“If He wanted, the nails and spear would have simply bounced off.”
I was telling my wife and daughter that. My wife disagreed - that because He was and is God, that He couldn’t disobey Himself. I try not to argue with my wife over such things (she knows more Bible stuff!).
But - if Jesus HAD to go through all of it, and it wasn’t His CHOICE to obey God - that in my mind makes it less of a sacrifice. If Jesus’ life and sacrifice was all just automatic - what meaning does it have?
Oh - and would Satan ever have even tried to tempt Jesus out in the wilderness if Satan knew that there was no way that Jesus would give in to Satan?
IMHO good arguments can be made on both sides of the issue.
Did Christ have a choice or were His actions pre-ordained?
My personal view is a little hard for many people to grasp. Shory version is I believe BOTH views are correct.
I often fall back on physics to help me understand these kinds of things. Without writing a 100-page treatise, short version is wave/particle duality provides some insight. Are photons waves or particles? Answer is both. Sounds contradictory but that’s real physics.
So did Christ have a choice? Yup. But were His actions on the cross pre-ordained (i.e., was he bound to obey God aka Himself)? Yup.
One other take-away for me is God was/is the first entity in this universe who had/has Free Will. He gifted us with that. Now we little mortals often abuse it, but we do have free will. That said, our names are already written — or not — in the Book of Life so our eternal destiny is pre-ordained. So how could it be different for Christ?
Note I’m *really* short circuiting the arguments. Hope my points come through a little bit without being too dense. Also admit I may be wrong. Again, just my views.
PS Yeah, said I’m not a theologian before. Well that was a little bit of a fib. I’ve studied this stuff for decades.
“So how could it be different for Christ?”
Skipped a few steps there. Figured I’d fill one in. Christ as a human incarnation of God was obeying the same rules us humans do: Have Free Will but also have a pre-ordained destiny. The two seem mutually exclusive. They are not. Again, it’s akin to wave/particle duality.
I know, kind of hard for people to wrap their heads around. Trust me, dealing with quantum mechanics can give someone a headache too. Theology can too...