Why would Jesus need to pray? Think beyond the usual.

[Carlos McCloud]

Considering the fact that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, given the fact that he is the full expression of the Godhead, why would Jesus even need to pray.  If he has all power, If he and the father are one, if he has full authority, why would he need to pray

[A.W. Bowman]

A great question! Truly! Rambling a little, here is an answer:

Because prayer is conversation time. It is akin to taking some time out to talk to yourself.

While the Father and Son are ‘one’, they are not identical. Rather, they are as a rope, intertwined and inseparable. To remove any one of the three manifestations of God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), would be to destroy the ‘oneness’ of God. Even as we are made in both the likeness (Heb. Male) and image (Heb. Female) of God, we also have three separate elements of our existence that must remain intact in order for us to continue to exist as humans, i.e. our body, soul and spirit. Three separate and distinct elements, that when united creates a single unique individual.

Unlike humans, however, God is not dysfunctional. Not having a ‘fallen nature’ or constricted by time, space, or modes of existence, He is not bound by His own creation. Consider: Our bodies will never see heaven, we will first receive new ones. Our bodies are almost always in rebellion against our own will (see Paul’s lament concerning sin in his members). Our soul (mind/emotions) require a serious ‘renewing’ through the word of God, and our spirits (our essence) requires a ‘rebirth’ (a recreation). Most of us have never had a serious conversation with our selves, much less a continuous conversation where our physical bodies effectively communicated with our soul or spirit, or our soul with our spirit. For example, where is your spirit at this very moment? What is it doing, engaged in? And, don’t forget, we are to be continually ‘in prayer’ (communication) with God via the communing of our spirit with the Holy Spirit (living and walking in the Spirit).

So, while Jesus lived and walked in the Spirit, He continued to live among men as a man, a physical manifestation of God (a theophany), the physical element of God communed with the Soul (Father, mind) and Spirit (essence) elements of God. All are bound together and yet they do not relinquish their individual traits or functions, it is as the Hebrew sages have declared from Mt. Sinai to even today, “God is an absolute (inseparable) unity of deity”.

This is a very difficult subject to just gloss over, as I have done here. The problem is that we must stop trying to understand God according to human terms. While God is frequently described in the Bible in human terms (anthropomorphic descriptions) so we can grasp something of His nature, He is also identified as being ‘unknowable’ and ‘unsearchable’.

The first step in a personal study of the nature of God might start with a study of the Godhead. What one will quickly discover is that there is no such thing as a Godhead. I highly recommend that one reference the three times this term is used in the KJV of the Bible in a good Greek Lexicon, not a dictionary! The word, Godhead, is an English translator’s created term to express three different Greek words identifying three different aspects of God’s deity. Understand these differences and one will be in a good position to launch out on an independent study, and answer such questions as, “How could Jesus, a human, contain the totality of something of the Father?” See Colossians 2:9.

Shalom Aleichem