In the briefest of nutshells, the Doctrine of Kenosis involves the voluntary restraint, on the part of God the Son, in using His omnipotence for the period of the incarnation.

However, before we launch into a detailed explanation of why this measure was deemed necessary by God, I assume the readers of this commentary fully understand that Jesus Christ had two natures; human and Divine. Jesus, the man, was every bit human as we are, and Christ, the Divine Person of God the Son, was, and is, co-equal with the other Members of the Holy Trinity; The Father and Spirit.

This unique spiritual configuration is but one of the many charactaristics of the Lord Jesus Christ that makes Him the Unique Celebrity of all time. For more details on the dual-nature of Christ you can read the section on The Hypostatic Union.

That said, we understand that the two natures of Christ were, and are, independent, exclusive, both existing in One Person forever, without either interfering with the other. This phenomenon can be confusing to Christians who study the Word of God themselves in that there are three venues from which our Lord spoke in scripture; from his Divine nature, from his human nature, and from the dual-nature. This complex distinction is one of many reasons why we need a highly prepared Pastor-Teacher to dig out the principles of doctrine from the Bible and teach it to us in an academic environment.

Let's focus on the purpose of kenosis, which incidentally, is a common theological term. To reduce the Divine objective to its simplest context, we need to regard Christ in His role as a prototype. The Bible refers to this aspect of His ministry as "first fruits"; He is the "trailblazer" that breaks trail for us to follow.

As the prototype Christ "tested and proved" a unique new spiritual life, entirely different in many respects from the Old Testement form of worship that prevailed until the cross. This new spiritual life is not only new, relatively speaking, but it is superior to every other installment of God's plan for humankind, for it is the life given to The Church, The Bride of Christ, The Royal Family of God, to name a few of the designations for those of us so fortunate to be born into this most prestigious of all dramatic moments in time. I should note that the spiritual lives given Tribulational saints, and believers in the Millenium (under perfect environment) are identical in scope to the Old Testement era. At the moment of The Rapture of the Church this fantastic new life ends and will not be given to any other man until the end of time.

One of Christ's functions, then, was to "road test" this new and exciting spiritual dynamic, which He did in spectacular fashion. All the temptations Jesus overcame in the desert, on the cross, during His trials, for the entire time of His life on this earth, were demonstrations of the great power given to us in this Church Age.

So what is there in this revelation that should interest us?

We are given the exact same power that Jesus Christ, Himself, wielded during the incarnation!

The primary component of this spiritual life is the introduction of God the Holy Spirit into the soul of every believer. This is the power that Christ informed his disciples of in the upper room, when He told them that 50 days hence they would be given power.

Not to be confused, there were select men in the Old Testement that had this ministry of The Spirit, but it was confined to just a few men; prophets, kings, and key players in the Divine Plan. Those men could lose the "enduement" of The Spirit permanently for misadventure, which explains why David pleaded with God not to "take your Spirit from me" after the Bathsheba incident.

We, on the other hand, have the option of restoring the Holy Spirit to our souls whenever we drive him away with a sin by observing 1John 1:9, cited at the top of this page. Therefore, for our entire lives we can spend most of our time, as Christians, on this planet filled with God the Holy Spirit, which is key to fullfiling God's plan for our lives.

Kenosis comes into play in this new arrangement of Divine government in that Jesus Christ, as the First Fruits, the prototype for all who would follow (us), could not avail Himself of Divine power to augment His humanity. For those occassions when He did execute a miracle, as in the resusitation of Lazarus, curing the sick and blind, and making wine of water, He depended entirely upon the Holy Spirit, just as we must.

Further more, and just as significant, the work of the cross, when Jesus bore our sins as our substitute, He had to accomplish it as A MAN! In that terrible three hours Jesus relied entirely on another great power that we car given, "the Word of God that loveth and abideth forever". Niether the Father, the Spirit, nor the Son Himself, could contact sin in any way. The humanity of Jesus Christ hung alone, naked and alone, to save our immortal souls.

Of course, The Son did not separate Himself from Jesus Christ during the great atonement, but He could not be judged for sin.

Other doctrines that bear on this subjects are Rebound and The Filling of God the Holy Spirit