Q: Why does Jesus say the Father is greater than he and call him "my God" if they are equal?
The reason you're struggling with this question is entirely understandable. We don't call it the mystery of the incarnation for no reason. But the truths that we see in God's Word concerning Jesus and His coming to earth are not for the mind. Rather they are truths for the heart. We accept them because they are revealed in His Word. And what we see is this:
Jesus is CLEARLY declared as "God" in several places in the New Testament. (John 1:1, Titus 2:13, 1 John 5:20, Colossians 2:9. Hebrews 1:3 and many, many more.)
Also, Jesus made statements that NO ONE could make except God. One of the clearest is in John 8:58 where He said, "Before Abraham was born, I AM." (He actually used the Divine Name that God used to identify Himself when speaking to Moses through the burning bush. The words "I am" mean I had no beginning and I will have no end. That's something ONLY God could say.
But we ALSO know that Jesus condescended to become a human being. The Apostle Paul writes: "...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." (Philippians 2:5-7)
The Apostle tells us that even though Jesus was "in the form of God" He nevertheless "emptied Himself." That is language that absolutely transcends our ability to understand. How can God "empty Himself" and become a man and yet still be God? We have NO IDEA. All we know is that it happened in the Person of Jesus.
Jesus called God His Father because He was a man. He died for our sins on the cross and rose again on the third day because He is God.
We know these things by revelation — not by human intellect.
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