Dr. Paul Brand The incarnation of Christ made possible one further aspect of the pain of God, one that has direct bearing on our analogy of the human body. I think of my futile attempts to develop an artificial pain system. All my patients intellectually understood pain, acknowledge its value as a warning signal, and abhorred the injuries and wounds on their painless hands, and feet. Yet until they "felt"pain for themselves, inside their own brains, they had not suffered. It seems inappropriate to think of the "developing awareness" with God, but something like a progression did occur as implied in the mysterious phrase in Hebrews 2:10, "made perfect through suffering." imagining pain is one thing-God as designer had surely understood its physiological values and limitations. Grieving in response to pain, felling with His people, suffering with humanity-all these, too, link God and man. Still, something was missing. Until God took on the soft tissue of flesh along with its pain cells just as accurate and subject to abuse as our, He had not truly experienced pain. By sending His Son to earth, God learned to feel pain in the same way we feel pain. Our prayers and cries of suffering take on greater meaning because we now know them to be understood by Him. Instinctively, we want a God who not only knows about pain, but shares in it and is affected by our own. By looking at Jesus, we realize we have such a God. He took onto Himself the limitations of time and space and family and pain and sorrow. Christ has now ascended, and in the new role of Head He receives messages of pain reporting in from all over His Body. My brain does not feel pain inflicted on its own cells-protected in a skull of bone. it needs no such warning cells. Yet it desperately feels the pain of other cells in the body. In that sense, Jesus has now placed Himself at the receiving end of our pain, with actual consciousness of the pain we endure........... continued
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 08:36:49 +0000
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