Does the Bible Teach Divine Ignorance?

Does the Bible Teach Divine Ignorance? | Questions in the Crucible #1

INTRO

Greetings, and welcome to — The Wisdom Crucible with Jakob McClain — where you and I engage in the ongoing practice of applying biblical thinking to deepen our understanding of biblical truth.

The first question offered to the crucible is this:

How do you contend with the argument for divine ignorance which leans on scriptures proposed to present Jesus as ignorant where God is all-knowing?

This question was originally posed to me as an objection to the coherence of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus based on His supposed ignorance revealed in John 10 regarding the content of Psalm 82.

However, that objection functions more as a gateway than as a pillar of skepticism, because it’s easily dismantled by a careful reading of the immediate context, as I’ll demonstrate shortly.

The more challenging and interesting question that is asked by serious skeptics reading passages indicating limited knowledge of Jesus is this: does Scripture present Jesus as lacking omniscience, and if so, how does that affect His divinity and our Christianity?

The process of forming my response to this question has led to an unexpectedly substantial deepening of my appreciation for God’s incarnation — not merely intellectually, but also emotionally and spiritually.

My God expresses not a cold intelligence, or a blindly emotional ego — but a perfectly complete brilliance of mind.

Now that I’ve summarized my mind’s response to the revelation of God’s mind in the incarnation, allow me to show you how I arrived at that conclusion from the question of divine ignorance.

THE ORIGINAL QUESTION

For the sake of this discussion, I am granting the presuppositional framework of the integrity of Scripture categorically and reliability of the Gospel accounts — not because I haven’t considered alternatives, but because the objection itself depends on these presuppositions to maintain a meaningful existence in genuine theological discussion.

The distilled version of the original question is this: Did Jesus misunderstand the original meaning of Psalm 82 when He cited it in John 10:34?

In the original discussion, the claim was that Psalm 82 refers to divine beings of a pantheon rather than to human judges, yet Jesus treats the term “gods” as applicable to human recipients of God’s word.

This would suggest that Jesus, or at least the Gospel writer, did not correctly understand the psalm’s original meaning.

If New Testament authors could misinterpret earlier Hebrew Scriptures that had been in circulation for centuries, this raises broader concerns about whether such texts were being re-interpreted to support newly developing Christian claims between the first and third centuries.

If this is the case, Jesus’ recorded application of Psalm 82 could reflect contextual misunderstanding rather than authoritative interpretation.

If Psalm 82 originally referred to divine beings in the heavenly council rather than human judges, does Jesus’ use of it suggest that He was mistaken about its context — or that the Gospel writer attributed an incorrect interpretation to Him by mistake?

How does this affect Christology — how we understand, explain, and defend the identity and nature of Jesus Christ? What does this mean for the Christian faith?

The following is my response to this argument:

The objection rests on a misunderstanding of Jesus’ logic recorded in John 10.

He makes a lesser-to-greater argument that does not hinge on whether the ʾĕlōhîm, in this case little ‘g’ gods, in the psalm are spiritual beings or human beings — both of which fall within the semantic range of this word — the range of common intended meanings for elohim.

Jesus’ reasoning is about the logic and authority of Scripture.

If the title elohim can apply even to lesser beings, or human judges as some translations say, who act under God’s commission, how much more can He apply it to Himself, to the One who truly does the Father’s work.

The claim of divine ignorance in this particular case assumes that the objecting reader’s interpretation of the Old Testament and grasp of the historical and linguistic context is more accurate than those present in the ancient days, and the One who breathed out the Scriptures — which is a logically unsustainable position.

This is because the issue can only — even just initially — make sense as an internally consistent objection if you consider the Gospel account of John to be legitimately reliable and the Old Testament writings to be Scripture.

Otherwise, if you argue that the Bible is not reliable then it doesn’t logically follow to treat the record in John 10 as a historical account to be held in opposition to the Old Testament, and if you argue that the Old Testament is not Scripture then you wouldn’t have a reason to hold it up as the standard by which to judge the Gospel.

That’s why I said earlier that in dealing with this issue I’m presupposing the reliability of Scripture rather than first spending time proving that point.

That would be for another episode, but in my opinion the reliability of Scripture is even easier to prove than the answer to the question that I want to pose next.

FRAMING THE GREATER QUESTION

The real challenge of this discussion isn’t whether Jesus misread a Psalm.

The real challenge is whether Scripture itself presents Jesus as possessing limited human knowledge — and if so, what that means for His divinity.

If Jesus is truly divine, how do we account for passages in the New Testament where He appears to lack knowledge or wisdom?

Do such moments reflect faulty records of the Gospel writers, or indicate genuine limitations in His knowledge?

I’ve heard a lot of skeptical questions over the years, but none without good answers. Today’s question is no exception.

This is Questions in the Crucible — where I invite skeptical questions about God, the Bible, or Christianity to be offered to the crucible for refinement to produce thorough responses that I hope will be beneficial.

Let’s put our thinking caps on and consider this issue carefully.

Before we commence to discover an answer to the question of divine ignorance, I want to establish for the sake of this discussion a key concept of Christian theology that we should hold prior to entering fully into this discussion since it’s primarily an internal discussion within Christianity:

Philosophy is formed after exegesis rather than enforcing eisegesis.

Notice what this means for the method of approaching the argument:

We anchor and organize our way of thinking on the foundation of the truth revealed through Scripture rather than starting from a position of personal philosophies.

We cannot be so committed to man-made philosophies or conclusions that we feel we must invent new interpretations to rescue religion or even worse, to correct Scripture itself.

Either result in us no longer sitting under Scripture, but placing Scripture under our feet.

Those methods of evaluating the Bible are an arrogant elevation of man to our own detriment, because it robs the Scriptures of their ability to correct us as needed.

For those of us who claim to be Christians, we must acknowledge that God is perfect in His wisdom, and that we are prone to fallacies because of our limitations.

Reverent questions are welcome and appropriate, but any time that you find yourself in defiant opposition to God, you are the one in the wrong.

You and I are never in the right to raise a fist to God in judgment or opposition.

