And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
1 Timothy 3:16
Man has searched for God throughout history. From grotesque idols to psychic phenomenon, through crude rites and elaborate ceremonies; man seeks to venerate the Being who is there but unknown. Since the day Adam hid himself from God, God has removed Himself from the common knowledge of man, leaving man to grope in ignorance for knowledge of the Holy; unable to imagine God’s character, unwilling to admit God’s loftiness. Unable to learn of God, man has created god in his own likeness, to his own satisfaction, and for his own benefit.
This cloud of ignorance about God has been penetrated from time to time, as God has chosen to reveal Himself in some small measure. To select individuals, chosen for reasons known only to God, He has shown Himself and His character; providing fleeting glances into the reality that lies beyond man’s ability to know. These revelations of His person and character, growing progressively more complete, were given almost exclusively to one nation, and brought a unique cohesiveness to the descendants of Abraham as the nation to whom God had especially chosen to reveal Himself. But even such direct manifestations of Himself failed to secure the allegiance of Israel to God for more than short periods of time. And the remainder of the world continued in spiritual darkness; the God who must reveal Himself was still largely unknown.
But then, at a time carefully chosen and in a way that man could understand, God revealed Himself. Jesus Christ, who was fully God, became man. He did not simply appear as a man, as He had done at various times in the past; He did not simply assume the role of a man. He took upon Himself the character of a man, the flesh and body of a man, the limitations of a man, the mortality of a man. He became one of us. One New Testament writer states this truth in these words:
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Hebrews 1:1-3a (NIV)
Paul said it simply in the words of our text, "God was manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16)."
What would prompt Jesus Christ, the second person in the Godhead, to leave the glories of Heaven and come to this depraved world? Why would He lay aside infinite majesty, inexhaustible power, boundless knowledge, and eternal life to be born of a woman, to be restricted by a human nature and a fleshly body? What motivation could bring God to man?
The Scriptures teach that God created man in His own image, and gave man dominion over all creation. God delighted in man, and came, we are told by Moses, to walk and talk with man in the pleasant atmosphere of the garden of Eden. We may suppose that this man was a specimen of manhood and humanity such as has never graced God’s creation, excepting the person of Jesus Christ, since the day God pronounced him good. Taught daily by God, working in a perfect environment, having an intricate understanding of the world around him, he was the exact antithesis of the popularly supposed "cave man" of the past.
If Biblical historians are correct, this man lived fully one sixth of all recorded history. He was so healthy and his environment was so free of pollution, even for several generations after his sin, that the life expectancy was over 9 times as great as ours. If you and I were near death, and were as old today as Adam at his death, we would have lived through almost all of America’s recorded history—not just Columbus’ landing in 1492, but the landing near Boston by a Norseman named Leif in 1001 A.D.
Eating of the trees and herbs created immediately by God, not required to labor for food but free to labor for knowledge and to attain his full potential, he was a man among men. He had the perfect spouse, not simply chosen for him, but created by God especially for him. Living without shame or fear, in perfect health, and with abilities beyond our imagination, he was a man beyond anything we might dream of being.
But this man, with all his manliness, strength, and special communion with God, sinned. Not a casual, unthinking, "I might get by" kind of sin. His was a sin of willful rebellion, of clear disobedience. His beloved wife, Eve, was deceived by Satan (1 Timothy 2:14). She then invited Adam to enjoy the sin with her, to eat of that which God had forbidden. Without taking liberties with the text of Scripture, I urge you to place yourself in Adam’s position at that moment. His wife, the one creature in all creation made especially for him and given him by God, had committed a forbidden act; she had been deceived. God had promised death to Adam if he committed that act. Though Adam had no experience with death, he certainly knew it was not something he would desire. God would now be offended at Eve. Adam must join his beloved wife, or be separated from her by the punishment God had promised. At the cost of his death and the death of all his posterity, Adam sinned.
And God executed His judgment. There was no more communion between God and man. Man no longer had time to reach his potential, he must now labor for his bread. Driven from his perfect environment into a world sharing his curse, the effects of sin became gradually more evident in his life and in the world around him. And, as we often say about much of life, things went from bad to worse. We continue to see sin’s ever increasing devastation around us. Man had become and remains spiritually dead, severed from any hope of communion with God; and God was rightly offended at man. The One Who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil (Habakkuk 1:13)" withdrew His fellowship from Adam and his rebellious offspring.
