Donald MacKinnon on Christ’s assumption of temporal existence

What it was for [Jesus] to be human was to be subject to the sort of fragmentation of effort, curtailment of design, interruption of purpose, distraction of resolve that belongs to temporal existence. To leave one place for another is to leave work undone; to give attention to one suppliant is to ignore another; to expend energy today is to leave less for tomorrow. We have to ask ourselves how far this very conformity to the complex discipline of temporality, this acceptance of the often tragic consequences that spring from its obstinate, ineluctable truncation of human effort, belongs to the very substance of Jesus’ defeat.

from Themes in Theology: The Three-fold Cord, (T&T Clark, 1987), 162-3.