If Jesus Is God, Why Didn’t He Know the Hour?

If Jesus is God, why didn’t He know the hour in Mark 13:32? Christians shouldn’t dodge the verse. Jesus says that no one knows the day or hour, “not even the Son, but only the Father”. The right response is not to explain those words away. It is to ask what they mean in light of who Jesus is.

Does Mark 13:32 really say that Jesus did not know?

Yes. The ordinary meaning of the Greek verb is “knows”. Some interpreters have taken the wording functionally, meaning that the Son did not make the hour known or was not commissioned to disclose it. That is a recognised reading, but we do not think Christians need to pretend the verb itself means “declare”. The text can be faced directly.

Jesus also grew in wisdom in Luke 2:52. He became hungry, tired and sorrowful. These are not defects in His deity. They belong to the real human life the Son chose to live. Our view is that this matters apologetically: if Christ’s humanity is reduced to appearance, the incarnation stops answering the objection because it no longer describes a genuinely human Jesus.

How can Jesus be omniscient and still have limited human knowledge?

The answer is the incarnation. Jesus Christ is one person with two distinct natures, divine and human. The Son did not stop being what He eternally is. He took to Himself what He was not before: a complete human nature. John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh”, while Colossians 2:9 says that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily”.

That gives us a precise distinction. According to His divine nature, the Son is not ignorant or limited. According to His human nature, Jesus possessed a real human mind and lived a real human life. He learned, obeyed and grew. Christians do not need to choose between His deity and His humanity because Scripture gives us both.

This is also why the eternal Son remains fully divine even in the incarnation. The Son does not turn into a creature. He remains fully divine while truly becoming man.

Did Jesus give up divine attributes when He became human?

No. Philippians 2:6–8 says that Christ humbled Himself by taking the form of a servant. The passage does not say He stopped being divine. His self-humbling is seen in what He took on and in the obedient life He chose, all the way to death.

We think this is one of the most useful distinctions in the whole discussion. Christ’s humility should be described as addition, not subtraction. He adds true humanity; He does not subtract deity. That keeps the incarnation coherent and prevents us from solving one difficult verse by creating a much larger theological problem.

What about the idea that Jesus did not disclose the hour?

There is an old Christian reading that treats “does not know” in a functional sense: the Son does not know the hour for the purpose of announcing it to the disciples. Augustine used this sort of explanation when discussing the passage. It can help explain why the Father’s authority to reveal the appointed time matters.

We would still keep that reading secondary. Mark 13:32 does not need rescuing from its ordinary wording. The incarnation already gives Christians a sound way to affirm both Christ’s full deity and His real human limitation. A functional reading may add context, but it should not carry more weight than the text can bear.

Does Mark 13:32 make Jesus less than God?

No. The verse describes the incarnate Son in His humbled mission. It does not redefine His divine nature. The same New Testament presents Jesus as the eternal Word through whom all things were made, the one in whom the fullness of deity dwells, and the Lord who receives divine honour. That broader witness matters when reading any single difficult text.

This is why one verse should not be made to cancel the rest of Scripture. The same principle helps with John 17:3 and the deity of Jesus and with the question of what “Son of God” means. Difficult verses deserve close attention, but they also belong to whole books and to the whole biblical witness.

Why does the Father know the hour?

Mark 13 places the timing of the Son’s return under the Father’s authority. The point of the passage is not to satisfy curiosity about the calendar. Jesus tells His disciples to stay awake because they do not know when the master of the house will come. Mark 13:32–37 turns the doctrine into a call to readiness.

For us, that is easy to miss. People can spend so much time trying to solve the mechanics of Christ’s knowledge that they ignore His command. The verse is both theological and pastoral: it tells us something about the incarnate Son, then tells us how to live while we wait for Him.

How to say it gently

You could say: “Mark 13:32 really does say the Son did not know the hour. Christians believe the eternal Son became fully human without ceasing to be God. So Jesus could experience real human limits in His earthly life while remaining fully divine.”

What not to say

Don’t claim the Greek simply means “declare”. Don’t say Jesus only pretended not to know. And don’t divide Christ into two persons, one divine and one human. The Christian claim is one Jesus, truly God and truly man.

A good next step is to read Mark 13:32 alongside Luke 2:52, John 1:14, Colossians 2:9 and Philippians 2:6–8. Then ask whether the incarnation gives a coherent account of all those texts together. We think it does, and it does so without weakening either Christ’s deity or His humanity.