As with the original objection, the broader question of divine ignorance also requires that we grant the same presuppositions — the integrity of Scripture and the reliability of the Gospels.

That said, let’s finally move on to the response.

SUMMARIZING THE RESPONSE

I’ll first provide you with a summary of the response to the objection of divine ignorance.

Following that, I will build a more thoroughly detailed case to help you understand how the response to this objection was formed.

In summary, consider the following — the argument for divine ignorance only holds under the following conditions:

The Incarnation is ignored or misunderstood — that God truly became human, not just in appearance, but in lived experience.

The union of Jesus’ divine and human natures is denied — treating Him as either only God or only man, rather than both.

The Son’s role is flattened — ignoring that Jesus willingly lived in submission to the Father as an example for godly living to us during His earthly life.

And finally, if Scripture is treated as internally confused — rather than as a coherent witness that speaks with depth, not contradiction.

The biblical and historical understanding of the incarnation is that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man — fully divine and fully human, with no critical components of either nature missing.

Without this, we would not only lack a perfect example to look up to as we attempt to follow the directive to seek the holiness of God, but we would also lack the revelation of the depth of character that Jesus’ self-humiliation provides for us.

We would be even less able to fathom how great the Father’s love for us.

I admit that the dual nature of Jesus is difficult to comprehend, and that we have not been provided a mechanistic explanation of precisely how it works, but that doesn’t automatically prove that it’s impossible, and it doesn’t prove that the Bible is contradictory.

The Bible is perfectly consistent on this matter, as it is on every other matter when read fairly with all context considered.

DIVINE IGNORANCE IN MARK 13

The supposed prooftext for divine ignorance is found in Mark 13:32 and paralleled in Matthew 24:36.

However, I’ve noticed that Mark 13 is referenced far more frequently. This seems to be historically due to Mark’s account being the earliest, clearest, least textually disputed, and therefore most easily weaponized against traditional Christian doctrine.

In the modern discussion, this may have become a subconscious tradition in pop-culture online skepticism where, according to my observations, people seem to mostly just repeat whatever they’ve been taught to say without demonstrating a well-rounded understanding of their own beliefs or the arguments for other positions.

To be fair, this is not a trait unique to online skeptics.

Rather, it’s an unfortunately common error for humanity as a whole to substitute careful consideration with lazy assumption.

In any case, I want to focus on the argument centered in Mark 13, because if I can explain the passage that is considered to be the toughest example of a contradiction between human limitation and divine omniscience, then the other related passages will likewise be found to fall into place.

Mark 13:32 records Jesus saying that no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

This is the flagship text for certain beliefs, some more problematic than others.

Unitarianism uses this text to propose that Jesus was not ontologically God — not of the same divine nature of God.

Docetism uses this text to propose that Jesus only appeared as a human.

Certain formulations of two-mind Christology use this text to propose that Jesus’ human mind was separate from His divine mind, which is close to the biblical incarnation, but still can fall critically short of the truth depending on how that is precisely defined — which will be clearer soon enough.

These belief systems have been developed to attempt to explain Jesus seeming to lack total omniscience across all time because of how clear it is in certain instances, especially Mark 13, that Jesus did not at all times experience omniscience, in this case as it relates to eschatological timing — the exact timing of end time events — because “that day”, as stated in Mark 13:32, is a reference to the Day of the Lord and the events surrounding it, which Jesus was discussing just prior to this verse.

This smuggles a psychological projection of assumption from their argument onto God, which is that to have knowledge requires continually active attention to that knowledge.

That assumption confuses possession with use.

You can test this understanding of knowledge for yourself right now. Do you actively attend to everything that you have knowledge of at all times? No, of course not.

Why should we think that omniscience as a natural trait requires constant exercise of all knowledge at all times?

That assumption isn’t logically or biblically required, which matters since, once again, the framework for the question of divine ignorance depends on the integrity of Scripture.

Pertaining to the aforementioned various belief systems regarding the incarnation, teachers holding to the orthodox understanding of the incarnation — not denominational Orthodoxy, but historic theological orthodoxy — will say that we can disagree on many things, but we lose Christianity entirely if we lose concurrent complete divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ.

I agree with that conclusion, but I still consider this essentially an in-house discussion for the following reason:

I’m sure that there are also many people who genuinely believe that Jesus is their savior and the way to God, but yet still believe in an unbiblical version of the incarnation.

People are quite capable of maintaining inconsistent beliefs.

I’m not saying that’s good, but it’s undeniably possible, and it’s not my place to judge another person’s eternal destiny, especially if my only evidence comes from witnessing a challenging circumstance such as appearing to claim the Christian label while experiencing difficulty in trying to understand the incarnation of God in flesh, which I’ll admit is quite a challenging process to fully comprehend when you try to consider mechanistically the limitation of the human experience being ascribed to the One who we also know as the all-knowing God.

I might conclude that if a person doesn’t fully agree with all of my beliefs regarding the incarnation that they aren’t Christian, but only God has the ability to authoritatively determine the true state of their soul and judge their faithfulness considering their cognitive ability to understand the degree of truth revealed to them.

In any case, aside from internal disagreements within the church, this text is also used often by Muslims to support the teaching that Jesus was merely a human prophet because He lacked the essential attribute of omniscience.

Unfortunately for Islam, to make that argument from the Gospel account they must first grant the fact that the biblical text is an accurate representation of Jesus’ statements, which perfectly aligns with Christianity but utterly refutes the Islamic teachings regarding who Jesus was for one inescapable reason.

Immediately after He says that no one knows the day or the hour, He progresses stepwise from humans to angels, and then again from the angels to say that even the Son doesn’t even know, but only the Father does.

The ordering of humanity first, followed by angels, and finally “not even the Son” but only the Father strongly asserts a hierarchy describing Jesus categorically above the angels in a unique relationship with the Father.

The phrase “not even” is a linguistic clue pointing us to an unexpected exclusion — the Son being excluded in this moment from the Father’s foreknowledge — which is only a sensible expectation if the Son was expected to know eschatological timing due to His divine nature.

This verse can’t reasonably be interpreted to refer to Jesus as merely a human son of God. Even setting aside the historical understanding of the term “Son of God” Jesus is clearly placing Himself first above humanity, and stepwise above the angels, only in submission to the Father.

