Jesus as God's Human Agent
Jesus as we had known him was the Son of God and was sent by God to redeem mankind. we also know that Jesus was the Divine Son in the pre-existence; as he is Deity. we know in the New Testament that the Son had partook human flesh and was fully human in his mortality (Jn. 1:14; Phil. 25:-11; Heb. 2:7-10; 1Jn. 4:2; 2Jn. 1:7) but ideas arise about his person while he ministered here on earth as they say that he has two full natures in his person, i.e the Hypostatic Union: that in the person of Christ while he was here on earth, he is fully God and fully man but how can that be possible where these two natures that they say are incompatible—exist together in one person?
As these people would say when objections would be made to this idea about the person of Jesus Christ is that Jesus do works that only God can do while here on earth, like forgiving someone's sins, but that would not be plausible if we take a closer look on what principles sorrounding these. We know that Jesus Christ was sent by God and was representing God and this is the principle of divine agency, that is terminized in Hebrew "Shaliach". In the principle of agency in the Bible and Judaism, we see that an agent is one who has been “authorized to act for or in the place of another,” as this one was given authority to represent the person who sent him. The legal agent is called the Shaliach/Shaliah (שׁלוח), which comes from the Hebrew verb שׁלח (shelach) that is “to send” (see. BDB Hebrew-English Lexicon; HALOT). the title itself does not appear in the Hebrew Bible but was used to terminize what the person was who was sent and representing in behalf. The New Testament uses an equivalent term for Shaliach which is an "apostle" or Απόστολος (apostolos) in the Greek, and it means: "ambassador, delegate, messenger" (BDAG), or one sent on a mission and this was used for Jesus Christ in Hebrews 3:1-3 (cf. Apocalypse of Esdras 2:1, p. 25, 29; Just II A.D, A I, 12, 9). the Greek word also appears once in the LXX. Gerhard Kittlel stated that when a person interacts with the Shaliach, he/she is interacting with the sender himself as it they were meeting in person (Gerhard Kittlel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Vol. 1 [Grand Rapids Mi: Eerdmans, 1964], 417.). one example of this in the Old Testament is the messenger that Abraham sent to find a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24. angels also and Moses and John the Baptist were all Shaliachs (Ex. 3:1-10; 4:13-17; 7:1; 23:20-21; Jn. 1:6-7). the one who was sent was the sender in the sense that it the one who was sent is a representative of the person who sent him. As Carl F.H Henry said that " . . . the shaliah for a person is as this person himself" (Carl F. H. Henry, Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought. [Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Book House, ed. 1958], 192.) How the sender and the one who was sent relates with is explained by Prof. Marianne Thompson in the following that she wrote:
" A common saying in the rabbis was “the one who is sent is like the one who sent him” or “a man’s agent is equivalent to himself. Because the saliah [shaliah] may act on behalf of the one who sent him, when one deals with the saliah it is as if one is dealing with the one who sent that person." (Marianne Meye Thompson, “Gospel of John,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Joel B. Green, ed. 1992 [Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1992], 377.)
Jesus is God's agent as someone who was sent by God and was representing God (Shaliach, Απόστολος - Isa. 53; Acts 3:26; Heb. 3:1; Jn. 1:18). Heavenly Father sent Jesus Christ to us but Jesus Christ is not of the same being of the one who sent him or the same person of the one who sent him (unless one defines on their own what a "being" and a "person" means). Jesus Christ, as the Son of God being sent down here on earth to reveal Heavenly Father (Mt. 11:27; Jn. 1:18), he perfectly represents the being of Heavenly Father and he is the exact copy of Heavenly Father's being (Jn. 14:1-14; Heb. 1:1-3); or in other words, Jesus is God's agent. According to Jesus, the one sent was greater than the one who was sent (Jn. 13:12-20; 14:28). Jesus Christ came in his Father's name (Jn. 5:43) and declares his Father's name (Jn. 17:1-26), and Christ authority came from no one else but from his Father himself (Mt. 28:18-20; Jn. 3:35). What Jesus Christ will do, he will do it in his Father's name (Jn. 5:43; 10:25). Jesus as God's agent show co-equality in the Godhead but rather, it shows the subordination of Jesus Christ to Heavenly Father. knowing what the true nature of God is essential for eternal life.
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