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Wednesday April 8, 2026

Human nothingness and the divine union

“Normal humanity is God-indwelt. Humanity which is not indwelt by Deity is sub-human. Can you offer proof of that? you say. Yes, I can. I can give you proof from the only perfect human who has ever lived on earth.

Jesus Christ was a real human. (That’s why I love to call Him Jesus, though He is the Lord Jesus Christ.) He was the Son of God, but if He called Himself the Son of God five times, He called Himself the Son of man fifty-five times. Which means He was a representative man–one of us.

Notice what Jesus said each time He was challenged on the source of His power to work miracles or His authority to say what He did. Every time He answered, ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself.’

In other words, His basic self-consciousness as a human was awareness of His nothingness in Himself!

His statements about the Father often puzzled his disciples. He would say, ‘I do what I see the Father doing,’ ‘as I hear, I judge,’ ‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me.’ They wondered whether He had some strange means of communication with His ‘Father in heaven.’

He revealed their true meaning in what I think is the most important conversation ever recorded. It was the first time in actual human words that the union of man and God is revealed. It came in that last conversation at the supper table before He went out to Gethsemane.

He kept saying that He was going to the Father, and that the Spirit was yet to come; hearing this, a normal human would likely picture outward relationships–one person here, another there, each person separate from the other.

So when he talked about the Father, the disciples thought He must be some Being way up in the blue. Feeling desperate that Jesus was going to whom they knew not, Philip made a common sense request:

‘Lord, show us the Father and that will satisfy us.’

In other words, ‘Open heaven, and let us have one look at the One to whom You say You are going.’

Remember Jesus’ answer? He said, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father”?

Now you might stop with that statement and say, ‘Well, that’s Deity. He meant that their names were interchangeable–Father, Son and Spirit, and they could call Him Father or Jesus.’

But He didn’t mean that, for the next verse says this: ‘Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I speak not on my own; but the Father who dwells in Me, He does the works.’

When Jesus said He did what He saw the Father doing it was not that He had some telescopic view into heaven, but that as the Father in Him took Him into various situations and faced Him with various needs He would know this was a call to action. As He saw the Father moving into action, He took action. The action of faith.

The same was true of the words He spoke. He was expressing the thoughts and words the Father thought and spoke in Him.

So you see the human nothingness and the divine union? Yet that doesn’t mean that we as humans do nothing.

No one was more active than Jesus Christ! But the activity was secondary to receptivity.

An outstanding characteristic of the life of Jesus was His relaxed attitude. He was always saying, ‘I have what the Father gives Me.’ Yet what words He spoke and deeds He did!

You see, that relaxed attitude is a normal human attitude–because a vessel hasn’t anything except the capacity to contain. So relax!”

Taken from: The Key to Everything

By Norman Grubb

Pages 35-38