This is an implicit equivalence to divinity.

What is above the angels categorically other than God Himself?

It's well known that common Jewish belief at that time was that angels comprise the highest category of created beings.

The only category of being above angel is divinity, occupied solely by God.

Hebrews will reveal more pertaining to that later.

It’s also worth briefly noting a rather revealing trend regarding the handling of Mark 13 and categorical natures.

An intellectually consistent skeptic should proceed from questioning the Son to questioning the Holy Spirit as well, since Jesus said that “only the Father” knows the day and the hour.

The fact that I have yet to see evidence of this discussion in skeptical interpretations of Mark 13:32 further reveals that the selective pressure on this verse is not careful enough to consider deep Trinitarian implications.

It’s an interpretation from a surface-level reading aimed narrowly at Jesus.

Digression aside, the hierarchy that Jesus presents with the Son being categorically above humanity and angels is already an unavoidable problem for Islam because one of their core teachings is that Jesus was merely a human prophet, and that He did not claim to be the divinely begotten Son of God.

Because of this, when Islam meets thorough apologetics, it tends to default to the non-evidenced patsy that the Bible has been corrupted over time, so it can’t be trusted to be accurate in its current form, but yet they will inexplicably trust that Jesus indeed claimed to not know the day or the hour without specific evidence indicating which verses are corrupted and in what ways.

The only reasoning they honestly possess is that whatever disagrees with their beliefs must be wrong, but that’s not evidence-based faith so much as circular reasoning.

That kind of argument is essentially saying that you’re wrong because I’m right without being able to prove either, and disagreeing on this particular tenet of Islam is an offense punishable by death under their laws, because fear and silence are the only real arguments that work for Islam.

That aside, if we consider within the framework that treats Scripture as authoritative, the fact that in this one statement Jesus seems to claim both that there is something that He did not know at this point in time and that He was above the angels with the Father leaves us with only a few plausible conclusions about Jesus.

Either He is a lunatic to esteem Himself above angels to the level of divinity, a liar making false statements to deceive people, or He’s correctly identifying Himself as the divine Son of God.

Upon considering further historical context, it’s not plausible to classify Jesus as a lunatic because He was seen to be a wise teacher — demonstrating consistently sustained, coherent, and high-ordered reasoning with moral clarity and deliberate self-control. These qualities can’t all coexist with delusion over time under frequent adversarial pressure as Jesus experienced.

A lunatic also wouldn’t have been able to intellectually evade the numerous attempts at logical and legal traps in conversation that the religious leaders brought against Him.

It’s also irrational to conclude Him a liar because liars don’t willingly and without protest against their accusers suffer the torments up to the crucifixion as described in multiple historical records within and outside of the biblical texts.

The histories, both biblical and extra-biblical, only make sense if Jesus is who He said that He is: God in the flesh.

At this point, we have been shown that Jesus can affirm both human limitation and divine nature in the same breath, meaning that omniscience as an attribute does not require continuous conscious access in every moment.

Every other passage presented in support of the divine ignorance argument is essentially downstream of this one, so once this one is understood, the rest begin to fall into place naturally.

However, before we conclude, we need to let Scripture finish what it began in Mark 13.

COMMON UNBIBLICAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JESUS

One of the most rhetorically strong arguments against Jesus’ divinity as it may be presented is that God is omniscient, Jesus is not, and therefore Jesus is not God.

An honest rewrite of that syllogistic argument that reveals the critical hidden premise is this: God must always exercise the maximal experience of omniscience. Jesus does not always exercise the maximal experience of omniscience. Therefore Jesus is not God.

The weakness of this reasoning is that it depends on imposing an unproven philosophy and limited understanding as a rule for God. That syllogism isn’t taught through Scripture or acceptable as a secondary issue for Christians.

This essentially requires you to argue that the human incarnation is impossible, because it requires you to say that God CANNOT take on all of the necessary characteristics of humanity while maintaining all necessary characteristics of divinity.

One approach that some people use to deal with this issue is to say that the concerning portion of Mark 13:32 is merely a figure of speech, and that Jesus is only saying that it’s not His authority to say the day or the hour — which is conveniently lacking internal consistency.

In addition to attributing omniscience to God, Scripture also attributes all authority to God such as in Daniel 4:35 and Psalm 115:3.

Therefore, the logical framework of the aforementioned syllogism merely relocates the problem from omniscience to authority rather than solving it.

Unbiblical solutions lead to shifting or multiplying problems, not honest clarity or resolution.

Regarding the proposition of mere figure of speech, such was the inclination of even certain prominently influential ancient figures such as Augustine and Martin Luther.

While those men may have done much good for the Church, this is one issue in which they demonstrated error, because it is not a justifiable reading of the text so much as it is avoiding having to accept and explain the dual nature of Jesus as both fully man and fully God — truly human and truly divine — which leads me to the final theory that I want to discuss: the biblical incarnation.

In this next section I’ll be working toward a Scripture that doesn’t merely allow for this interpretation — it explicitly confirms it unequivocally.

PRESENTING THE BIBLICAL EXPLANATION OF THE INCARNATION

The Church has always affirmed both the deity and humanity of Christ, maybe not every member or even every local gathering, but this teaching has been consistent orthodoxy — a teaching generally considered to be true and in alignment with Scripture — since the first generation of disciples.

Agreeing with the true theory of the biblical incarnation requires that we accept the fact that this is simply how the incarnation of Christ works — not just because we are told to, but because it’s what all of the Scriptures inevitably point to.

In fact, the narrative of Scripture requires something of us that I worry may be understated in many circumstances.

That is that we need to not only defend the deity of Christ, but also the humanity of Christ which requires that God limited not His divinity in the incarnation, but His exercise of His divine mind, power, and authority.

What this does not mean is that Jesus lacked the ability to use divine omniscience or omnipotence if it was His will.

What it does mean is that He temporarily chose to not exercise full use of divine powers so that He could not only take on the physical form of a man but also the experience of living as a man, growing as a man, and suffering as a man.

