JOHN CALVIN

35
QUESTION 19
JEW: I ask you, if he was God, when he prayed why did he say to his father, Your will be done?
From this it appears that he did not have in his own hand the power to do anything: whatever he
did from the will of the father was not from his own power.
CALVIN: I ask you, when the angel who descended to Abraham and Lot made himself the
judge of Sodom, and claimed for himself the whole power of God, but a little later he denied
that he was able to do anything until Lot had come forth, had the strength of God been fettered
by the will of man, and were his hands bound until a mortal man assented?
To be sure they throw against us nothing which the apostle did not declare, that Christ
died from the infirmity of the flesh and was raised from the dead in the strength of the spirit (1
Peter 3:18). In Christ we must always observe the office of the mediator, which could not stand
forth without abasement, just as he could not perform this abasement without humbling himself.
Therefore Christ not only endured to be weak on account of man, but he even made himself
desolate after assuming the form of a servant, not because he was at all lacking in his own
strength from eternity, and not because he was weakened, but because his divinity kept itself
silent until in the person of man he offered full obedience to his father. This is how these two
verses harmonize: I lay down my life to take it up again (John 10:17), and, Father glorify your
son (John 17:1).