Question: why does Jesus then pray to the Father,
To understand Jesus as God on earth, praying to His Father in heaven, we need to realize that the eternal Father and the eternal Son had an eternal relationship before Jesus took upon Himself the form of a man. Please read
John 5:19-27, particularly verse 23 where Jesus teaches that the Father sent the Son (also see
John 15:10). Jesus did not become the Son of God when He was born in Bethlehem. He has always been the Son of God from eternity past, still is the Son of God, and always will be.
Isaiah 9:6 tells us that the Son was given and the Child was born. Jesus was always part of the tri-unity, along with the Holy Spirit. The tri-unity always existed, the Father God, the Son God, and the Spirit God, not three gods, but one God existing as three persons. Jesus taught that He and His Father are one (
John 10:30), meaning that He and His Father are of the same substance and the same essence. The Father, Son and Spirit are three co-equal persons existing as God. These three had, and continue to have, an eternal relationship.
When Jesus, the eternal Son of God, took upon Himself sinless humanity He also took on the form of a servant, giving up His heavenly glory (
Philippians 2:5-11). As the God-man, He had to learn obedience (
Hebrews 5:8) to His Father as He was tempted by Satan, accused falsely by men, rejected by His people, and eventually crucified. His praying to His heavenly Father was to ask for power (
John 11:41-42) and wisdom (
Mark 1:35,
6:46). His praying showed His dependence upon His Father in His humanity to carry out His Father's plan of redemption, as evidenced in Christ's high priestly prayer in
John 17. His praying demonstrated that He ultimately submitted to His Father's will, which was to go to the cross and pay the penalty (death) for our breaking God's law (
Matthew 26:31-46). Of course, He rose bodily from the grave, winning forgiveness and eternal life for those who repent of sin and believe in Him as the Savior.
There is no problem with God the Son praying or talking to God the Father. As mentioned, they had an eternal relationship before Christ became a man. This relationship is depicted in the Gospels so we can see how the Son of God in His humanity carried out His Father's will, and in doing so, purchased redemption for His children (
John 6:38). Christ’s continual submission to His heavenly Father was empowered and kept focused through His prayer life. Christ’s example of prayer is ours to follow.
Jesus Christ was no less God on earth when praying to His Father in heaven. He was depicting how even in sinless humanity it is necessary to have a vital prayer life in order to do His Father’s will. Jesus' praying to the Father was a demonstration of His relationship within the Trinity and an example for us that we must rely on God through prayer for the strength and wisdom we need. Since Christ, as the God-man, needed to have a vibrant prayer life, so should the follower of Christ today.
www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-pray-God.html
say the Father is greater than him,
The phrase “the Father is greater than I” (
John 14:28) was spoken by Jesus during the upper room discourse, and the greater context is the promising of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus says repeatedly that He is doing the Father’s will, thereby implying that He is somehow subservient to the Father. The question then becomes how can Jesus be equal to God when by His own admission He is subservient to the will of God? The answer to this question lies within the nature of the incarnation.
During the incarnation, Jesus was temporarily “made lower than the angels” (
Hebrews 2:9), which refers to Jesus’ status. The doctrine of the incarnation says that the second Person of the Trinity took on human flesh. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, Jesus was fully human and “made lower than the angels.” However, Jesus is fully divine, too. By taking on human nature, Jesus did not relinquish His divine nature—God cannot stop being God. How do we reconcile the fact that the second Person of the Trinity is fully divine yet fully human and by definition “lower than the angels”? The answer to that question can be found in
Philippians 2:5-11. When the second Person of the Trinity took on human form, something amazing occurred. Christ “made himself nothing.” This phrase has generated more ink than almost any other phrase in the Bible. In essence, what it means is that Jesus voluntarily relinquished the prerogative of freely exercising His divine attributes and subjected Himself to the will of the Father while on earth.
Another thing to consider is the fact that subservience in role does not equate to subservience in essence. For example, consider an employer/employee relationship. The employer has the right to make demands of the employee, and the employee has the obligation to serve the employer. The roles clearly define a subservient relationship. However, both people are still human beings and share in the same human nature. There is no difference between the two as to their essence; they stand as equals. The fact that one is an employer and the other is an employee does nothing to alter the essential equality of these two individuals as human beings. The same can be said of the members of the Trinity. All three members (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are essentially equal; i.e., they are all divine in nature. However, in the grand plan of redemption, they play certain roles, and these roles define authority and subservience. The Father commands the Son, and the Father and the Son command the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the fact that the Son took on a human nature and made Himself subservient to the Father in no way denies the deity of the Son, nor does it diminish His essential equality with the Father. The “greatness” spoken of in this verse, then, relates to role, not to essence.
www.gotquestions.org/Father-greater-I.html
cry out to God and ask why He has forsaken Jesus on the cross, etc.? Things like that always confused me.
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (
Matthew 27:46, KJV). This cry is a fulfillment of
Psalm 22:1, one of many parallels between that psalm and the specific events of the crucifixion. It is difficult to understand in what sense Jesus was “forsaken” by God. It is certain that God approved His work. It is certain that Jesus was innocent. He had done nothing to forfeit the favor of God. As
God’s own Son—holy, harmless, undefiled, and obedient—God still loved Him. In none of these senses could God have forsaken Him.
The prophet Isaiah says this about the Messiah: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (
Isaiah 53:4–5). Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (
Galatians 3:13). He was made a sin-offering, and He died in our place, on our account, that He might bring us near to God. It was this, doubtless, that intensified His sufferings and part of why Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It was the manifestation of God’s hatred of sin, in some unexplained way, that Jesus experienced in that terrible hour. The suffering He endured was due to us, and it is that
suffering by which we can be saved from eternal death.
In those awful moments, as evil men were allowed to do whatever they wanted to Jesus, our Lord expressed His feelings of abandonment. God placed the sins of the world on His Son, and Jesus for a time felt the desolation of being unconscious of His Father’s presence. It was at this time that “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (
2 Corinthians 5:21).
There is another possible reason for Jesus to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It could be that Jesus’ intent in quoting
Psalm 22:1 was to point His hearers to that psalm. When they read
Psalm 22, they would no doubt see the many fulfilled prophecies included in that song of David. Even while experiencing the agony of the cross, Jesus was teaching the crowds and proving yet again that He was the Messiah who fulfilled the Scriptures.
www.gotquestions.org/forsaken-me.html