To help us paint a less abstract picture of self-limitation, allow me to present to you an analogy:

If I close my eyelids, I cannot see what is in front of me, but it would be wrong to conclude that I therefore lack the ability to see.

I still possess the ability to see, which I can resume use of at any point by opening my eyes. I have simply voluntarily and temporarily limited my access to my ability to see by closing my eyelids.

Closing one’s eyes does not remove the faculty of sight; it limits what is presently accessed and provides the temporary experience of living as a blind man.

Yet, the capacity itself remains whole even while its exercise is willingly restrained.

This is easily the simplest analogy of any that I’ve encountered or imagined to describe approximately how Jesus’ self-imposed limitations could effectively enable God to live as a man, lacking only sin — which is a typical characteristic of human life, but not an essential characteristic of humanity.

If sin was a necessary characteristic of humanity, then Adam, Eve, and all people since were not human until their first act of sin.

Nature indeed influences decisions, but that doesn’t mean that decisions define nature — they are evidence, but not proof.

I don’t want to digress too much, but I will acknowledge that I indeed just implied a difference between sin nature and the guilt of sin itself.

That would be a topic for another discussion for those who want to argue whether we are guilty of sin simply by virtue of our nature.

Digression aside, let’s return to the concept of the two-nature incarnation.

PROVING THE TWO-NATURE INCARNATION

Certain texts such as John 7:5 reveal that Jesus’ family, especially His siblings, had a hard time believing in his divinity, which reasonably implies that He did not obviously act divine as a child, and therefore must have been limiting His observable exercise of divine abilities.

There’s no conceivable way that a child could manifest omniscience at all times and be mistaken as a mere man by their local community, as with Jesus in Mark C6 V1-3, unless they lived a life full of lies and misdirection, which would also contradict the nature of God.

The reaction and confusion of Jesus’ family and childhood community is consistent with the Gospel accounts presenting the first miracle of Jesus since the virgin birth occurring near the start of His third decade living as a man on earth.

This is yet another piece of evidence for divine inspiration and foreknowledge: Jesus began His public ministry at about 30 years old, the same age that Levites began their priestly duties, Joseph entered the service of Pharaoh, and David became king of Israel.

Clearly, God appreciates poetic parallels in historical narratives.

Returning to the main argument — the divine authority of Jesus would have indeed allowed Him to command angel armies to descend on His enemies, or to throw the moon across the sky without requiring an infinity stone, but by His will, perfectly in sync with the Father, He limited Himself to His human abilities for a time and yet still lived in sinless perfection.

This wouldn’t be nearly as meaningful for us if He had been exercising divine powers in a more observably inhuman way.

People would look at Him as at an alien, something different from us, and would not relate to Him the way that we can when we visualize our human savior.

It wouldn’t have been as meaningful for Him to live perfectly and take our sins upon Himself to the cross if He didn’t truly live as a man.

The incarnation would have been incomplete and all but pointless without God’s choice to self-limit, humbling Himself to our level, despite His foreknowledge of the suffering that He would experience between birth and resurrection.

The humanity emphasizes the sacrifice, which allows us to better understand the depth of God’s love for us; that the only Begotten-One incarnated in flesh while maintaining His nature — His ontological being — through a life of sinless perfection to willingly set aside the option to exist through eternity without the experience of pain or limitation and live as a man yet still being God all through the Word as Jesus Christ.

Scripture itself explicitly forces this interpretation of the incarnate Son remaining fully divine through the inspired record in Hebrews C1, which leaves no ambiguity.

In this passage of Scripture, God the Father explicitly places the Son above the angels, commands that they worship Him, and specifically names Him God, which directly relates to Mark 13 because Jesus distinguishes Himself above humanity and angels, and in unique relation to the Father.

Let’s consider the Word itself on this matter as I read Hebrews C1 V1-12.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’? Or again, ‘I will be to him a father, and He shall be to me a son’? And again, when He brings the firstborn into the world, He says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship Him.’ Of the angels He says, ‘He makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire.’ But of the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.’ And, ‘You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.’

Whatever else is said about Jesus, it must agree with what we’ve just read in Hebrews 1 — so let’s take a moment to carefully consider the most crucial elements for this discussion.

God the Father asserts possession of the angels, then implies that the Son also possesses the angels when the Father says that He (Jesus) makes His angels winds…

This makes it rather difficult to invent a linguistic loophole for the command that all of God’s angels are to worship Jesus.

Only God is the possessor of angels, and the Father includes the Son in that possession.

Semantic range provides possibilities, but the context dictates the message unapologetically and unequivocally.

I cannot fully fathom how this incarnation and the internal relationships of the Trinity actually work in the fullest sense, nor can I fathom the depth of the love for me and for everyone else in creation that is required for a perfect being in need of nothing to take on the shame of sin and death for all of us.

What I can fathom though, is that without the divine incarnation into human flesh I would be even more clueless of the depth of His love and consideration for His creations because I wouldn’t have a relatable human savior, and salvation without paying the price of sin and death would require an imperfect justice from a perfectly just God, which would never happen with the God of the Bible.

Consider the poetic symmetry of this:

The humanity of Adam is important because he drags us into the curse of sin and death by representing us all and initiating the consequences of judgement for us all.

The humanity of Jesus is important because He lifts us up out of the curse by representing us all and suffering for us the consequences of sin despite being the one and only man to ever live a lifetime spanning decades of sinless perfection.

Think about this for a moment, and let this humble you — to tears if it must.

Jesus proved beyond shadow of a doubt that with all essential elements of the human nature present, life can still be lived in sinless perfection — and yet God said through Paul in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

This is where the theology becomes personal.

How often have I sinned, despite the fact that my inclinations to temptations do not actually force me to commit sin?

If you believe in free will, as do I and most other Bible-believing Christians, you have to recognize that you are responsible for your sins, because they are, each and every one of them, a result of your own choices.

Jesus was incarnated to live as a man for many reasons I think, and one of those is to help me understand how inescapable the responsibility for sin is — because in every experience of temptation my God-given gift of free will provides me the opportunity to resist and avoid committing sin, and yet so often I fail.

