If Jesus Is God, Why Didn’t He Know the Day of His Return?

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If Jesus Is God, Why Didn’t He Know the Day of His Return?

June 12, 2025

Questions about why Jesus didn’t know the day of his return if he truly is God, and why it’s important for Jesus to be both fully God and fully man.

* If Jesus is God, then why didn’t he know the day of his return, and if the answer is that he limited himself, wasn’t it a lie to say that he didn’t know?

* Why is it important for Jesus Christ to be both fully God and fully man?

Transcript

You're listening to the hashtag SDR-esque podcast with Greg Koukl and Amy Hall. You gave me top billing. Well, we've spent a couple of episodes here on other worldviews and ideas, so we're going to switch gears now.

We're going to talk about Jesus for a little bit. All right. And this first question comes from Jacob.

If Jesus is God, then why didn't he know the day of his return? And if the answer is that he limited himself, didn't he lie then that he does not know? I am a Christian, and I'm debating very often with the Muslim friend of mine, and he says that Jesus isn't God, and I'm curious on getting an answer. Well, this has to do with refined points of Christology, which are the doctrines of Christ, or of Jesus, and I'm not, I'd be curious how the Muslim person is arguing Jesus is not God, because that Jesus is God is a point of revelation, which is substantiated by historical information. Now, of course, the Muslim is not going to accept the historical information because characteristically Muslims believe that the New Testament has been corrupted.

Now, there's a way to deal with that, and Ellen Schlemann does a great job. I think we have an ambassador's guide to Islam that explains that. But you use the Quran to support the Gospels, all right? But their theology of Jesus is not only that he's not God.

He's just a prophet. He's not the son of God, that he wasn't even crucified, that somebody else was, I think Judas was crucified. And therefore, if not death, crucified did not race from the dead.

So there's all kinds of points of disagreement here. So I'm not sure how anyone would go about proving that to a Muslim unless they could first establish, and this is going to be a little more complicated. Although Muslims like talking about religion, so they'll probably stay in play if you're willing to, get ahold of Ellen Schlemann's little workbook on, it's not a workbook, it's a pamphlet or booklet.

Yeah, a booklet. The ambassador's guide to Islam, and he explains how to go about showing that the Quran actually affirms the divine inspiration of the Gospels. And I mean, curiously, because it's curious because they affirm it, and then they print information that's contrary to it.

But in any event, and since Muslims are authority driven, and if you can position the Quran in support of the Gospels, which you can, then that allows, hopefully the person you're talking with to take the record in the Gospel more seriously. And the record shows a crucified and resurrected Christ. Now, Paul in Romans 1, a first couple of verses, says that Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God through the resurrection.

So it's not just that someone came alive, but there are theological ramifications or implications to that. One has to do with forgiveness of sin. And Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 15.

If Jesus has not been raised in the dead, we are still in our sin, and if he has been raised, then we're not in our sin, okay, in virtue of what he's done and how we have. So that's the way of approaching that issue, okay. I mean, I don't know of any other way to do it.

When you're dealing with a Muslim, you have to deal with an authority, all right. They're on the authority of the holy books of Islam and that most notably the Quran, and there's some others. But the Hadith and some others.

Now, Alan's much more conversant in this than I am. He can talk about it in his book, The Ambassador to God to Islam. But if we can leverage their authority in favor of our authority, now that changes everything.

And Abdu Murray, who we have been friends of ours for a long, long time, and actually was, as I've told others, he was in my garden when he was still a Muslim before he was a Christian. But this argument had a powerful impact on him converting as a Muslim attorney in Detroit. This argument had a powerful impact on him to convert to Christianity.

So this works. This gets their attention. God uses it in a powerful way.

But that would be the only recommendation I could give to regarding the conversation with the Muslims. Now, when it comes to the Christology, this is all based on Revelation. We know that Jesus is God because we have Revelation that says so and historical information that verifies the theological claim.

And we believe in the Trinity because of particulars in the Revelation that allow no other conclusion. All right, because the inspired text says that there is one God. It says that the Father, Son, and Spirit are separate individuals after a fashion characteristically.

We see persons, maybe separate centers of consciousness is another way of putting it. But each is fully God, that they each share fully the divine nature. So there is one God and three persons in the one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Okay. Now, according to Christian doctrine, so here I'm now appealing to Jacob regarding this strange circumstance where Jesus doesn't know the future or certain aspects of it. Okay.

Well, God would know the future. All right. Well, let me ask you a question, Jacob.

Does God do thirsty? Well, no. Well, Jesus has got thirsty. Does God do tired? No.

Well, Jesus got tired. In other words, we have a lot of statements in the Gospels that are true of Jesus that are not true of God. So how do we make sense? And one of them, by the way, has to do with his knowledge.

God's omniscient. So how do you figure that out? And here's the answer. Jesus was not just God.

He was the word come down to take on human flesh to accomplish a task. And that was a multifaceted task. But because of that, we have this unique individual, no one in history like him, the God man, Emmanuel God with us.

