To the divine soul and nature of the Word – when He became incarnate – was added the human nature of man.
Jesus had both divine and human nature: human – because he had all the physical senses and attributes of humanity; divine – because He was Immanuel, and as such would not act contrary to His own divine will and Spirit, though affected and limited by the human nature He assumed. He was always at one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Can we say that the will of Jesus was ever contrary to the will of the Father? I suppose we can speak of the pull of the flesh as being the will of the flesh, often opposed to the pull or will of the Spirit. What does the statement, ‘Not My will, but Yours be done,’ signify? It means, I believe, that He chose not to allow the divine will to be overcome by the ‘will’ of His flesh, naturally wanting to defend the body against torment and pain – the influence of His human body. Jesus always subjected the will of His flesh to the divine will of the Father – the will of the Spirit. Wanting to escape pain and torment is not a sin, but Jesus never allowed temptations or His desire to escape suffering to compromise His integrity. Therefore, we can see in Jesus a second Adam, without sin. In Jesus, the pulls of the flesh were always made subject to the will of the Spirit. The body exerts pressure and influence, but it does not take decisions. The seat of moral rationality is the soul – and the soul of Jesus, though influenced by His flesh, always acted in agreement with the divine will.
I am reminded of what Athanasius wrote: ‘…the Body [of the Word] … is not the Word Himself, but a distinct entity (Athanasius, Letter LIX.— To Epictetus, 9, A. Robertson, P. Schaff, 1891). The will of the Word’s body – its pulls and defences, acting according to nature – belonged to the incarnate Word, but was subordinate to the divine will – emanating from His own divine Soul and Spirit. At the cross, Jesus acted against His bodily desire and so could say, speaking out of His humanity: ‘Not My will, but yours …’
Moral decisions come from the soul – and the soul of Jesus is eternal in integrity. In spite of human nature often pulling against the Spirit, the incarnate Word always chose to do what was right and according to His divine Spirit.
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