That’s why I need Jesus, and why I appreciate Him so much more than I can describe — because I am completely responsible for every stain of sin that exists in the choices that I have made throughout my life, and there is absolutely nothing that I can do to remove those stains of my own power.

I cannot pay the price of sin, which is separation from the eternal holy presence of God, and recover to then spend another eternity in Heaven. I have no right to eternity, not even to the mercy of annihilation — of ceasing to exist entirely so as to avoid the experience of the permanence of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

The moment you stained yourself with sin, you forfeited your right to exist within the light of Heaven, because nothing dark, unclean, or unholy can persist in the presence of God’s perfectly holy and cleansing light. You lost any leverage that you could imagine to even suggest that God offer you salvation.

Yet, His response is to send His only begotten Son to live and suffer under the curse of the first Adam, to show us how to live better, to give us a clearer visualization of God through a relatable human form, and to pay the price of our frequent rebellions against God’s holiness.

You and I were made to be holy — set aside by our creator God, for our holy God. Yet we live as though to set ourselves aside for ourselves.

The problem with this is that we are not the sustainers of our own lives. By our own power and authority, we will find only ruin.

According to the monotheistic model revealed from the genesis of the Old Testament it is only God who is the creator and sustainer of all things, and as we just read in Hebrews 1 of the New Testament, God the Father calls God the Son the creator and sustainer of all things.

The divinity and humanity of Jesus are both equally undeniably expressed through Scripture, and since Scripture is breathed out by God, you don’t have to understand every aspect of it to believe and trust in it.

This will sound foolish to those who believe that God and the Bible are disproven through other arguments, but for those of you who have experienced God personally and undeniably, and for those of you who have sought out the many supposed proofs against Christianity and found them surprisingly lacking in the promised substance, let it be enough for you to trust for what you do not understand because of what you do understand.

Consider how you likely already apply this in other circumstances intuitively.

As an example, many people understand and agree that healthy dietary and exercise habits have a positive impact on long-term health outcomes, yet very few can really begin to explain the physiological mechanisms that directly cause those outcomes.

An even more relatable example is consciousness. How many people do you know who can thoroughly and mechanistically explain consciousness without resorting to either claiming it’s a miracle, or it just is what it is?

Not being able to understand the how doesn’t prove a miracle or an impossibility.

Sometimes it is thus with God as well. Love it, hate it, accept it, deny it — your response to the truth doesn’t change the truth itself.

If you need to take a moment to wrestle with that now might be a good time to do so before continuing with this discussion.

As for this discussion, I’ll next pivot to considering how we might more care carefully explain the functional voluntary self-limitation of the incarnation of God in the flesh — to the best of my ability.

EXPLAINING SELF-LIMITATION FUNCTIONALLY

Since Jesus was in constant communication and submission to the Father, it’s plausible to describe His self-limitation as thus:

Having a human body, He could close His eyes, so to speak, to divine omniscience and limit Himself to use of his human faculties.

The Father, another person within the same trinitarian being, could have provided direct messages to Jesus such as He did for the prophets, or He could have instructed Jesus when and how to use His own access to divine omniscience so that He experienced only the divine knowledge that was pre-ordained.

Remember that since Jesus is God, being of the godly nature, He is also eternal. Before Jesus was born into the incarnation, He was the Word with the Father from before the beginning, as is clearly taught in John C1.

He already knew the plan for all time, and knew what He would go through when He stepped into time and space to save us from our sin.

This is how we begin to understand the incarnation, not perfectly as only God does, but well enough to realize that the entirety of Scripture is in agreement on this and it’s logically consistent with everything that we know about God.

His love is shown through the sacrifice; His joy through the relation of Father and Son; His peace through the willingness to reconcile; His patience through the timing of it all; His kindness through the considerate expression; His goodness through the uncompromising ethos; His faithfulness through the fulfillment of prophecy; His gentleness through the tender approach; His self-control through the restraint of power.

The deeper you go, the more you reveal.

DIFFERENTIATING FUNCTIONAL AND ONTOLOGICAL KENOSIS

Now for the weeds of functionality versus ontology. For those not yet comfortable with these terms, don’t worry. This is worth the effort to consider and much less confounding than some make it out to be.

To frame this issue, notice the difference between the following ideas.

It’s one thing to say that God in the flesh had an ability to do something and simply chose not to, which is a description of a functional kenosis — a word referring to the concept of Jesus emptying Himself to take on humanity.

It is quite a different doctrine to say that He divested Himself of divinity, or gave up His divine characteristics to become human — which is a heretical ontological kenosis involving the removal of divinity.

This view tends to lean on the wording of Philippians C2 V6-7 which says that Jesus “emptied Himself” to humbly don the likeness of humanity before the cross.

The root word of the Greek term translating to “emptied” in that passage is “kenos”, which is where the label for the doctrine of kenosis was derived.

It’s a not a word that was invented from scratch to describe a new doctrine. It’s a word that naturally occurs as a concept from the original language in multiple New Testament passages — one that has, unfortunately, been hijacked by common usage to favor an unorthodox interpretation.

I don’t want to provide opportunity for the skeptical objection that Christians merely ignore what is inconvenient for their beliefs.

It is precisely because of this that instead of disregarding kenosis entirely as heresy, I want to redeem an appropriate understanding of it by distinctly categorizing the two possible interpretations and why only one of the two is acceptable logically and biblically.

If you encounter the word kenosis being used by itself referring to Jesus, it’s likely referring to ontological kenosis, the heresy — rather than functional kenosis, which allows for the nuanced understanding of self-imposed temporary limitation — so be sure to clarify what kind of kenosis a person is referring to before you try to argue with the doctrine.

Back to the Bible.

Let’s consider what Philippians 2 says from V1-11 so that we can appreciate the context of the discussion rather than simply cherry-picking a single phrase out of a passage, which is how most supposed Bible contradictions seem to be formed and presented.

Considering the purpose and message of this passage as a whole reveals with more than sufficient clarity why we can’t read the strictest literal definition of the root of the verb into verse 7 to then conclude that Jesus actually lost any of His divine nature.

Listen to the Word.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The purpose of this passage is to provide a specific kind of encouraging message by describing the humility of our prime example in Jesus, which is why you might see a header for this passage of Scripture that says something like Christ’s Example of Humility.

