The Suffering of the Incarnation and Transformational Education

Once, while teaching Sunday School, one of the children asked me: “Teacher, did Mary ever correct Jesus?” I initially answered that no, she didn't need to, because Jesus didn't sin. So, it wasn't necessary.

However, this question continued to bother me for a few days, until I finally came to the conclusion that possibly, yes. Because, even if Jesus had not sinned, and thus had never given reason to be physically disciplined, there is no guarantee that Mary had not sinned, and that on a day of anger or stress due to many household chores and taking care of her other children, she sinned and unjustly disciplined him.

But, what does this reflection have to do with the suffering of Jesus, the teacher and transformational education? In my opinion, everything. First of all, because, when we think of Jesus' sacrifice, we usually only think of the Cross, and we forget that, before dying on the cross, His greatest and most difficult sacrifice was His own incarnation. The martyrdom of the cross lasted just 3 days, or something like that, but His incarnation lasted around 36 or 37 years.

Imagine what it was like for the perfect God to have to enter into a limited body, grow up amid persecution and exile, spend his first years of life as a refugee in a foreign land, be subject to being raised by sinful and flawed parents, live with sinful brothers, have to do hard work as a carpenter with rustic tools, an extremely hard and rough job, live in a fallen society that was far from His Holy character. The cross was a great suffering, but the incarnation of Jesus was truly brutal.

In the book of Hebrews there is an incredible chapter, marked by a shocking verse that says: “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).[1] A God who learns?! Yes, Jesus, in His divine condition, even though He knew what it meant to suffer theoretically, had never really suffered. Because He was Spirit, He did not have to suffer in the flesh. In His incarnation, He learned what it felt like to have an empty stomach, to snore, to be hungry, to have the muscle tremors from sleeping outside on a freezing cold night, to feel faint, to experience a suffocating sensation and the dry mouth from the scorching heat of the desert, to have fatigue, to be tired, to be sick, to have calluses on His hands and blisters on His feet, to suffer physical punishment, to be wronged.

In addition, Jesus submitted Himself to the Father, doing the will of the Father throughout His life, submitting Himself to God as a human being, obeying the Law of Moses, and carrying out the work of life that His Father designated for Him, living a humble life like a slave, and finally, as is clear in the prayer of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done” (Matthew 26:42), subjecting Himself to death, and death on the Cross (one of the most painful and humiliating punishments imposed by the Romans).

Returning to Hebrews, it is precisely because Jesus went through all of this that He understands us. He learned what it is to be a human being. He learned our limitations, our weaknesses, our fears, our pains, and He suffered our death.

As Constable points out:
“Suffering ‘perfected’ Jesus Christ in the sense that it completed Him as our Great High Priest — by giving Him experiential knowledge of what human beings must endure”.[2]

This is the didactic aspect of Jesus’ incarnation. In His incarnation, He had to learn. Learn to nurse at His mother's breast, learn when to sleep and when to wake up, learn to walk, learn to speak and become literate, learn the rules of social coexistence (including related cynicisms and hypocrisies), learn to maintain family life, learn to obey sinful parents, learn to relate to evil siblings, learn His father's profession, learn technical skills through mistakenly hammering His finger. In short, all this human learning, for a Perfect and Holy God, was suffering.

Precisely because of everything He suffered and learned through suffering, according to the book of Hebrews, Jesus became qualified to be our High Priest, the main mediator between God and His people.
“It was in death that Christ fulfilled the Aaronic [High Priest] type, making a full and perfect atonement for the sins of His people. It is in resurrection that He assumed the character in which Melchizedek prefigured Him — a royal Priest”.[3]

Thus, Jesus is not just a teacher who teaches theories of which He had no experience. He is the Teacher par excellence, who learned in practice what He teaches and is superior to any other teacher, for, in addition to being God (100% God) and as such, absolutely perfect and the source of all knowledge and truth, He is also 100 % man, and as such, someone who learned through His incarnation absolutely everything it means to be human, in flesh and blood, and in mind and soul.

Thus, in the book of Hebrews, the author appeals to his readers to follow the example of Jesus Christ, the man, and be obedient to God themselves, learning from Him, through their own sufferings. He even exhorts them, “you ought to be teachers” (Hebrews 5.12a).

However, the Hebrews who lived in Rome, recipients of the letter, unlike Jesus, were bad listeners who did not pay attention, were careless with the teaching, did not learn the basic concepts of the Word of God, and thus, did not obey Him or practice in their lives what the Word of God teaches. For this reason, they were immature Christians, not being able to teach others, but rather needing others to teach them (5:11-14).

The incarnation of Christ is the perfect model for those who want to teach the Word of God to someone. That is why, with emphasis, the apostle Paul tells us in Philippians:

     “... have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
      rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
      And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8).

Transformational education will only be provided by transformed teachers, perfected by the sufferings of being like Christ. Teachers who learn, as Christ learned, to suffer for obeying the Father. Teachers who die to themselves so that Christ may live in them.

Finally, this education is priestly. In other words, it is not an education that exchanges technical knowledge for remuneration, but it is a sacrificial education, in unconditional love, that offers salvation through grace in a completely missionary perspective like Christ. An education that first knows and obeys, and then teaches knowledge and obedience. An education that models Christ, incarnating Him in the teacher for his students.

Creuse Santos
Creuse is a husband, father and professor of theology at several seminaries in Latin America. He serves as Associate Director for TeachBeyond Uruguay and is completing his doctorate, focusing on education, at Dallas Theological Seminary.