God's Human Nature Series

Superman has always been popular as a comic book character, and I can remember racing across

the snow in a blizzard to trade comic books with a friend in order to get some new adventures of this

heaven-like hero of humanity. In our day now the movies of superman have made millions because

they appeal to the universal human fantasy that man can be God-like, and fly on his own power, be

invincible as he fights the forces of evil. We love to have our super heroes. This is true in every

culture. Some of the early Christians exalted Jesus to the level of a superman. It is understandable why

they did, but the majority of Christians got together and declared these Christians heretics by making

Jesus a superman. They were guilty of thinking too highly of the deity of our Lord. This seems very

strange to us, but the world is full of strange things. There is a rare metal called gallium which melts

at 86 degrees, so that if you held it in your hand for awhile it would begin to melt. That does not fit

our image of a metal, but it is a fact. It seems equally unlikely that anyone could think too highly of

Christ's deity. How could this be possible?

The Christians who were called heretical were saying that Jesus was so divine than he could

never be truly human. They so exalted the deity of Christ that they denied his humanity. They said

he could not have been a real man for human nature is evil, and a holy God could never take on a

human nature. These people were called Docetists from the Greek word meaning to seem. They said

Jesus only seemed to be human.

Their theology has come down to us in the Acts of John which was written in the second century.

In it Jesus does come down from the cross and does not suffer at all. That would be totally unworthy

of the Son of God. The people saw him suffer on the cross, but that was only an illusion. Jesus

appears to John and reveals to him that he is really not suffering at all. It is all a trick, and it is like

superman acting weak when he is not. This superman image of Jesus became popular, and we have

Gnostic documents from the third and fourth century that tell us Jesus did not really die. It was all an

illusion and Jesus was really laughing as he watched them nailing him to the cross, for it was not

real. The church declared these writings heretical for they rejected the real humanity of Jesus.

The New Testament does not give us this superman concept at all. The Jesus of the New

Testament could not stop bullets, for he could not even stop whip on his back. It cut through his

skin and made him bleed, as did the crown of thorns on his head. The spear went through his side

and the nails through his hands. He had to endure the pain a suffering of a fully human body.

The battle raged for centuries between the two groups with one saying it was all illusion and the

other saying the pain was real in a real human body. Orthodox Christianity said Jesus was not a fake

man, but he was totally real as a man. One heresy after another tried to deny the full humanity of

Christ, but the church stuck to the Scripture and said he was fully real in his humanity. The battle

goes on yet today, for many believe Jesus was fully God, but not fully man. They say his humanity

was only a disguise. Charles Colson in The Struggle For Men's Hearts and Minds tells of a survey

by Christianity Today in which people were asked if they believed Jesus was fully God and fully

man. Among the general public only 26 percent said yes. Among evangelical Christians only 43

percent said yes. That means that the majority of believers are still rejecting one of the major

doctrines of orthodox Christianity. They do not realize that they are heretical in their beliefs.

All of this brings us again to the introductory paragraph of Paul's letter to the Romans. In it he

spells out the essence of the Gospel which centers in the two characteristics of Jesus, which are his

humanity and his deity. Like the two ends of shoelaces, these two realities tie up the Gospel

package. If you cut one side off you lose it all. Paul says in v. 3 that the Gospel regards God's Son as

to his human nature and then in v.4 he says it regards God's Son as to his divine nature. Only a man

could come from the seed of David. The word used here is spermatos. Jesus had a human nature that