Furthermore, the meaning of the Greek term for “emptying” in V7 has both literal and figurative meanings, which is evident right away when referencing a word-study tool such as Strong’s concordance.

To insist that Philippians 2:7 can only be interpreted to mean literal removal of divine quality to allow for the incarnation requires an unreasonably rigid interpretation of this text to have a very particular meaning that doesn’t fit with the rest of the biblical context or the historical view of the Church, as we’ll discuss in more detail shortly.

This is important to understand because it allows us to realize that the conclusion and explanation of ontological kenosis attempt to answer one apparent problem but create another more serious problem, because if ontological kenosis was true then it would prevent Jesus from being concurrently fully God and fully man, and would indicate inconsistency with what other portions of Scripture consistently state as true, which is not acceptable within Christianity or determined by the evidence.

You have to be careful when trying to create theology from etymology — the study of the origin of words and their meanings.

Etymology is not a judge — making authoritative rulings independently.

It’s a flashlight — useful when needed, but revealing little beyond the narrow scope of its beam.

Let me paint the picture from a different angle. Consider this realistic hypothetical scenario:

When a person talks about emptying their mind, you don’t take that to mean that they literally threw their mind out the window.

Either you subconsciously presume or you think to yourself, they can’t literally divest themself of their mind, so they must mean that they intentionally limited their use of it temporarily for some specific purpose.

Don’t let yourself become the hypocritical reader who understands normal use of figurative and context-dependent language in modern daily life yet acts like it can’t exist in historical and theological literature.

While I could spend more time exhausting the topic of Philippians 2, I think that most people at this point will be able to clearly see that the syntax of V7 doesn’t force ontological kenosis.

To misinterpret the text that way you must ignore the figurative side of the semantic range and read it as a very literal emptying rather than considering just the immediate context within this letter to the Philippians, not to mention the other passages through Scripture that clearly maintain Jesus’ divinity.

The Gospel of Christ and the coherence of Scripture as a whole requires not just one nature or the other, and it doesn’t allow for a mixing either — because mixing implies changing the unchangeable nature.

Scripture requires completeness of both natures.

We have to accept both the deity AND humanity of Christ, regardless of our limited ability to understand it mechanistically.

DEALING WITH MYSTERY

As much as many people, myself included, would like for it to, Scripture does not explain the incarnation mechanistically. It doesn’t detail the precise process by which God joined humanity and divinity in the incarnation, but it does present it as a clear reality when all passages about Jesus are considered together.

The doctrine of the two natures is not imposed on the Bible by theologians — it is the only way to read the Bible without either ignoring or perverting one side of its testimony.

Jesus is spoken of as fully God and fully man — sometimes in the same breath, as in Hebrews 1.

There’s a degree of mystery to it, and that’s alright.

I believe that God has the answer to every question, but I also believe it would be immensely arrogant to think that we have a right to demand answers from the sovereign God of all creation.

The Bible already gives us far more than is necessary for confident belief.

If you can’t wrap your mind around that and think that you therefore can’t believe in the biblical incarnation because it would be a blind faith, remember this:

We can have faith for what we do not understand because of the insurmountable truths that we do understand.

Those come both in the form of textual evidence, and more importantly to each individual believer, in the form of the genuine personal experiences of God in their life.

Furthermore, not understanding how one aspect of God’s existence works is not proof that it’s logically impossible. It’s only proof that you don’t yet understand.

We tend to crave full mechanistic explanations for everything such as we attempt to provide through the scientific method, but questions that we cannot answer with the observation of proof provide an opportunity for a different sort of blessing as well.

This is clear in John C20 V29 in which Jesus is recorded to say that “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Neither you nor I have the right to demand an explanation from God for anything, and yet He has provided ample evidence in creation and throughout the history of humanity with miracles and Scriptures that cannot be reasonably explained by anything other than the one true God of the Bible who mysteriously incarnated Himself through 1 of His 3 aspects into the person of Jesus Christ.

I don’t say that as an assumed conclusion. I’ve spent time exploring other possibilities and pressure testing other belief systems, but when you unveil the mystery of any other worldview it simply dissolves in the light of observable evidence and careful philosophy.

Now that we’ve spent a little time in the ancient text of Scripture, let’s consider a slightly less ancient document well known for addressing the topic of how church history has impacted our pedagogy of ontological Christology — our methods of teaching the nature of Jesus Christ.

ECCLESIAL TIMELINE

This is where church history becomes clarifying rather than distracting. It’s not about outsourcing interpretation, or appealing to authority — it’s about recognizing continuity through history.

The subject of this portion of the discussion is The Council of Chalcedon from 451 A.D.

The records from this rather momentous gathering are freely available online if you would like to examine them yourself.

Before I present the decidedly relevant details of that event, let me provide a brief overview of some historically relevant major events in the timeline of the Christian Church to orient this discussion historically and to prevent some possible misunderstandings before they occur.

Jesus lives and dies at the turning of the calendar from B.C. to A.D. His disciples go out and make other disciples far and wide, establishing the early Church in the first century.

A few centuries later several major ecumenical councils — groups consisting of members of multiple branches of the church from different geographical locations, were formed to discuss issues of theology that were under attack in their cultural setting.

What they did NOT do was invent theology, as many internet myths would have you believe, especially regarding the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. — the council that you will most likely hear the most discussion of, yet with the least accuracy and clarity — but it’s not the one that’s most relevant to this discussion.

After Nicaea, there was the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D., the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., and finally the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

Up until this point, the Church had been relatively unified in its doctrines compared to what we see now with modern denominational divides.

In those days, if you used words like orthodox or catholic people understood these to refer to correct doctrine and the entirety of the faithful Christian Church. These days, when you use those words, among others, most people think you are referring to specific modern denominations.

This is one of numerous unfortunate consequences of denominational segregation in the Church today.

Regarding the Council of Chalcedon it did not invent a new Christology.

Rather, it labored to clearly explain in summary what the whole of Scripture teaches about the nature of the incarnation of the Word made flesh — Jesus Christ — and everything that the early church had considered correct doctrine as it relates to His nature and relational position in the Trinity.

