GDL
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- Jul 25, 2020
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Are you saying Jesus personally experienced the "sin" problem?
Or just that flesh, in and of itself, is limited and, therefore, "weak"?
The flesh/body itself is limited and weak (resurrection body now, please).
I see what Jesus went through as the most extreme of tests that took Him to the brink in His humanity:
37 "He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. 38 Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. 39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me....42 Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me...44 So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. (Matt. 26:37-44 NKJ)
42 saying, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me. 43 Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him...44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Lk. 22:42-44 NKJ)
The way I see this, on the one hand, when He told His disciples the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, He was obviously addressing them to be on guard of temptation. On the other hand He is going through mental anguish not said of Him anywhere else but on the cross itself when He cries out to God, so, in His words, I think there is some self-realization and experiential understanding of what we deal with in temptations/tests.
Matthew tells us He was "exceeding sorrowful even to death." Luke helps us to see what the mental agony is doing to His body - His flesh - but not flesh in the sin sense. He's putting so much intense pressure on His flesh by His spirit that His flesh reveals it's weakness of standing against mental pressure. In a way, His body was fighting back against His mental agony and breaking down in the effort. We know He won the battle, but the battle between the flesh & the spirit is intense to the point that it even challenged Him to accept the cup of the Father after 3 requests to let it pass from Him and to learn obedience from what He suffered.
We, go from indulging our flesh at the slightest hint of pressure (temptation) from it, to learning about it and how to deal with it in Christ by the Spirit. But, like I pointed out before, have we been challenged until blood? When Paul says he boxes not as beating the air, but he strikes his body and subjugates it (1 Cor 9:26-27), he's dealing with the same concept.
Jesus was tempted/tested but without sin. The temptations never got past His defenses. He dealt with external temptations and, the way I see it, even an internal temptation to disobedience caused by external agonizing factors He knew He was going to face. But, no matter the mental and emotional agony, the psychosomatic effects on the weak flesh and its efforts to get us to yield to it, the strengthening by an angel, He dealt with it as we are to deal with it - "Your will be done" - no matter how much pressure or metaphorical boxing and striking we need to apply against the flesh to override it.
Long answer, but make sense? Or raise more questions?
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