Even though man offended the righteous and holy God, God purposed to restore the fellowship between Himself and fallen man. But this restoration had to be accomplished without doing violence to God’s immutable law—the wages of sin is death (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23). Someone must die the death required by God’s law in order to free man from the penalty of death. No man could pay the penalty; all men were already spiritually dead. So God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came to pay the price for our life—His own death.
The New Testament always links the coming of Christ in the flesh to man’s need of redemption. Jesus stated His purpose for coming as a man very simply:
For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Luke 19:10
The Apostle John stated the purpose in broader terms, but maintained the necessity of man’s redemption:
He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
1 John 3:8
The humanity of Jesus Christ is a truth of vital importance. It is central to the message of redemption. The very first man, Adam, sinned against God, plunging all his posterity into spiritual death—absolute separation from God. As our father, he sold himself and all his descendants into perpetual slavery to the self-proclaimed god of this world; severing for all mankind the possibility of communion with God and assuring our ignorance of heavenly knowledge. It became necessary that we be redeemed; bought back from the bondage of sin and given freedom to once again know God and commune with Him. Jesus Christ accomplished this two fold task by becoming one of us.
A distinction must be made, however, between Christ’s humanity and our sinfulness. Our inherent sinful nature, the result of Adam’s transgression that is passed from generation to generation, is not essential to humanity. Adam was very much a man prior to his sin, and continued as a man after his sin. The change that occurred as a result of his rebellion against God was primarily a change in his relationship to God, though it brought certain consequences of a physical nature. But Adam was very much a man with limited strength, knowledge, and ability and with certain needs and desires even before his sin. It is this human nature, as distinct from sinful nature, that Jesus Christ took on.
Jesus Christ took upon Himself human nature with all its restrictions and limitations, but not our sinful nature. The Psalmist described this sinful nature of fallen man in his prayer for repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Psalm 51:5 (NIV)
But the sinless condition of Jesus at birth was foretold by the angel in his announcement to Mary:
". . . The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. . . ."
Luke 1:35 (NIV emphasis added)
Not only was Jesus holy and sinless at birth, He maintained His holiness throughout His earthly life. Referring to Jesus Christ,
the Apostle Peter wrote, "[He] did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22)." And the writer of Hebrews assures us that, even though He was tempted in every way that we are tempted, He remained without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus Christ was a man in every way. His humanity is evidenced throughout Scripture. His experiences, His needs, His reactions all attest to His genuine human nature. He was born of a woman, like you and I. Luke records His growth through childhood in these statements:
And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom.
Luke 2:40
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Luke 2:52
As a man, Jesus experienced fatigue ("Jesus therefore being wearied with His journey, sat thus by the well." John 4:6). He had the need for sleep ("The boat was covered with the waves; but He was asleep." Matt. 8:24). He hungered as a man ("And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He afterward hungered." Matt. 4:2; "Now in the morning as He returned to the city, He hungered." Matt. 21:18). John records His thirst ("Jesus . . . saith, ‘I thirst.’" John 19:28). Even His anger and indignation is recorded for us ("But when Jesus saw it, He was moved with indignation." Mark 10:14; "And when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart," Mark 3:5). But in contrast to that anger, we know that He acted with compassion ("But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them," Matt. 9:36; "and being moved with compassion (toward the leper), He stretched forth His hand, and touched him," Mark 1:41).
Usually when we think of Jesus, we first think of His love ("Jesus looking upon him, loved him," Mark 10:21; "One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved," John 13:23). Of course, the One Who promised us joy Himself experienced joy ("These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full," John 15:11). But with His joy was a measure of very real sorrow and anxiety ("And He . . . began to be sorrowful and sore troubled," Matt. 26:37; "Jesus wept," John 11:35; "Now is my soul troubled," John 12:27). And, as a man, it was necessary that He be tempted ("Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil," Matt. 4:1; "For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," Heb. 4:15; "For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted," Heb. 2:18). As an example to us, He met each of life’s situations with fervent prayer ("He went up into the mountain apart to pray," Matt. 14:23; "Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears," Heb. 5:7; "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground," Luke 22:44). Not willing to exclude Himself from any purely human experience, it is recorded that Jesus suffered ("He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed," Is. 53:5; "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer," Luke 24:46; "Though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered," Heb. 5:8; "for it became [God] . . . to make [Jesus] the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering," Heb. 2:10). And, though He never committed sin, Jesus partook of the ultimate consequence of man’s sin; death ("And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit," Matt. 27:50; "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," I Cor. 15:3).
