INTRODUCTION:
Jesus Christ is the heart of the Christian faith. He is the central fact of Christianity. Without Jesus Christ there is no Christianity. Therefore it is incumbent upon any study of the Christian faith to focus on the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.
THE HUMANITY OF JESUS CHRIST:
It is just as clearly the teaching of the Holy Scriptures that Jesus Christ is human as that He is divine. More than seventy-five times the Bible refers to Jesus Christ as the Son of Man.
[1] He was born of a human mother, and thus had a human body:
“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born underthe law, to redeem those who under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” [Galatians 4:4]
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.” [Matthew 1:18]
“And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.” [Matthew 2:11]
[2] He entered the stream of humanity without the stain of sinfulness:
For God to enter the stream of humanity and thereby be truly human, He had to have a human birth, but a human birth void of any sinfulness. It is an undeniable tenet of the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is the eternal, uncreated Son of God, forever co-existent with and co-essential with God the Father and with God the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul wrote these words:
“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up into glory.” [1 Timothy 3:16]
There are two significant facts that make the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ an undeniable element of the Christian faith: THE PREEXISTENCE and THE SINLESSNESS of Jesus Christ.
Evangelical Christian believes that human life begins at the moment of conception, and everything germane to that embryo becoming what he or she will be in life is immediately established. This is known as Traducianism. In other words, Christians do not believe in the preexistence of the soul of a human being. But the fact remains that Jesus Christ is the eternal, uncreated Son of God, forever co-existent with and co-essential with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. God cannot cease to exist. Therefore, the Son of God could not cease to be in order to become the Son of Man.
The Apostle Paul states clearly that all naturally engendered offspring of Adam’s race are born with a natural inclination to evil:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” [Romans
5:12]
But Jesus Christ was and is and always will be the eternal, uncreated Son of God, forever co-existent with and co-essential with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, and therefore forever without sin as to His divine nature, He had to enter the stream of human life in a manner other than by natural generation.
The Scriptures clearly declare that Jesus Christ was human as well as divine:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” [John 1:14]
By this it is understood that Jesus Christ did not simply dwell in flesh, but actually became flesh, and in this state lived temporarily on the earth.
The Scriptures also declare:
“Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.”
[Hebrews 2:14]
It is evident therefore from the undeniable teachings of the Holy Scriptures that:
(a) Jesus Christ is forever the eternal, uncreated Son of God, co-existent with and co-essential with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit; therefore He has always existed, and could not cease to be in order to become.
(b) Jesus Christ entered the stream of humanity, becoming in very essence human, and did this through a human mother, without the aid of a human father. [See Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:26-35]
(c) Jesus Christ received His physical body through His mother, Mary, and at the same time retained His eternal, divine nature.
(d) All naturally engendered offspring of Adam’s race are born with a sinful nature, giving evidence to the fact that the sin nature, while inherited from the federal head of the whole human race, and a part of each so engendered person, is passed through the male side of the human race. Theologically this is stated thusly:
“Carnality, or inbred sin, is that active conscious tendency to evil inherited from Adam as the federal head of the whole human race, transmitted wholly through immediate ancestry, not from them, and is not affected in any way in the process of its descent.”
[3] Jesus referred to Himself as “a man” or “the Son of Man.”
“But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God.”
[John 8:40]
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him,…” [Matthew 25:31]
[4] Jesus became subject to the same laws and limitations as other humans.
(a) He grew. [Luke 2:52]
(b) He learned. [Luke 2:40, 46]
(c) He hungered. [Matthew 4:2]
(d) He thirsted. [John 4:7; 19:28]
(e) He was weary. [John 4:6]
(f) He slept. [Matthew 8:24]
(g) He expressed emotion. [Matthew 9:36; Mark 3:5; 10:21-22; John 11:33, 35; 11:38; 12:27]
(h) He was tempted. [Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:13; Hebrews 2:18; 4:15]
(i) He was sensitive to pain. [Hebrews 2:10; 5:8; 13:12]
(j) He died. [John 19:33]
(k) He was buried. [John 19:42]
[5] Jesus sensed the need for prayer and a relationship with God the Father.
[See Matthew 14:23; Mark 1:35; Luke 22:41-45. It is recorded twenty-five times that Jesus prayed to God.]
[6] Jesus appeared to others in human form, even to the point of identifying His human nationality.
[See John 4:9; 20:15; 21:4-5]
Conclusion
In summary, Holy Scriptures do not prove Jesus Christ to be a “mere man,” as some have supposed, and neither do they prove Him to be “an angel or an archangel,” as others have supposed. The Bible, The Word of God, declares unequivocally that Jesus Christ was fully human, with a human body just like all other human beings. Jesus had heart that beat just like yours, His blood flowed properly in His veins, He breathed air like you and I, His digestive system functioned just like ours; He had to shave, He had to wear sandals because the rocks of the ground would have ripped and cut His skin At the same time, His Spirit was void of any sinfulness.
It is very important to understand the being of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not want to profess to others that we worship God and believe in His Son Jesus Christ, while having not an understanding of who He really is. Make no mistake about it, there are people who will use logic as an attempt to trump the existence and characteristics of Jesus. Do it seem logical that a man could also be God? No it does not, but guess what? God is not confined to logic, He is not confined to anything which He created.
Focus…focus on the supernatural being of the God we serve. For after all, if He wasn’t supernatural, He would not have been God.
