HOW DID JESUS THINK?

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. John 5:19 (ESV)

How did Jesus see the Father doing things? 

This is a deep mystery. Jesus had an amazingly deep and clear perception of what was going on in the spirit world. This should not surprise us if we believe that Jesus was God living as a human being on the earth. 

So did Jesus live on earth with complete divine omniscience? Clearly He did not.

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. Luke 2:52 (NIV) 

Jesus grew physically from a baby to a man. Jesus also grew in wisdom and this also seems to imply that He grew in knowledge. 

He learned as a child learns. He could not learn if He already knew everything with the mind of God. 

We believe Jesus was God in a human body but that it not all. He was God who lived as a human being with a human mind. 

Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV) 
5  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 
6  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 
7  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 
8  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

• When Jesus became a human being, He did not stop being God but He emptied Himself of His infinite abilities, His omniscience and omnipotence. 

• However, He did not give up the goodness of His divine character or the love of His heart, which was and is the loving heart of God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8 (ESV) 

Jesus became an embryo in the mother of Mary and then a baby boy in Bethlehem. Why? Because of His love for you and me.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (ESV) 

Jesus was born with the body of a baby and the intellect of a baby. As He grew up, He had to learn to think and know things, just as we do.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. Luke 2:52 (NKJV) 

Jesus was a MAN. 

If He was God in a human body, He could have known everything as God does and made everything happen as God does with His own unlimited power.
But Jesus said:

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son CAN DO NOTHING of Himself, 

• unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. John 5:19 (NASB)

The key word hear is CAN. 

• Jesus had surrendered His unlimited abilities which He had as God before He became a human being.

• Jesus lived by faith. He lived on earth as a man to show us how to live by faith as human beings.

12  "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. 

13  "Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 14:12-13 (NASB) 

• If the miracles of Jesus were demonstrations of His own Divine omnipotence, how could He reasonably expect us to follow in His footsteps? We are not God.

• But if Jesus worked miracles as a man, by trusting in the power of His Father’s Spirit, then we can do the same through His grace. 

Remember the Grace of God is not just His mercy but also His transforming power which works in us and through us but only as we choose to trust and believe and give Him the glory.