Jesus was and is God. For 33 1/2 years He lived on this earth as a man, just as us.
He laid aside His power as God according to the scripture but He couldn't lay aside His deity, the fact that He is God.
He was man and faced life just we do. The miracles He performed were not by His power, He had laid that power aside, it was all performed by the power of the Holy Spirit through Him.
Jesus lived His life on this earth totally and completely dependent on the Holy Spirit.
He is the example of what God wants from all of us.
This is the type heresy I spoke of called "Kenotic Theology". I'd encountered it talking with followers of the TV false prophets such as Kenneth Copeland, who is an example of the sad state of christendom in this day. The following information is found on the news site "Christianheadlines":
$7 million dollar home that is Tax Exempt
Reported net worth of $750 million
Owns three private jets.
"Copeland is considered America's wealthiest pastor as he has a reported net worth of $750 million, Ministry Watch reports. In a 2015 sermon, he said that God told him to build the six-bedroom home in 1999 for his wife, Gloria. Copeland noted that God told him it was "part of your prosperity."
https://www.christianheadlines.com/...-million-home-is-tax-exempt-report-finds.html
This exact topic of Kenotic Christology should probably be a thread to its own, but there are a couple good articles on it online. Part of one article reads:
"The term
kenosis comes from the Greek word
kenoo, translated "emptied" in chapter 2 of Paul's letter to the Philippians:
"Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men." (Phil. 2:6-7
NASB)
What has come to be called "Kenotic theology" attempts to understand the
incarnation of the second person of the
Trinity in light of the
kenosis of Phillippians 2:7. Its aim is to solve some of the supposed paradoxes arising from
Jesus having both a divine nature and a human nature. For example, how could an
all knowing God become a baby, how could God be tempted, or how could Jesus (being God) not know the time of His return?
The danger comes when it is concluded that in the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity took on human nature
and gave up or lost some of the
divine attributes -- such that Jesus was not fully divine. The doctrine of the two natures of Christ (known as the
hypostatic union) maintains that Jesus possessed a full undiminished human nature and a full undiminished divine nature, which were not combined or confused into some new nature but were added to each other forever (yet remaining distinct) in the one person Jesus Christ."
This is just part of the article.
https://www.theopedia.com/kenosis
Another good article exposing this heresy can be read online as well, located here:
https://www.gotquestions.org/kenoticism-kenotic-theology.html
How do these false prophets and con artists prosper so well? Paul summed it up thus:
"For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and
lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and
never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all
men, as theirs also was." (2Tim 3:6-9, KJV)
Does it mean merely silly females, or does it include males who base life on silly emotions instead of truth? A major point to comfort us is in that last phrase "their folly shall be manifest unto all
men, as theirs also was." Notice "
men" is in italics, added by the translators. It is obvious that the lies of false prophets are made manifest only to the elect, unto all of God's elect, similar to Mark 13:22