Shortly after that, there was a group who denounced the Chalcedonian definition of Christology — biblical Christology — and formed the Oriental Orthodox church.

Much later, the Great Schism of 1054 A.D. results in the Chalcedonian branch splitting further into Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

This is important to remember, because it places the setting of the Council of Chalcedon half a millennium prior to the establishment of the Roman Catholic branch of the church, so even though some Roman Catholics may refer to it as a Catholic council, it’s only catholic in the sense of the original meaning of the word — relating to the entirety of Christendom, or the entire Christian Church pre-major denominational schism.

That’s not to say that there weren’t other offshoots in the earlier centuries, but they didn’t result in the formation of any of the major denominations that we’re concerned with in the scope of this discussion.

Proceeding from the Great Schism, we have the final major event, the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century A.D. leading to the formation of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed Christian churches.

So, to summarize the key points, the Council of Chalcedon was formed well past the days of the early church, at which point all necessary doctrine had already been established and the entire canon of Scripture recognized by most to be closed.

It was also early enough to occur prior to any major schisms which is appreciable considering post-schism events and writings are more prone to confusion of authority and bias.

CHALCEDONIAN CHRISTOLOGY

Now, let’s discuss the relevant result of the Council of Chalcedon: the famous Chalcedonian Christology.

This understanding of Christ’s nature was summarized by a man referred to as reverend Archbishop Leo, who asserted that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

The record of this council often references the 318 at Nicaea, and the 150 at Constantinople who unanimously agreed on their statements of faith.

If only we could have that kind of unity in the Church today…

Anyway, the attending bishops of the Chalcedonian council overwhelmingly affirmed that the definition of the Faith that they were subscribing to was a (quote) “confirmation of the faith of our fathers.” (end quote)

Only a portion of the eastern bishops later clearly disagreed with the Chalcedonian Christology and separated to form the Oriental Orthodoxy.

The Council of Chalcedon frequently references the 318 and the 150 of the prior councils because they did not see their theology as innovative, but as linguistic clarification and theological continuity with the Faith of their forefathers to combat the innovations of the enemy seeking to sow discord through heretical preaching.

This still occurs today, especially in the online cultures where ideological echo chambers form quickly and perpetuate deception and confusion faster than they can be realized and corrected.

Regarding the Chalcedonian response to the heresies of the 5th century, the crystallized verbiage of the definition of Christology comes from the following 3 main points in the council records:

(quote)

Jesus Christ is one Person, the only-begotten Son, fully God and fully man. He possesses two complete natures — divine and human — united in one Person without confusion and without change, and yet without division and without separation. His divinity is not diminished by becoming human, and His humanity is not swallowed up by His divinity. In Him, the fullness of God and the fullness of man remain perfectly joined, perfectly distinct, and perfectly one.

(end quote)

This is perfectly in line with the establishment of Scripture, and the authoritative doctrines of the early Church.

This was not a new definition, just new language to sharpen the sword of truth against the agents of deception who were spreading false teachings about Jesus Christ.

This definition also agrees with the interpretation of Mark 13:32 that I presented prior.

It’s the position of Scripture, the position of the early Church, the position of the famous Chalcedonian Christology, and the position that I will die before denouncing.

This is not a secondary issue. Among certain other facts, Christianity lives or dies on the character and nature of Christ, so we need to do our best to understand it and explain it well as we evangelize and disciple according to the mission of Christ.

If you’re curious about the council records you can easily find free translations online.

Just know that some websites don’t provide a translation of the entire record all on one page.

For instance, you might find sites that only quote a translation of the specific section containing the particular summary definition of Christology that I quoted in this episode.

I provide more detailed links to study tools in the descriptions of my corresponding YouTube videos for anyone interested in links to my notes or other resources.

OTHER ARGUMENTS FOR DIVINE IGNORANCE

For now, let’s get back to the Bible.

Besides Psalm 82, the subject of the original question, other Scriptures that are not so explicit as Mark 13:32 are sometimes similarly mistreated to assume ignorance, as though Jesus wouldn’t or couldn’t ask a question unless He genuinely did not know the answer, which parents and teachers regularly contradict when they ask their children or students questions for the sake of the one being taught a lesson.

When presenting these other passages as evidence, the real question being asked may often be less of a verse-specific issue and more of a broad philosophical inquiry when ignorance isn’t really explicit or even necessarily strongly implicit in the text.

The broader question may be stated as follows:

Can Jesus be truly divine if He appears to possess limited or context-bound human emotion, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom?

The “God-forsaken cry” in Mark 15:34 is used not only to argue a case for cognitive misunderstanding or confusion, but also emotional weakness.

However, this text is addressing a different category of the human experience than Mark 13. It’s not a confession of misunderstanding, but an articulation of genuine suffering.

As I’ve said before, without suffering, the incarnation would be hollow, because it would not be a relatable human experience, and the experience of the cross would be meaningless.

Mark 15:34 is also a record of Jesus quoting Psalm 22, which begins with anguish, but ends with vindication — righteous victory — so it’s quite poetically appropriate for Jesus to refer to the anguish of the ancient Scripture when He was in the middle of the tortuous experience of the crucifixion, which was followed by the victory of the resurrection that He had already proclaimed to His disciples.

I hope that you can see by now that once you understand the framework of the biblical context as well as the Chalcedonian definition of Christology, and you deal with Mark 13, you’ve essentially already handled the core of the arguments brought against most any other passage of Scripture, such as Luke 2:52 where it says that Jesus increased in wisdom, or John 11:34 where it says that He asks where they laid the body of Lazarus.

Consider this: parents and teachers often have conversations with students in which they set aside the fact that they already understand the situation perfectly in order to have guided interactions that will involve and benefit the audience.

This could resolve some questions arising from certain situations even less mysteriously than the two-nature Christology.

Consider the story recorded in Mark 5:30 and Luke 8:45 in which Jesus asked who had touched Him when He felt power flow out of Him, which could be assumed to mean that He lacked knowledge of what had happened, but could also have been a question asked not out of ignorance, but to offer the woman who touched Him an invitation to respond and interact with Him more personally.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for that as the best interpretation or even the most likely because that’s not the point.

