I received a devotional recently that inferred that Jesus could have failed to complete His mission! Simply put, the idea was that Jesus was so human that He almost backed out of going to the cross, failing to provide the needed sacrifice. This was supposed to evoke a thankfulness for His not letting His humanity overcome God’s plan and as an example of His being as subject to failure in temptaion as we are.

I responded that I considered this near heresy because it intimated Jesus could have failed in His mission to save mankind. Using that same reasoning we could say that Israel could have accepted Jesus as the Christ and no death on the cross would have had to have occurred. Where would that have left us non-Jews, eh?

I insisted that the plan of Salvation was instituted from the beginning of time, God made promises beforehand He (as incarnate Christ) would surely keep, there was no Plan B, and to say that Gethsemane was a pivotal point where Jesus could have backed out is to say that God can lie! This is a very subtle, yet provocative, attempt to humanize Christ at the expense of challenging His deity.

God tells us He cannot lie and that Jesus appeared at just the right time! Jesus was human in that He can empathize with our human weaknesses, but He could not and cannot fail…or He is not God!

Anything this popular should be setting off alarm bells, but many in leadership are falling for the same siren song.

The post was a good read, I may have to invest in the book the reviews looked interesting.