It's not just a theophony. It's just just a manifestation of God. God added to his divine nature a human nature.

So the classic way of putting this is also called the Calcidonian formula or the Calcidonian box for elements. One person, two natures, fully God, fully man. One person, two natures.

The person of the word with a divine nature taking on a human nature that makes Jesus the incarnation fully God and fully man at the same time. Everything that was true about divinity was true about Jesus. Everything that was true about humanity was true about Jesus.

Okay. Now you've got an unusual circumstance here. And this is where refined theology is important.

It's New Testament theology, but a lot of folks don't get this far thinking about Christology, right? If we read in Philippians chapter two, it says that even though Jesus essentially was God was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God, which was do him, given his divine nature, as something to be grasped or held on to. But it says he let it go and stepped down and taking on the form of a man, he became a servant to all men and died the death of a common criminal. So now you've got what theologians call a kenosis and that's called the emptying.

Okay. So you have God with all these wonderful qualities. He's never thirsty.

He's never tired. Knows everything. But now he takes on a human body and so he is both fully human, fully God.

And that's why we can read things about Jesus from the human perspective that would not be true about God. But we can also read things about Jesus that would not be true about a mere human, but would be true about his divine nature. We find both in the Gospels.

So when it says Jesus wept or Jesus slept or Jesus was tired or that he was thirsty or whatever. Or grew in wisdom or grew in wisdom and stature in a favor with God of men. Excellent.

That's speaking about Jesus from his human perspective. I mean, obviously, when he says the Father is greater than I, he's talking about his human nature relative to the Father's divine nature. But other times we see Jesus say things like before Abraham was, I am.

Okay. And John Chapter 8. Or I and the Father are one. That would be one in essence is what the Greek indicates there.

And that's in John Chapter 10. And there are lots of other verses like this. You should worship honor me even as you honor the Father.

Okay. John Chapter 5. I raise up whoever I will. Also John Chapter 5. So I give life to whoever I will.

So he forgives sins. Mark Chapter 2. You know, only God can forgive sins, but Jesus has the proper authority to do so because of his divine nature. So we see in the Gospels these two different characteristics of the two different natures of Christ being played out.

And it all makes sense because he's two natures. Sometimes the text is speaking from the perspective of his divine nature. And sometimes from the perspective of his human nature.

Okay. So now this brings us to the question from the all of a discourse. Yeah, that's right.

Matthew 24 where this passage is famously, I don't know if it's the parallel passages in Luke or Mark. Luke 21, Mark 12, I think. But here in Matthew 24, no one knows the day or the hour, not even the Son of Man or the angels, but the Father alone.

Now, this is a tricky one. It's easy. There's a simple way of answering this.

And then there's a much more complicated way of answering it. The simple way is that Jesus is speaking from the perspective of his human nature, not his divine nature. Just like I thirst, Jesus was hungry and grew tired, all of that stuff.

From his human nature, his knowledge was limited. Okay. And his divine nature is not.

Okay. That's kind of in a certain sense, the more straightforward simple way of putting it. But now you have a very challenging kind of philosophical theological question.

How could Jesus be fully God in his divine nature, but his human nature doesn't have access to all the information his divine nature has? And I don't know how to answer that. It's a fair question and a lot of people have tried to make sense of it, but here's the deal. That's what it says.

The text teaches that Jesus was God and in his humanity, his knowledge was limited. Now, sometimes he could figure out what people were saying, thinking. He knew things that were going to happen.

But so he, you know, there was this supernatural quality about aspects of his life that related to his divine nature or the role of the Holy Spirit in his life. But still, there were things that he would just acknowledge. I don't now know.

He didn't. And the question is, how is it possible for the divine nature not to communicate certain attributes to the human nature? And I don't know that answer. And this is something that theologians have struggled with.

But there's an important principle here for Christians. And that is, we have to determine what the text says and teaches first. And that Jesus is fully God and that he is fully man.

And that he, he, before Abraham was, I am, but that he didn't know the exact time of his coming at that time. Those are facts of Scripture. Then we work out the details of the outliers.

Okay. Well, what, what with that? You know, what's going on? How does that work? Well, sometimes we can work it out and sometimes we can't. But the thing that guides our understanding has got to be the text.

Okay. So there's no reason for us to think that Jesus was lying. In fact, the text tells us just the opposite.

It says, no evil was found in him. This is Isaiah. And also referring to Jesus.

But also, who is there that convex me of sin. There's no darkness found in him. There are other passages that refer to Jesus' sinless nature.

So there's no reason for us to think he was lying. He was telling the truth, but it does present a mystery that may not be solvable. How is that possible? I don't know.

I don't know. Do you? Amy? No, but I was, I was just thinking, you know, he came to live a human life. He didn't come out of the womb being conscious of every fact of the universe.

You don't even have to go to this if he's learning anything. Yeah. Then it's already making the point that they're objecting to.

