Does God Know What It's Like?

The Incarnation of God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ means that God knows what it's like to experience the entire range of the human condition.

There wasn’t enough to eat in the village. Fathers were watching their daughters wither until only skin sagged on bones. Funeral processions for the starved would somberly march through the streets as yet another neighbor had succumbed to starvation. All the while, the nobles in the palace overlooking the village would feast until they were fat, feeling sick because they were so full. An officer in the palace guard felt that surely if the nobles were made aware of the great famine, they would help to provide food for the peasants in the village. Gathering his courage, he approached the great queen as she ate at one of the palace’s great feasts.

“Your highness, may I approach to speak to you?” he asked.

“Speak,” she said.

“Your highness, the peasants in the village have no bread to eat.”

“Well,” the queen said, “then let them eat cake.”

The queen was so oblivious to the experience of the peasants, she assumed that everyone lived as luxuriously and lavishly as she and her household. She had no idea what it was like to be a poor, starving peasant in the village. Life in the palace was abundant and bright, while life in the village was deadly.

Doubters, Celebrators, and Grinders

If we’re honest, sometimes we’ve wondered whether God is like that. A cake-eating high-falutin’ king who has no sense of the suffering of the common people. After all, the Bible describes God as all fully satisfied and (maybe it sounds irreverent) happy. God the Trinity is full of life and joy and love, satisfied in all that he is and does. He is unborn and eternal, self-existent and independent, infinite and limitless, all-knowing, all-powerful, sovereign, exalted, transcending suffering and mortality. Of course he’s happy! And in our more cynical and darker moments, maybe we’ve thought and prayed, “God, you have no idea what it’s like to be dependent, limited, ignorant, powerless, afraid, broke, abandoned, humiliated, subjected, hurt, and in danger of death.” 

I’m a pastor, a professional Christian, so sometimes folks think I’m immune, that I have some kind of perfect faith. But I’m just a man, and I have the same thoughts and fears and feelings that you do. 

Maybe you have thought something like this.

Maybe you’ve wondered to the point where you’ve given up on the idea of God’s existence.

Maybe your doubts are intellectual.

Maybe your doubts are more visceral and emotional. 

Maybe you’re hurting and starving, like the peasants in that village. 

Or maybe, you’re not. Maybe you’re not a doubter, but a celebrator.

Maybe you’re enjoying the fat of life like the nobles in the palace. 

Maybe you’re not in a dark place, but a happy and good place in your life. 

Maybe your faith is strong and life is good. Hashtag blessed.

I’ve been there, too, when the temperature is right, the breeze grazes your face, and all seems right.

But most of us, most of the time don’t live fully in the jagged grip of doubt’s dark nights or the shiny joy of celebration’s bright days. We live our lives in partly cloudy days, days with both sunshine and a chance of rain. In this sometimes hazy grind of life, the mundane, normal majority of it, we’re plodding through.

The beauty of the gospel is that God knows it all.

He knows the darkest and loneliest moments, where the world is suffocating us.

He knows the highest and most joyful moments, where the skies are big and clear and the sun is bright but not too hot and the face of God is shining.

And he knows the plodding, boring, mundane everyday, moments of life, where you get up, do your work, eat your dinner, go to bed and it’s nothing great and nothing terrible. It just kinda is what it is. 

No matter what your experience in your life, God is not like the queen in the palace, calling you to eat dessert when you don’t even have dinner. God knows exactly what it’s like—because God became a man. 

The Word, the Son of God, became the Son of Man, the man Christ Jesus. And he now bridges the abyss between the life of God and the life of humanity. In seven ways, Jesus bridges the abyss of God and humanity, because he is fully God and fully man.

1. Jesus Christ: Born in Eternity, Born in Time

First, because Jesus is God, he is eternally born, not like a human son is born. He is God forever, eternally with the Father. He has eternally existed in the eternal life-generating love of the Father, the only-begotten—only-born—Son. “Before Abraham was,” (2000 years before he said this), he said, “I am” (John 8:58).  But, because Jesus became man, he was conceived and born of a woman. He went through three trimesters of fetal development. His mother Mary felt him move, and Joseph his earthly father put his hand on Mary’s tummy to feel him kick. When she delivered him, they had to check his vitals, and wash the goop off of him. He was cold and tiny, so they bundled him up and held him close. 

