(I will start by confidently stating my belief that any educated Muslim who reads this WHOLE post, and still finds no sense in Christian/Biblical theology (im not saying it must be accepted, simply understood) need not investigate the issues presented here any further or bother listening to anyone else – all I can say is I pray for you.)
Im making this post as a response to every Muslim in this entire forum, which has felt the need to isolate certain verses out of their context, to emphasise Christs submissiveness and use this a proof against his deity – I can only attribute this to: a gross misunderstanding of Christ’s purpose to become incarnate, an ignorance of how His Jewish audience would have perceived many of his statements (i.e. the lack of ability to empathize), and the logical fallacy of drawing a correlation between submissiveness and nature. I urge any Muslim before reading this, to read my post “God,His Spirit,& HisWord” to know exactly what we mean by a God existing as three hypostasis.
Before I start discussing certain sayings of Christ that seem problematic for the Muslim, I see many Christians on this forum already have brought up Phillipians 2:5-11, and I would like to provide a brief commentary for this line by line, as a brief introduction to keep at the back of the mind, for those who are sincere in trying to understand exactly how we can harmonise the fact Christ was indeed God (in the sense that He is a hypostasis of God by eternally existing as His word/will/logic/wisdom) and the fact he voluntarily submitted himself in the form of a servant.
The apostle Paul through divine inspiration has undoubtedly emphasized (what was already clear, simply from reading all 4 gospel accounts objectively) the significant aspects of Christ’s incarnation which harmonize all those sayings of Christ which, generally speaking, 1) Show some sort of a submissive motif 2) Show strong parity with the Father and 3) Verses which show a mix of both motifs.
Before His Incarnation Jesus Christ was ''in the form of God'' (vs. 6). From the beginning He had the nature of God, He existed (or subsisted) as the eternal Word of God (which is essential to God’s being, just as a human’s mind is essential to their being), and that essential Deity which He once was could never cease to be.
He ''thought it not robbery to be equal with God'' (vs. 6). The eternal Son did not consider it a thing to be seized unlawfully to be equal with the Father. Equality with God was not something He retained by force or by farce. He possessed it in eternity past and no power could take it from Him. But in the Incarnation He laid aside, not His possession of Deity, but His position in and expression of the heavenly glory.
''He made Himself of no reputation (Other translations render it as “He emptied Himself”." God emptied Himself! He did not lose His Deity when He became Man, for God is immutable and therefore cannot cease to be God. He always was God the Son; He continued to be God the Son in His earthly sojourn as Man; He is God the Son in heaven today as He will remain throughout eternity. He is ''Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). It was the glory he beheld with the Father “before the world was” (John 17:5) that he emptied Himself of, and divine rule and authority that he laid aside.
''He took upon Him the form of a servant.'' His was a voluntary act of amazing grace, the almighty sovereign stooping to become earth's lowly Servant. Instead of expressing Himself as one deserving to be served, He revealed Himself as one desiring to serve others. He did not boast His eternal glory and right to be ministered to, but instead evinced His humility and desire to minister. ''The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many'' (Matthew 20:28).
"He was made in the likeness of men." This phrase expresses the full reality of His humanity. He participated in the same flesh and blood as man (Hebrews 2:14). Although He entered into a new state of being, His becoming Man did not exclude His possession of Deity, for He was and is today a Person who is both God and Man, Divine and human, perfect in His Deity and perfect in His humanity.
''And being found in fashion as a man." When He came into the world, Christ associated with His contemporaries and did not hold Himself aloof. Thus, He manifested to all that He was a real Man. One obvious distinction marked our Lord's humanity; His perfection and sinlessness. As a Man He was made under the law, yet He never violated the law. As a Man He was tempted in all three points in which we are tempted (I John 2:16), yet His temptation was apart from any thought, word, or act of sin.
"He humbled Himself." The world has never witnessed a more genuine act of self-humbling. So completely did our Lord humble Himself that He surrendered His will to the will of His Father in heaven. His desire was to do the will of the Father, therefore He could testify, "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29). It was humiliation for the eternal Son of God to become flesh in a stable, and then to dwell in a humble home in subjection to a human parent. God was ''sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin'' (Romans 8:30).
"He became obedient unto death." The first Adam's obedience would have been unto life, but because he disobeyed unto death, the last Adam (Christ) must now obey unto death in order that He might deliver the first Adam's posterity ''out of death into life'' (John 5:24 R.V.). ''For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). To subject Himself to the cruel death of a criminal on the cross was a necessary part of God's plan of salvation for men, and to such a death our Lord voluntarily submitted. Implicit obedience!
LETS NOW CONSIDER THESE SO-CALLED “PROBLEMATIC” VERSES:
First of all let me repeat something I said in an earlier post: The difference between the issue of Christ playing a consistently submissive role in relation to the Father, and the issue of Christ being equal in deity as the Father, lies in the fact that the former issue concerns personal orientation, choice, and representation; whilst the latter more concerns aspects such as nature, characteristics, and being. Therefore the co-existence of both issues does not present a dilemma!!!, since the issues are neither explicitly nor obviously contradictory.
Verses of Christ declaring that he does nothing of His own initiative, that He did not come to do His own will, that He was sent, and that what he taught was not his (see John 6:38, John 7:16, John 8:42), are irrelevant to the issue of Christ’s deity. This is firstly because the import of such statements to His Jewish audience, would have been quite different from the apparent implication as perceived by the skeptic Muslim.
