One of my earliest articles from way back in May 2011 explored the deity of Jesus. In this one, we are going to thoroughly explore His humanity.
The Hypostatic Union Strikes Again!
My regular readers have often encountered my mention of a divine mystery theologians have labelled the “hypostatic union.” This term means that, while remaining 100% God in nature, Jesus set aside His godhead powers and took on the nature and limitations of His 100% humanity (see Philippians 2:6-11). That means Jesus is completely God and completely Man at the same time. These two aspects of Jesus’ essential nature are absolute and inseparable; neither is greater in quality or quantity than the other and they both coexist eternally.
“How does all that work?” you may ask. The answer to that poser is way above our pay grades!
As a mystery, it can be briefly summarized as I have here and accepted by faith as true and factual. However, it cannot be more deeply analyzed or defined without straying into heresy. Why? Because it requires our sin-corrupted, finite intellects to comprehend the Infinite. Point-of-fact: two of the major heresies which cropped up during the first 300 years after Jesus’ Ascension involve one or more bozos trying to pound the square peg of this particular mystery into the round hole of their own intellect — and failing miserably!🥴
God Became a Human Being
Father God Himself first foretold Jesus’ incarnation when He pronounced judgment upon Satan immediately after Adam and Eve’s rebellion in Eden:
So the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. Genesis 3:14-15
Men have seed, women have eggs; that’s simply basic biology. So what’s all this about a “seed of the woman?” It prophesies a Child born apart from the seed of an earthly father Who would crush the devil’s authority on this earth, though Satan would wound Him in the process.
Since I’ve dealt with the topic of spiritual authority elsewhere here at Miscellaneous Ramblings, I’ll let you read that at your leisure. Here’s our takeaway from this verse: from the very moment of God’s judgment on Satan as well as Adam and Eve’s sin, He foretold the coming of a Savior conceived and born of an earthly mother without any procreative contribution from an earthly father.
Centuries later, the prophet Isaiah wrote:
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel .
Isaiah 7:14
As you may already know, the Hebrew name “Immanuel” literally translates as “with us is God.” This both confirms the prior Genesis prophesy of the Messiah’s virgin birth and also directly proclaims the resulting Child would be God in human flesh.
The Implications
I’ve said all that to say this: for God to redeem mankind, He needed not only to have a man willing to sacrifice himself for the sins of all mankind, He also needed someone qualified to do so. He needed an Adam v2.0 who would be:
- Devoid of the indelible sin nature inherent to every man since Adam v1.0, and;
- Tempted with selfishness as Adam v1.0 was, yet pass rather than fail the test.
The only way to produce such a man was for God to father one Himself by means of a human woman, a virgin, and then allow His offspring to be tempted by Satan.
Here’s how that played out historically:
This was not the only occasion where Jesus was tempted. Satan gave Him more than a few opportunities to choose selfishly during His life and ministry, right up until the moment of His death on the Cross. Rather than cursing His tormentors and mockers, He asked His Father to forgive them because of their ignorance of both Who He is and the import of what they were doing.
All of this led the writer of Hebrews to state:
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin .
Hebrews 4:15
Let’s take a look at what the Greek lexicon says about some of the words in that verse:
- sympathize (sumpatheo)
- 1) to be affected with the same feeling as another, to sympathise with
2) to feel for, have compassion on - weaknesses (astheneia)
- 1) lack of strength, weakness, infirmity
2) lack of strength and capacity required to:
a) to understand a thing
b) to do things great and glorious
c) to restrain corrupt desires
d) to bear trials and troubles - all points (pas)
- each, every, any, all, the whole, everyone, all things, everything
- tempted (peirazo)
- to try or test ones faith, virtue, character, by enticement to sin; to solicit to sin, to tempt; of the temptations of the devil
- sin (hamartia)
- 1) to miss the mark
2) to err, be mistaken
3) to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong
4) to wander from the law of God, violate Gods law, sin
How Did Jesus Pull It Off?
