HUMANITY OF JESUS
Jesus is God. The Gospel of
John has especially aimed at emphasizing Jesus' divinity,
presenting Jesus as the Logos, pre-existent and divine, from its
first words – “In the beginning, the Word already existed. The Word was with
God and the Word was God”. The Gospel of John ends with Thomas's declaration
that he believed Jesus was God, "My Lord and my God”. (See John 1:1
and John 20:28). Gospel of Mathew quotes Jesus as saying, "All things
have been handed over to me by my Father (11:27).
Paradoxically, without ceasing to be God,
He was a human being. Jesus’ human incarnation is the basis of our being
justified by God; it was the act of pre-existent Christ voluntarily assuming a
human body and human nature. He didn’t give up His deity, but merely set aside
His right to His glory and power and subjected Himself to human limitations.
Romans 1:3, 4 makes this clear: ‘’He was a descendant of David with respect to
his humanity and was declared by the resurrection from the dead to be the
powerful Son of God’’. Heb 2:14 says ‘’since the children have flesh and blood,
He also shared the same things, so that by His death He might destroy the devil
who has the power of death’’. John claims in 1John 1:2 “We saw what He did n our
hands touched Him’’.
A generation after Jesus, as Christianity
spread over the mid-east it came in contact with belief systems prevalent in the
region dominated by Greek culture. Human nature being what is, many were
attracted by this “new religion”, not for its message of love or salvation
through grace, but for its novelty, and many syncretized belief systems were
born. The primary of them was Gnosticism. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause
of salvation is the “knowledge of" ("acquaintance with") the
divine. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did
Gnosticism, and there was even a Christian Gnostic sect that believed in Jesus’
divinity while rejecting His humanity. They believed material was evil and an
omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God – God of purity and holiness - cannot
live in a corrupt human body. This was the kind of heresy Paul fought against
consistently and preached and wrote insisting on Jesus’ humanity. The situation
appears to be opposite today with many claiming Jesus was a great moral
teacher, but not God! Islam says Jesus
was the greatest of Nabis, a mighty messenger of God, but not divine.
To us
it is as important to know Jesus is God as to understand He was also
completely human. The following scriptural passages will make it clear that
Jesus was completely man as if He were not God, and completely God as if He
were not man. In the course, we will also learn why He had to die in His human
flesh.
è2Corinth 8:9 You know the
generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes
he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich.
Jesus’ poverty mentioned here is not
material poverty. Most first-century Palestinians were poor anyway. Jesus
became poor by giving up His rights as God and becoming human. In His
incarnation, God voluntarily became man – the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As a
man, Jesus was subjected to place, time and other human limitations. He did not
give up His eternal power when He became man, but He set aside His glory and
His rights (see Philippians 2:5-7). In response to His Father’s will He limited
His power and knowledge. Christ became “poor” when He became human because He
set aside so much. Yet, by doing so He made us “rich” because we received salvation
and eternal life.
èJohn 1:1 - Before the world began, the
Word was there. The Word was with Christ, and the Word was Christ.
John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made his
dwelling among us.
Word became flesh, God became man – not
partly man, partly God, but fully man. People’s understanding of God was
partial, vague and in many cases completely wrong before Jesus came. God became
visible, tangible in Christ – “We saw him with our own eyes and touched him
with our own hands” asserts John in 1John 1:1. We cannot minimize His humanity, or His divinity – Jesus was both God and man.
èRomans 1:3, 4 As a human, he was born from
the family of David, but through the Holy Spirit he was shown to be Christ’s
powerful Son when he was raised from death.
Here Paul summarizes the humanity of
Jesus:
1. He came as human by natural descent
2. He was part of the Jewish royal line
through David, further proof of His humanity
3. He died on the cross as a man.
è Philippians 2:7, 8 ….. emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death
on a cross.
The incarnation was the act of a
pre-existent Christ, voluntarily assuming a human body, human nature. He set aside
His right to power, glory. In submission to God’s will, He limited His power
and knowledge, subjected to place, time and many other limitations – His humanity was unique. Free from sin, in His full
humanity He showed us everything in God’s character that can be conveyed in
human terms.
è Hebrews 10:5, 7 … You have prepared a body for Me. …. ‘Here I am, Christ. It is written about me in
the book of the law. I have come to do your will’
It was never God’s will and design that the
sacrifices under the law should be considered as making atonement for sin; they
were only designed to point out Jesus’ incarnation and consequent sacrificial
death. Therefore God prepared a body for
Jesus through a miraculous conception in
the womb of a virgin, the seed of the woman who shall bruise the head of the
serpent.
è Colossians 1:22 Yet now he has reconciled
you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result,
he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you
stand before him without a single fault.
In order to answer the accusation that
Jesus was only a spirit and not a true human being, Paul explained that Jesus’
physical body actually died. Jesus suffered death fully as a human so that we
could be assured that He died in our place.
è Hebrews 2:14 Because God's children are
human beings -- made of flesh and blood -- the Son also became flesh and blood.
For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the
power of the devil, who had the power of death.
Jesus had to become human so that He could
die and rise again in order to destroy the devil’s power over death. Only then He
could deliver those who lived in constant fear of death and free them to live
for Him. When we belong to God, we need not fear death, because we know death
is only doorway into eternal life.
CONCLUSION: Part of 1John 4:1-3 makes it very clear ……..do not believe every spirit, but test the
spirits to see whether they are from God…… By this you will know the Spirit of
God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is
from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from
God.
Jesus was the perfect man. The only one who
openly claimed He was sinless. St Paul
In our life, our ministry, in our witness,
in our thought, speech, deed, let us reflect Jesus, the true God and perfect Man.
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