These expressions were statements of continuity with the Father, which assured His audiences that Jesus had no 'personal agenda' independent from the Father, but that His mission and ministry was solely the one they longed for from the Father. He assured them that His words and works were completely trustworthy, because they were uniquely and completely those of the Father.
This can be seen by considering the impact which the opposite statements would have had:
• "I have come to do MY will, NOT the Father's"
• "I have come without being sent by the Father--on my own initiative"
• "My teaching IS my own, and NOT that of the Father"
• "I have come in my OWN name, not in the name of the Father"
(This last element was sarcastically mentioned by Jesus in John 5:43: "I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another shall come in his own name, you will receive him.")
The verses in question express Christ’s intimate connection and relationship (of perfect unity) with the Father, that in some way He expresses what the Father stands for. It is an affirmation of community of purpose, and it roots his mission squarely in the will of God.
John 5:19 in particular, conveys the message that It is impossible for the Son to take independent, self-determined action that would set him over against the Father as another God, for all the Son does is both coincident with and co-extensive with all that the Father does (The verse says Christ can ONLY do what the Father does). Perfect Sonship involves perfect identity of will and action with the Father. It follows that separate, self-determined action would be a denial of his sonship. Since verse 19 emphasises the impossibility of the Son operating independently and grounds it in the perfection of Jesus' sonship, it also constitutes another oblique claim to deity; for the only one who could conceivably do whatever the Father does must be as great and as divine as the Father. This goes right on line with what has been taught by the church since time immemorial: Jesus, as the Logos (the word of God), as the Father's active principle, acts upon the command of the Father, and yet, because he is indeed that principle, has equality with the Father as well.
If we continue to read John 5 from verses 19 – 23, the parity motif becomes obvious: "For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father”.
Furthermore, analyzing the verses empathetically further emphasizes the harmony between The Son of God’s submission to The Father, and the fact they are equal in deity. Christ, the eternal word of God, was manifest in the flesh in order to fulfill the roles of the expected Messiah, which were agency and functional roles. The messianic promises in the OT were focused on God visiting/blessing his people in the form(s) of various "ministerial" agents: prophet, priest, and king.
The prophet spoke the words of God, delivering the message "intact and unadulterated". The high priest purified the people with unblemished offerings and sacrifices (and taught the people about the heart/will of God), in complete conformity with the revealed will/torah of God. The Davidic king was to implement God's perfect social will within his people--"fully, precisely, and solely" the will of YHWH. No personal agendas were allowed in these jobs - it was expressly forbidden in several places of the law, and thus Christ could not claim independency from the Father, rather interdependency.
With this emphasis in mind, to argue from his statements of dependence or submission to His alleged inferiority to the Father would be to take these statements out of their context in the prophetic redemptive history and place them into an alien, foreign ontological discussion. They just would not have been understood in this latter sense, by the first-century audiences.
Another vital factor to consider, is that all of these 'subordinate statements' were consequences of His initial free choice to do so. He was not 'coerced' by the Father in any way, to take this step into submission. This is the awesomeness of His love for us - to choose a path of servanthood for our welfare; and the awesomeness of the love of the Father for us - to allow His beloved to make that choice.
The final reason is one which expresses one of the more moving and transforming truths of the gospel. Jesus lived a life of submission to the Father and of service to people as the ultimate exemplar for us as to how we should live.
This should already be obvious from the Philp 2 passage - "let this attitude be in you which was in Christ Jesus", but it is pervasive in the New Testament. From the 'it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher' to the foot-washing 'I have left you an example to follow', His life was the model for all of us. "Walk as He did", "love one another as I have loved you", and on and on. He modeled what authentic, life-bearing humanity was to be.
And it might also be suggested that this outward-looking goodness-heart is intrinsic to the essence of God, for the illustration Jesus gives of His final exaltation at the end of history has an unheard-of image in it:
“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he (The MASTER) will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. [Luke 12.35f]
And practically speaking, if He had come down and only lived 'like an authority God' - in terrifying magnificence and perhaps distancing power - we might not have learned much about how to live and how to love. We would not have learned that meekness and gentleness were the true values, nor that it was more 'blessed to give than to receive'. We might never have learned that forgiveness is sometimes the loving way to make peace, and that loving one's enemies was the best hope to change them.
Theologically and theoretically speaking, the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus could have happened up in heaven, or at His birth, or completely in private (if some of the OT prophesies had not been made to set it up in the public way), but the drama of redemption was played out in blood, tears, anguish, marginalization, humiliation, rejection and in submission before our very eyes. In the very means of saving us, He showed us how to live: “take up your cross and follow me”, “greater love hath no man than he that lays down his life for his friend”, “he bore our sorrows”, “for the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many”, “nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done”.
In conclusion, Christ’s voluntary submission does not make Him 'ontologically subordinate' per se. In Romans 15.8, Paul says that " For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs"—However this is no way indicates that Jesus was in any way 'inferior' to the Jews. So now that hopefully we have resolved this “apparent” (but non-existent) dilemma of Christ being equal in deity yet on some occasions submissive to the Father, maybe we can move on to dealing with those verses that reveal his deity, and see what objections one can come up with in direct response to those verses promoting His nature, characteristics, and being.