Welcome back, my dear friends. In my last study, we looked at the deity of the God/man Jesus Christ. We will now look at His human nature or His humanity. These two lessons are essential in building the foundational picture of the God/man. Without an understanding of these two persons of Jesus Christ, you will have difficulty grasping the Hypostatic Union of Christ, which I will discuss in the next lesson. In that lesson, I will bring together the two persons into one person, the God/man.
Let us begin looking at the man Jesus Christ.
But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, 5 to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own sons. Galatians 4:4-5 (TLB)
When I speak of the humanity of Christ, it is necessary to begin with the virgin birth of Christ. Scripture clearly asserts that Jesus was conceived in the womb of his mother, Mary, by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and without a human father.
14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name Him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14 (NASB)
34 But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God. Luke 1:34-35 (NASB)
The Son of God as Man
14 Since we, God’s children, are human beings—made of flesh and blood—he became flesh and blood too by being born in human form; for only as a human being could he die and in dying break the power of the devil who had the power of death. 15 Only in that way could he deliver those who through fear of death have been living all their lives as slaves to constant dread.
16 We all know he did not come as an angel but as a human being—yes, a Jew. 17 And it was necessary for Jesus to be like us, his brothers, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God, a Priest who would be both merciful to us and faithful to God in dealing with the sins of the people. 18 For since he himself has now been through suffering and temptation, he knows what it is like when we suffer and are tempted, and he is wonderfully able to help us. Hebrews 2:14-18 (TLB)
7 but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bondservant and being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:7 (NASB)
“Made in the likeness of men” refers to the human nature Christ assumed. The “form of a servant” denotes the position or state which He entered.
The humanity of Christ was unique. History supplies us no analogy nor can His humanity be illustrated by anything in nature. It is unparalleled not only to our fallen human nature but also to fallen Adam’s.
The Lord Jesus was born into circumstances totally different from those in which Adam first found himself.
His humanity was produced neither by the natural procreation of a man and women (as is ours) nor by special creation, as was Adam’s.
7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
The humanity of Christ was under the immediate agency of the Holy Spirit, supernaturally “conceived” of the virgin.
34 But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God. Luke 1:34-35 (NASB)
His body was “prepared” by God…
5 That is why Christ said as he came into the world, “O God, the blood of bulls and goats cannot satisfy you, so you have made ready this body of mine for me to lay as a sacrifice upon your altar. Hebrews 10:5 (TLB)
yet “made of a woman.”
4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, Galatians 4:4 (NASB)
Christ’s humanity also is unique because it never had a separate existence of its own. The eternal Son assumed (at the moment of Mary’s conception) a human nature.
My friends, are you beginning to understand that the God/man was one person with two natures residing inside of Him.
The doctrinal importance of the virgin birth is seen in at least two areas.
1. It shows that salvation ultimately must come from the Lord, just as God had promised that the “seed” of the woman would ultimately destroy the serpent.
15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15 (NLT)
So, God brought it about by his own power not through mere human effort.
2. The virgin birth made possible the uniting of full deity and full humanity in one person. God used this means to send his Son into the world as a man.
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (NLT)
If we think for a moment of other ways in which Christ might have come to the earth, none of them would so clearly unite humanity and deity in one person.
It would have been possible for God to create Jesus as a complete human being in heaven and send him to descend from heaven to earth without the benefit of any human parent.
But then it would have been extremely hard for us to see how Jesus could be fully human like we are and be a part of the human race that physically descended from Adam.
Christ’s humanity means that He is fallen humanity’s representative.
Because of the horrors of sin and death that came through the original human pair, (Adam and Eve) the one to remedy this tragic decision must be himself a human, the seed of the woman.
Jesus is, thus, the last Adam, the true human in whom all fallen humanity can be reconciled to God. The humanity that Christ assumed was complete: he took to himself all that it means to be human — body, soul, mind, and will — with sin being the only exception.
- He was willing to be born in a dirty, filthy place — not the pretty, clean stable of Christmas pageants and Christmas cards.
- He was circumcised on the eighth day.
- He was willing to grow to adulthood in a miserable town named Nazareth.
- He was willing to be an unknown carpenter.
- He could have had the shekinah glory with Him all the time, but He did not. He did not have a halo around His head as we see in so many paintings of Him.
- Judas had to kiss Him the night He was betrayed so that the crowd would know who the man was they were to capture.
- He did not stand out from other men by some kind of inner light or glory around Him.
He was a human being, but He was God manifested in the flesh. He laid aside the prerogatives of His deity. How can we be sure that all He did was lay aside the prerogatives of His deity and not just give up His deity?
After He had finished His ministry, He gathered His own about Him on His last night on earth, and He prayed a very wonderful prayer to His heavenly Father. One thing He said in that prayer was this:
5 Father! Give me glory in your presence now, the same glory I had with you before the world was made. John 17:5 (GNT)
Notice this carefully: He prayed to have His glory restored. He did not pray to have His deity restored, because He had never given up His deity. But now that He is returning to heaven, He is asking that His glory, the glory He had with His Father, be restored.
