Did Jesus have to experience temptation to know what we go through? Doesn’t he just know?
God is omniscient, which literally means that he is “all-knowing.” However, when the Bible uses the verb “to know,” it often is not referring to our knowledge about things, but to our experience of them. Thus, to say that God knows about everything is not the same as saying that he has experience of everything. God might know everything there is to know about the sun, but only through his incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ can he know what it feels like to have the sun shine down on his face. In the same way, the incarnation allows him not only to know about our suffering, but also to share in our experience of it. For this reason, the Scripture says: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Pastor Chad Lewis