This isn't even, the scripture is very open about the fact that he is learning and growing. And I don't know if it says knowledge, but it says wisdom, right? Does it say knowledge also? Growing as wisdom and stature and in favor with both God and man. So, but it clearly knowledge.

But even so, very, very, I mean, his human mind, his human brain cannot process that when he's a fetus and when he's an infant, you know. However, his divine mind, I mean, we have this in Hebrews 10 where it says, when he came into the world, he says, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. So there was a divine awareness of the nature of the incarnation, you know, and, but how, but the human mind had to catch up with that, the human, the human, you know, the brain that processes is all of this, et cetera.

So, and that's mysterious. How did that happen when, but, but here you got Jesus at 12 years old and he's really running circles around all the other teachers there in, in the temple and famous episode. So, so he was unique, but he did grow.

Yeah. So all we can do is say, look, if, if you as a Muslim are going to accept that he said this, why would you not accept that he said these other things that indicate his divinity? Why were people stoning him for blasphemy? And I think you have to look at everything. You have to look at this in light of everything that he revealed about himself and everything that God revealed about him through the, the apostles too.

So, okay, Greg, let's go to a question from Lucy. Why is it important for Jesus Christ to be both fully God and fully man? Well, we're getting the heavy duty ones now. There was a piece that was written.

There's two I'm thinking of right now. And I can only think of the title of one, ones by Athanasius in the fourth century. And the other one was, I'll think of the name of the bit, but it was right around the turn of the first millennium.

And that one was called, one of them was called why the God man. And it made the case why it was necessary. And I do this also in the story of reality, but it's a much more modest kind of characterization.

To put it simply, I guess, that since man fell and was guilty, the guilt had to be paid by man, but an ordinary man could not pay the penalty for everybody. And that's why it had to be a God made flesh that could pay in a finite amount of time, the penalty for sin that an individual would spend forever paying for in hell. So, okay, that's strange calculus.

Yeah, you're right, it is. But that seems to be the, I think there's a, in Hebrews, it says, and again, this is a snatch of a verse, something about, since the brethren partook of flesh and blood, so the sun had to partake of flesh and blood also. I mean, oftentimes redemption is talking about slavery, but there was a kinship redeemer applied in different things, like is it Ruth, where there was that played out in the Old Testament.

But it had to be some kin. And in this case, where Jesus is redeeming us, he redeems us in that sense kinship redeemer as another human being. So a human who is not a slave is able to redeem those humans who are.

And since humans, in a certain sense, gave into the devil, it's a human champion of sorts that now defeats the devil. So there's a way that these all kind of interact, but the biggest thing has to do with the capability of a mere human to pay for the sins of mankind, and a mere human couldn't do that. So you have, why the God band? Oh, Amy, you're supposed to help me with this.

On the incarnation? Well, there's, oh, yeah, there you go. That's Athanasian on the incarnation. That's Athanasian.

This is available. You probably find it online. Oh, yeah.

And then why the God man? And I'm, you know, the name of this particular theologian philosopher slips my mind. Oh, maybe it is Anselm. Yeah, I think it is Ansel.

Good. Let's see. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. Okay. Curtis Homo, the Latin cur C-U-R-D-E-U-S-H-O-M-O, which means why the God man.

And then he develops, and I've read this piece. It's really magnificent. And not everybody agrees with it, but he does offer a rationale about how this is the case and why a substitute is necessary in the substitute has to be somebody out of it.

And I quit to the task has to be human, but also has to be divine to accomplish the task before him. Sinless and not a slave himself, right? Not good. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, don't ask me.

Yeah, don't ask me. I'm looking to you for the words here. Yeah.

And Hebrews also says that the priests in the Old Testament had to first pay for their own sins and then others. But Jesus came. He didn't have to pay for his own sins because he was sinless.

And that's why he was able to pay for the sins of others. And you can't do that unless you're perfect. You can't be a fallen man.

You have to be the perfect God man. Yeah, right. Right.

And in order, there's another little detail here, Lucy. This isn't just, well, that's the way he did it. And that's what he says.

But you can tell me the reference here is probably in Romans where it says where God is both the just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus. So he can accomplish justice, but he can also then justify that is credit righteousness and save the one who puts their faith in Jesus. Yeah.

So that's another reason. It's beautiful. And it reveals who God is by Jesus coming as the second person of the Trinity.

He's showing a loving self sacrifice and a love for enemies. And that's revealing something about God's grace and his glory. So all of this had a purpose.

And the part of the purpose, I mean, I think the main purpose was to reveal God to his people. And so this all played, there was a reason for all of this. It wasn't just random.

Yeah. And it wasn't just about a transaction. I think it was also about revealing the beauty of who God is.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

We're out of time, Greg. Well, thank you so much, Jacob and Lucy. Please send us your question on X with the hashtag as CRS.

We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coco for Stand to Reason. Yeah.