Obviously, He had laid that aside. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation.”
In his humanity, Jesus experienced ordinary human growth and development. We read that when the family returned to Nazareth after presenting Him in the Temple to God.
39 When Jesus’ parents had fulfilled all the requirements of the law of the Lord, they returned home to Nazareth in Galilee. 40 There the child grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom, and God’s favor was on him. Luke 2:39-40 (NLT)
The New Testament only records one story of Jesus’s childhood: the episode in the temple, when his parents left him in Jerusalem. (Luke 2:41-50). After that incident, Luke tells us.
51 Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart. 52 Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people. Luke 2:51-52(NLT)
As a human, Jesus grew intellectually, physically, spiritually, and relationally.
John MacArthur tells us in The Incarnation of the Triune God:
“That He was born of a Jewish mother. He lived in a little village in Nazareth. He ate the way they ate. He talked in the language they talked. He transported Himself the way they did. He wore the clothes they wore, took care of Himself the way they took care of themselves. He ate what they ate. He drank what they drank.
In other words, He took on the scheme (pattern) of their life, the customs of their culture. So, by personal experience, He adapted to the outer manifestation of the time in which He lived. He was man at the deepest part of His nature. And He adapted to man in that climate, and that culture, and that time, and experienced all of their experiences, fully God, fully man, the mystery of the incarnation, and sinless all the while.
Do not think of Jesus as less than fully human. He was fully human. Did people come into this world through the natural process of birth, through the womb of a mother? So did He. Had others been wrapped in swaddling clothes? So was He. Had others grown up? So did He. Did others have brothers and sisters? He did. Did others learn a trade and work? So did He. Were other men at times hungry, and thirsty, and weary, and asleep? So was He. Were others grieved and angry? So was He. Did others weep? So did He. Did others rejoice? So did He. Were others destined to die? So did He. Did others suffer pain? So did He. Were others loved and hated? So was He. He was a man, in the form and the fashion of man.”
He suffered during His entire life. Since Jesus began to speak of His coming sufferings towards the end of His life, we are often prone to think that the final agonies constituted the whole of His sufferings.
Yet His whole life was a life of suffering. It was the servant-life of the Son of God, the life of the Sinless One in daily association with sinners, the life of the Son of God in a sin-cursed world.
The way of obedience was for Him at the same time a way of suffering. He suffered from the repeated assaults of Satan, from the hatred and unbelief of His own people, and from the persecution of His enemies.
In the last analysis all the sufferings of the Son of Man resulted from the fact that He took the substitutionary place of sinners. These facts include:
(1) He who was the Lord God of the universe had to occupy a menial position of a bondservant or slave, and although He had the inherent right to command as the Son of God, He was duty bound to obey.
(2) He who was pure and holy had to live in a sinful, polluted atmosphere, in daily association with sinners and was constantly reminded of the greatness of the guilt with which He was burdened by the sins of man.
(3) His perfect awareness and clear anticipation, from the very beginning of His life, of the extreme sufferings that would, as it were, overwhelmed Him in the end. He knew exactly what was coming, and the outlook was far from cheerful.
(4) Finally, the hardships of life, the temptations of the devil, the hatred and rejection of the people, and the abuse and persecutions to which He was subjected.
His sufferings were unique. We sometimes speak of the “ordinary” sufferings of Christ when we think of those sufferings that resulted from the ordinary causes of misery in the world.
We should remember that these causes were far more than the ordinary sufferings that you and I experience. No one could feel the tragedy of pain and grief and moral evil as Jesus could. Besides these more common sufferings there also were the sufferings caused by the fact that God the Father caused our iniquities to come upon Him like a flood.
The sufferings of the Savior were not purely natural; they also were the result of a positive deed of God,
10 The Lord says, “It was my plan to crush him and cause him to suffer. I made his life an offering to pay for sin. But he will see all his children after him. In fact, he will continue to live. My plan will be brought about through him. Isaiah 53:10 (NIV)
More specific sufferings of the Savior also may be considered, such as the temptations in the desert as well as the agonies of Gethsemane and Golgotha.
The temptations of Christ formed an integral part of His sufferings. They are temptations that are encountered in the pathway of suffering. His public ministry began with a period of temptation, and even after that time, temptations were repeated at intervals right on into the darkness of Gethsemane. It was only by entering into the very trials of men, into their temptations, that Jesus could become a truly sympathetic High Priest and attain to the heights of triumphant perfection.
14 We have a great high priest. He has gone up into heaven. He is Jesus the Son of God. So let us hold firmly to what we say we believe. 15 We have a high priest who can feel it when we are weak and hurting. We have a high priest who has been tempted in every way, just as we are. But he did not sin. Hebrews 4:14-15 (NIV)
Join me next time, as I bring the deity of the Son of God together with the humanness of the Son of man, creating the man they call Jesus Christ.
Until next time, my friends, may His mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you.