I’m merely presenting a possible alternative explanation that fits within the proper Christological framework and the reasonably possible room for interpretation in the passage of a less challenging question after we’ve already considered the toughest question and resolved it with a biblical and historically traditional understanding of the incarnation.

I could extend this discussion even further to delve into that passage to see whether it forces the circumstance of limited knowledge on Jesus, but we don’t need to spend time on that for this discussion.

As I stated in the introduction and again just a moment ago, we don’t have to worry about the weaker examples proposed for divine ignorance if we can deal with the load-bearing pillar of the entire heretical Christology, which we did already with Mark 13.

NAMING CERTAIN OPPOSITIONAL VOICES

Before I conclude this episode, I also want to briefly discuss a few specific voices that are relevant when studying the modern argument for divine ignorance.

The reason that I will not be addressing them each in depth at this point is that I essentially already have — implicitly.

I don’t have to invent new answers to every objector because a good understanding of Scripture as revealed by the Holy Spirit is sufficient to answer the substance of them all.

Be assured, there is no question, objection, or consideration that God was not already fully aware of before the foundation of the world was laid.

He is the source of inspiration — the true author of Scripture — and He wrote His Word into creation already having considered every bit of wisdom that would be needed to uphold the Faith.

That said, let’s discuss an overview of other views.

The following are Unitarian objections arguing for divine ignorance.

These men directly argue that Jesus lacked divine attributes because He is not divine.

The reason that I’m addressing them by name is that they are the modern voices whom I have found to have developed the most systematic form of the argument against the biblical Christology that I’ve been explaining throughout this episode.

However, systematic does not equal correct, and their system relies on unproven assumptions while contradicting proven principles within Scripture.

The Unitarian Essential-Attribute Argument is used by men such as Dale Tuggy and Anthony Buzzard.

The core claim is that Jesus appears to lack essential divine attributes. A being who lacks essential divine attributes cannot be God. Therefore, Jesus is not God.

The underlying assumption supporting this position is that divine attributes must be fully exercised at all times.

This assumes that God cannot temporarily or voluntarily limit Himself in any way, which is not a position established through Scripture so much as it is by a rigid personal philosophy.

That’s self-led eisegesis, not Bible-led exegesis.

In reading through Tuggy’s argumentation, I noticed a shotgun skepticism approach in which he launched a barrage of interpretations with shallow explanation and support that mostly relied on assumptions not supported by the text.

Furthermore, he is forced to reinterpret the texts where God the Father clearly refers to Jesus as God, such as in Hebrews 1.

Tuggy tries to circumvent Hebrews 1 by reclassifying terms one at a time, but this doesn’t work when you consider in context the entire description of Jesus by the Father: He is called God, said to be creator of all things and sustainer all things, and He is worshiped by the angels.

Only the One True God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and only the One True God is to be worshiped.

Besides, if I can temporarily and voluntarily limit my ability to see by closing my eyelids, and empty my mind without tossing my brain, surely the Almighty God of all creation can limit His access to His omniscience temporarily and voluntarily in one expression of His divine nature incarnated in the flesh to give us the relatable human savior of Jesus Christ.

Regarding Anthony Buzzard, he seems to believe that the two-nature argument for Jesus is merely verbal sleight of hand, which indicates to me that he perhaps thinks far too highly of himself if he concludes that since he can’t understand it then God can’t do it.

I don’t think that he would explicitly make that claim, although I don’t know him well enough to say that he wouldn’t either — but even as a subconscious assumption this is a dangerous elevation of the human mind to a level of understanding that we have not been granted by our creator.

In both of these cases, it seems that these men don’t believe in the biblical incarnation because they can’t imagine how it works mechanistically, or at least that’s the best explanation that I can think of for a person trying to honestly evaluate Jesus and yet so consistently mishandling Scripture and philosophy on this matter.

Not being provided the mechanism doesn’t mean that the result is logically impossible. The Bible may not describe the two-nature incarnation in such concise words, but there’s a reason that the core of the Church since the earliest days of Christianity has believed and taught the complete human and divine natures of Jesus Christ resulting in Him being simultaneously truly man and truly God.

The last Anti-Chalcedonian view of Christology that I’ll mention is represented in this discussion by Kermit Zarley, an author who argues that Jesus was a mere man with God-given authority.

The core claim is that two-natures language is incoherent and unbiblical.

The underlying assumption is that one being equals one center of consciousness, but that’s assuming that God’s internal architecture must necessarily be exactly the same as ours, and fit within the rather small realm of our ability to imagine and comprehend.

We can’t place God in a box to limit Him to existing within our ability to comprehend. That’s glorifying the mind of man and disrespecting the mind of God.

CONCLUSION

Claims of “divine ignorance” only stand if we misunderstand what Scripture actually teaches — about the Incarnation, about who Jesus is, about how He lived, and about the internal consistency of the Bible.

I’m aware that I don’t know everything, and I’m always open to fair criticism, but before you try to push back on this traditional view of Christology, know this:

I’m confident enough after all of the many hours that I’ve spent testing this Christology against Scripture, history, and competing explanations that I am willing to bet eternity on my understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done.

Are you?

If you want to change my mind on this particular subject you are going to require irrefutable evidence to force a different conclusion.

That’s not because I’m confident in myself so much as I am in God and His Word.

That said, feel free to share your thoughts on this matter, even if you disagree with me. Discourse is the only way for us to facilitate mutual understanding.

OUTRO

I hope that this response is beneficial to you, but if you find that your heart’s response to good answers is that it can’t accept them no matter how solid the logic is, or you just jump straight to the next question as though the last one doesn’t matter anymore, I would encourage you to consider whether the barrier between you and God truly is a question of reason.

It might just be the condition of your heart — and that’s something that God alone can heal — which He will, if you will submit your heart to Him.

If you have skeptical questions or doubts, you’re welcome to offer them. I’m grateful for the opportunity to walk through them with you.

If you’d like future episodes to meet you automatically, you can follow this podcast wherever you listen.

May the LORD bless you, and may you begin to recognize how blessed you are.