This leads us to a hotly-debated topic among various theological camps. Did Jesus overcome temptation by:
- The power of the Holy Spirit Who had descended upon Him at His water baptism, or;
- His innate power as a member of the godhead?
The issue being raised is this: how could Jesus as God-in-Sandals possibly experience actual temptation to sin because God is intrinsically holy and cannot be tempted to be/do otherwise? (see James 1:13b)
Here’s the problem with that premise: if we accept it as true and Jesus was indeed immune to any possibility of sinning against His Father because He is God, then Hebrews 4:15 is an outright lie on its face and our High Priest has zero clue whatsoever about our weaknesses, much less having any ability to sympathize with us. Why is that? Because He would have been able to call on resources the rest of humanity has no access to (i.e., His pre-incarnate godhead nature and power).
Paul sheds some light on all this in the 2nd chapter of Philippians:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation , taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:5-7
- no reputation (kenoo)
- to empty, make empty
a) of Christ, he laid aside equality with or the form of God
b) deprive of force, render vain, useless, of no effect
However, if Jesus successfully resisted temptation by the power of the Holy Spirit Who had Spirit-baptized Him at His water baptism, then we can draw a completely different set of conclusions:
- Hebrews 4:15 is indeed true: Jesus was indeed tempted just as we are.
- He truly has precise, firsthand understanding of exactly what we have to deal with and therefore has empathetic compassion on us.
- Temptation to sin can be overcome using the same mechanism Jesus used: the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
- He is our Prototype, the perfect Example of how to live a godly life, overcoming temptation to sin whenever it inevitably comes around.
How that all works under the hood is yet another divine mystery. We will never grasp the machanism this side of glory — and maybe not even then!
The Son of Man
Throughout the gospel accounts, Jesus consistently referred to Himself as “The Son of Man.” I believe He used this moniker for 2 reasons:
- He was consistently proclaiming His humanity, and;
- Every time He actually proclaimed His divinity, people wanted to kill Him. 😊
Further Scriptural Evidence of Jesus’ Humanity
- He was born a human child — Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 2:7
- He matured into adulthood — Luke 2:40
- He overcame temptations to sin — Matthew 4:1-11
- He got hungry — Matthew 4:2
- He became thirsty — John 19:28
- He grew weary — John 4:6
- He slept — Mark 4:38
- He cried — John 11:35
- He experienced deep emotional distress — Matthew 26:38
- He suffered physically — Luke 22:44
- He died physically — Matthew 27:50
Jesus’ Miracles
The final point I would like to make concerns His many, many miracles. While He indeed turned water into wine, fed thousands by multiplying boys’ lunches, walked on water, and calmed storms by verbal command, the vast majority of them were healings and deliverance from demonic torment.
Not only did Jesus perform the slew of notable healings specifically recorded in the gospels, but also countless other miracles too innumerable for the writers to recount individually.
And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
John 21:25
How Did He Do All That?
There is a huge misconception running around the Body of Christ and it’s this: Jesus was able to perform all those miracles because He is God incarnate. Actually, if one carefully reads the gospels, they show He performed all of them as a human being — albeit a sinless One — empowered by the Holy Spirit. Point-of-fact: He performed no recorded miracles prior to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him and His subsequent temptations by Satan.
For He is sent by God. He speaks God’s words, for God gives Him the Spirit without limit.
John 3:34 NLT
Jesus had the Spirit without limits because He was without sin. Us? Not so much!😩
Now if Christ had employed His pre-incarnate godhead powers to perform His miracles, we are reduced to being awestruck spectators, shouting, “Yay, God! Woohoo!” But if He indeed performed all of them as a human being empowered by the Holy Spirit, He then becomes an Example for us to emulate.
Our primary purpose as Christ-followers is to not only become increasingly like Him in our personal character (moral purity, loving behavior), but also to be increasingly like Him in power. The two are scripturally inseparable. And since the Word of God clearly states all of this, we are therefore without excuse.
Thanks for reading!
