A gracEmail subscriber writes: “It is too simplistic to say that Jesus was mortal since Jesus never forfeited his eternal nature — he was and always remained the Son of God. When the agony of the cross was over, Jesus resumed the existence he had before he ‘stepped down’ from his spiritual divinity to undertake our atonement. Of course our finite minds cannot grasp all this.”
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Indeed, the fullness of deity inhabited the human being we know as Jesus of Nazareth (Col. 2:9). In Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Son of God truly became flesh and blood (Heb. 2:3-4). Jesus was fully human and, in his humanity, he was fully mortal (Heb. 9:27-28). As mortal man, Jesus had to trust the Father to rescue him out of death (Heb. 5:7).
To rescue us from sin, death and the devil, the Son of God became our human brother, Jesus of Nazareth. Beginning with the Incarnation and forever afterward, the Son of God was, is, and will be “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). In becoming man, the Son was made “for a little while” lower than the angels. That does not mean that he later shed his humanity as something demeaning and base. Not at all. It rather means that the man Jesus of Nazareth was “crowned with glory and honor,” and that in him humanity was exalted to a position far higher than any angel has ever enjoyed (Heb. 1:2-4; 2:9-10).
You are certainly right that our finite human minds cannot fully grasp all these realities. But we can know and affirm all that God has revealed to us, which, I am persuaded, includes what I have stated above.