Matthew 24:36

Matthew 24:36. But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven. The best authorities add: neither the Son, as in Mark 13:32. This is implied also in the phrase: but the Father only. Christ did not know the day and hour of His future coming since Matthew 24:37 shows that this is referred to. The explanations, that Christ did not know this ‘officially,' or the sense: did not choose to tell the disciples, are make-shifts. This seems to be a voluntary self - humiliation in knowledge, a part of Christ's emptying of Himself (Philippians 2:8). Christ could, of course, not lay aside, in the incarnation the metaphysical attributes of His Divine nature, such as eternity, but He could, by an act of His will, limit His attributes of power and His knowledge and refrain from their use as far as it was necessary for His humiliation. His voluntarily not knowing, or ‘sacred unwillingness to know,' the day of judgment during the days of His flesh, is a warning against chronological curiosity and mathematical calculation in the exposition of Scripture prophecy. We cannot know more than Christ Himself chose to know in the state of His humiliation.