father and was revealed to us.”
It is remarkable that in his epistle, John speaks of the Word of God as if he were a thing: “That which was from the beginning…. the life was revealed.” These comments by John are relevant to the questions you asked, but the mystery remains, at least for me.
One last observation. The terms “Father” and “Son” are used only as tools to help us mortals understand that a loving relationship existed between God and His Son, not to reveal that God and His Son are big versions of human fathers and sons. The ancient Greeks imagined that the gods were big versions of humans, but the truth is that God and His Son are a different life form from humans. And so, they can do things which humans cannot imagine.
Thank you for your questions. They are the same ones I have had for a long time.
Pastor John