THE HUMANITY OF JESUS
The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that there was a man named Jesus who once lived on this earth, who was actually God in the flesh (John 1:1-3, 14). This man came to live in a human body as a man to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Our salvation was the purpose of His entrance into the world.
Down through the centuries, some have claimed that God only took the visual “appearance” of a man, but the Bible teaches that He was made like us in every way (Hebrews 2:17). He came into the world as a child. He was born from the womb of a woman. And, interestingly and significantly—although also mysteriously (i.e., we don’t understand how God in the flesh transformed)—Jesus grew and “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with both God and man,” the way any other child would (Luke 2:52).
The fact that Jesus was truly human is easy to demonstrate from the Scriptures in a variety of ways. He did not star in a play or in a movie. He wasn’t acting. He was a real human being, just like we are, only He was without sin. He knows what it is like to be physically hungry (Matthew 4:2). He got tired from walking in the sun and had to sit down and rest (John 4:6). At the Cross, He cried out, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). These are all human experiences. He really was human in every sense of the word.
The Bible describes Jesus as putting on “flesh and blood” in an absolute sense. He experienced all of the problems that go with living a human life on earth (Hebrews 2:14). His humanness was not a costume. It was a permanent identification with those whom He created (Philippians 2:7). He came to be like us so that we can be like Him (2 Corinthians 5:17).
When we consider the humanity of Jesus, we must also be aware of the fact that we are not just talking about being human in a strictly physical sense. Emotionally, He had the same battles that we have. The range of emotions that living in this world brings to everyone, Jesus experienced. The shortest verse in the English Bible says that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He had lost one of His closest friends in Lazarus, and at the tomb, He wept with Lazarus’s sisters. Why? Because He felt the grief and disappointment that humans feel in situations like that (John 11:33-35). The Bible also tells us that He was “deeply moved and troubled in spirit” when faced with the extreme amount of sorrow He encountered in this life (John 11:38).
While Jesus did not get angry in the way that sinners do, He did experience that emotion, as well. His was a righteous anger, but it was anger nonetheless when He saw people abusing others in the temple of His Father (Matthew 21:12-13). In the Garden of Gethsemane, He also felt overwhelming sorrow that caused Him to sweat blood. He said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38).
These things do not present a “robotic angel” sent from heaven. These are the experiences of a real man who can serve as our High Priest because He can “sympathize with our weaknesses,” being “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). To think that the Son of God would choose such an existence, would choose to go through so much physical suffering, and to do so for the sole purpose of its culmination in death for our sins, is truly amazing to consider.
One thing we learn from the life of Jesus here on earth is His perfection. Even though He was fully human, He also lived a perfect life. There is mystery surrounding how He did that and we do not have to understand it in order to appreciate it and be thankful for it. Because He did it FOR US. He died for us. He lived perfectly for us. He is our perfect example, and there is much that we learn from Him human life about living.
He did not depend on superhuman powers to live for God. He depended on God just like we must do. He got alone by Himself to pray and seek His relationship with the Father (Luke 5:16). He made the choice to put God’s will above His own, stating in His prayer in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
Indeed, He was God in the flesh, fully human and fully divine. That is the mystery of the Incarnation, and while we do not understand it, we can be aware of and appreciative of the fact that He did not use His divinity to live a charmed life. God the Father did not make things “easy” for His Son, and Jesus did not use His powers to do that either.(Matthew 4:3-4). Rather, He humbled Himself and was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). By doing so, He showed us what a life lived in radical dedication to God looks like and He serves as our model for the radical way in which we should live in submission to the will of God (Hebrews 5:8-9).
Jesus relates to humans because of His humanity. In Christ, we have a Savior who is divine, and, therefore, can represent God to us. But He is also human and can represent us to God. Because He was a real human being who lived a life of love and sacrifice, He is “not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). It was for all of humanity that He lived and died. He took on human flesh to suffer, to bleed, to die as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God, and live eternally with Him in heaven (Hebrews 2:17). The “man Christ Jesus” is the one and only mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). We need no other mediator and we have no other mediator. Jesus alone is the one.
Jesus took our sins and our brokenness for the purpose of healing it. He did not come to condemn us(John 3:17). He came to save and help us. Through sacrificial love and commitment, by being willing to live and die as a human being, He showed His great compassion for us so that He could bring us to God and we could be what we need to be. Everything He did as a human being, He did to help the rest of us (Hebrews 2:14, 18). What amazing love!
The Bible describes Him as a faithful and merciful High Priest, representing us to God, bringing us to God, and offering the help that we need to get through this life. We cannot say that He does not understand. He understands how difficult the journey of human life is because He chose to take part in it. And He did it all to help us (Hebrews 4:15-16).
Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of man. He is the God-man who came into this world to bring us to Jesus. Let us bow our knees in humble adoration and praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for us through the human life of Jesus.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
