Our faith in Jehovah rested in our trust that He would come and successfully complete this ministry. We all knew that if He failed none of us could be saved. Jehovah would not have had the power to overcome physical death. He would not have had the power to strengthen us during our trials. He would not have been able to complete our cleansing, meaning we could not become like our Heavenly Father. In other words, Jehovah’s failure would have meant our failure, regardless of our choices to become better people.
Thankfully, Jehovah succeeded in His earthly ministry, giving us the promises we’ve discussed.
But why was He required anyway? Couldn’t Heavenly Father cleanse us of our sins? He is, after all, the Omnipotent God. The answer to this goes back to our discussion about Him being a perfect god. As a perfect god, Heavenly Father obeys the laws of the universe, including the laws of justice and mercy. In addition, He has a perfected soul (remember that a perfected soul includes the physical body and spiritual body united as one perfected being).
The law of justice required that somebody would suffer the pains of imperfection and sin. The law of mercy required that we be forgiven for our mistakes as long as we do what we must to have a claim on mercy. To satisfy both laws, someone living a perfect life would be required to suffer the pains of imperfection and sin so they could grant mercy to those who fell short of perfection. This would require the person living the perfect life to have an imperfect body capable of suffering pain and affliction. As a perfected being already having a perfected physical body free from these, Heavenly Father couldn’t fulfill the requirements without breaking the laws He upholds.
Jehovah, however, could. He didn’t yet have a physical body, so He would be capable of suffering the necessary pains when He gained His body. At the same time, He was the best of us, having a nearly perfect will (if not a perfect will) Himself. He would be able to withstand all temptation He was given. Knowing this, and knowing Jehovah would offer Himself, Heavenly Father had selected Jehovah as the Cleanser of our souls.
In order to have the ability to cleanse us, Jehovah would have to accomplish three tasks in His earthly ministry. First, He would have to live a life free of sin and error. Second, He would have to suffer the pains and afflictions required by an imperfect world full of sin and error. Third, He would have to lay down His life of His own free will, choosing to give up the physical body so He could then reclaim it and break the bonds of physical death. We’ll visit these in more detail in following posts.
Jehovah needed a mortal body in order to be able to suffer pain and affliction. However, He needed the ability of God in order to endure the afflictions required. He also needed the power of God in order to have power over death so He could lay down His life and take it up again. This meant He had to be born as the son of God and man.
He was literally born as such. He came as Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, a mortal woman. God was His father. I don’t know how this happened, but I do know that it happened. Thus He carried the mortal and divine characteristics necessary to accomplish His tasks. Of this I bear my witness.
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