How did Jesus know people's hearts and their worthiness, by his divine nature or his human experience?
Robert Sungenis answers that sometimes Jesus knew hearts by divine knowledge, as when He did not entrust Himself to the Pharisees, or through the Holy Spirit informing His human nature. He holds that at other times Jesus used ordinary human experience to size people up, as anyone would, as he suggests happened with the man to be healed.
A viewer asks Robert to explain a comment in his Luke and Acts commentary that Jesus may have prompted Peter to approach the beggar after Jesus measured the man's heart and worthiness to receive the gift.
Answer
First of all I say it may be the case, so it is not definite, but if it is, then Jesus has this uncanny way of knowing who he is talking to. Sometimes it is divine knowledge, as when Matthew says he did not give himself to the Pharisees because he knew the heart of all men, basically evil; but with the beggar it would be the exception, where Jesus sizes him up and says he is okay, go give him the gift, like he did with Nathanael in John 1, 'behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile.' So either Jesus is doing that from his divine nature, or the Holy Spirit, as portrayed in the New Testament, is giving that information to Jesus in his human nature. At other times in the gospels we can tell it is not divine knowledge but experiential human knowledge that Jesus uses to size people up, just like us: if a man comes down the street with a holster and a gun, I know where he is coming from without sitting back to wonder. So that is probably what was happening with this man who was going to be healed.