2. Jesus Christ: Independent and Dependent

Because Jesus is God, he is self-existent and independent. He is not at the whims of anyone, he doesn’t need to eat dinner and get enough hydration and take a multi-vitamin. He doesn’t depend on blood thinners to keep his heart going right, or thyroid medication to keep his TSH in line. “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). But, because Jesus became man, he knows having to be dependent. He knows the experience of having to obey his parents, and live with brothers and sisters. He knows having other people’s decisions, words, and actions influence the course of life for good and for bad. He know what it’s like to answer when nature calls and you have to make a pitstop and use the restroom.

3. Jesus Christ: Limitless and Limited

Because Jesus is God, he is infinite and limitless. He has measured oceans in his cupped hands, and measured the immeasurable limits of the cosmos between his pinky and thumb. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the bonds in a billion banks, the houses in a hundred-thousand neighborhoods. But, because Jesus became a man, he has lived with the limits of being human. He knows running out of gas at the day’s end. John 4:6 says “he was tired.” He knows not being able to focus on the task at hand, and being ineffective in his work. He knows not having the resources needed to do everything. One time he had to send Peter to get a miraculous coin from the mouth of a fish so that he could pay his taxes (Mt 17:24-27). He knows having bills that he doesn’t have money to pay.

4. Jesus Christ: All-Knowing and Not-Knowing

Because Jesus is God, he knows everything. 1 John 3:20 tells us that “God knows everything.” He knows all knowledge, stored on every server for Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, every book in every library and every thought in every diary. He has known for all existence every thing that has happened or could have happened and will happen. He knows the beginning, the middle, the end and the insignificant details nobody thinks are important. But, because Jesus became man, he understands what it’s like to be ‘out of the loop’ from a human and a divine perspective. He understands not having all the answers, and to say ‘only the Father knows.’ (Mt 24:36). 

5. Jesus Christ: All-Powerful and Powerless

Because Jesus is God, he is all-powerful, omnipotent, and sovereign and exalted over all. He spoke creation into existence, he sustains creation by his powerful word. He rules as king and almighty sovereign. There is no debate. His word is law, and there is no court of appeals. His is the name above all names, king of kings and lord of lords. High above every ruler and authority and power (Eph 1). He is worthy of all worship (Mt 14:33) and demands and deserves honor from all creation. But, because Jesus became a man, he understands being made powerless and subjected to the whims of human desire. He knows weakness. He knows being abused, treated unjustly, unfairly. He knows the full extent of human cruelty. He knows the experience of total humiliation, more than embarrassed, but completely vulnerable and mocked. He understands obscurity and insignificance. He knows working hard without any notice. 

6. Jesus Christ: Impassible and Suffering

Because Jesus is God, he transcends suffering and change. Us theologians like to use a big five-dollar word for this called “impassibility.” God never suffers or changes. God the Son is eternally joyful in the fellowship of the Godhead, delighting in the presence of the Father and the Spirit. He cannot be hurt, or injured, added to or subtracted from. But, because Jesus became a man, he has suffered more than any person who has ever lived. He knows it more intensely than any person who has ever lived. He knows the torturous suffering of having the skin shredded off his back by scourging. He knows the agony of execution by drowning in his own bodily fluids while spiked to a crucifixion beam. But even more he knows the emotional, spiritual, and psychological suffering of being betrayed by a friend and abandoned by those who said they were ride or die. He knows the suffering of his Father’s back turning away from him, when for eternity he had only ever soaked in the radiance of his father’s face. The Father turned his back toward the man Christ Jesus, so that he could turn his face toward us. 

7. Jesus Christ: Immortal and Crucified

Because Jesus is God, he is immortal, but because Jesus became a man, he was killed, giving “himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). 

Let me tell you another story. There was a famine in the village, and the king knew it from start to finish. It was no surprised to him when he was told, “Your people have no bread.” In fact, he’d been planning for literally forever to fix that problem. So the king said, “My son will become the bread of life for them.”