While we have seen . . . Christ was Deity in the highest sense, possessed of all the attributes and titles of God and free from any taint of sin or error, we are not to forget that He was also perfect humanity, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and that during His earthly career He lived on this earth as a man among men, subject to all of the trials and temptations and sufferings which are common to men. He is as truly one with us on the side of His humanity as He is one with God on the side of His Deity. As a babe He came to consciousness; as a child and youth He "advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men;" and as a man He fulfilled perfectly the divine ideal of what God made man and meant man to be. All of the rest of us are only sketches or suggestions of manhood, having had our speech and action and sometimes even our bodies grotesquely marred by the destructive influences of sin. He alone had a strictly normal development, having been born into the world without the fatal entail of original sin, and having grown from childhood to manhood governed always by purity and righteousness. From the mouth of His mother He first learned the sacred things of God, and at her knee He often knelt to pray. He grew up in the obscure town of Nazareth. Doubtless the wonders of His infancy were kept a secret by Joseph and Mary, although after His crucifixion Mary may have related these to the intimate group of the disciples and thus they may have found their way into Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel. In all probability as He grew up His companions and the family saw nothing in Him to lead them to believe that He was a supernatural Being, but were only impressed with His remarkable mental force and moral purity. It seems probable that Joseph died before Jesus entered upon His public ministry, and that since He was the firstborn the responsibility of supporting His mother and the rest of the family fell upon His shoulders. As a carpenter He knew what every-day toil was. How much we should have missed if the Last Adam had appeared on earth as did the first Adam, mature! Instead He has passed through all the stages of human experience, from childhood to manhood. He knows human life fully, by personal experience.
(Loraine Boettner, Studies in Theology, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1975, p. 182-184.)
With this understanding of the very real human nature of Jesus Christ, what application of this truth can be realized in our lives? I suggest two areas that should be influenced by a correct understanding of Christ’s humanity.
First, Jesus Christ is the epitome of what man was created to be. While we can never attain the ideal He models for us, we should never excuse anything less. Jesus lived in the same sinful world, was surrounded by sinful and ignorant people, and struggled with the same human limitations; yet He was always victorious. When we are less than all that we should be, it is due to our own failure. To excuse our failure is to confuse our sinfulness with our humanness; it is to accept something less than God’s ideal as our standard. With all that is in us, we are to strive to be like Him, and we must confess as sin our failure to attain that ideal.
Next, we have in Jesus proof that human nature is not inherently sinful. Adam was human before he sinned and we will retain our human nature throughout eternity. Jesus Christ took on human nature and the Scripture seems to indicate that He, too, will retain that nature throughout eternity. Yet He did no sin. By accepting humanness as sinfulness, we become easy prey to much error. In Jesus’ day, the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the body, possibly due to Greek doctrine about the innate
sinfulness of all flesh. Later, the Gnostics taught that God could never become man; indeed, that the highest God could not even directly make man, since all flesh was sinful. Today, cults and religious groups teach the same thing in varying degrees. The monastic lifestyle of many religious groups is a consequence of their acceptance of the sinfulness of human nature.
We must make no mistake—all men are sinners. But we are sinners due to sin, not due to human nature. We must not accept the common lie, "To err is human." To err is sinful. But sin can be controlled, overcome. Not in our own strength and ability, to be sure; but through the person and power of Jesus Christ we can live in victory over sin. Christ came to free us of our heritage of sin, and He showed us how to live without sin.
We have seen now that Jesus Christ was a man. We understand that He surrendered His heavenly prerogatives and voluntarily assumed the limitations of a man. It is clear that someone who was pure and holy had to be found to redeem man from the eternal consequences of his sin, and that Jesus Christ came as our Redeemer. But we have not yet answered the question, "Why?"
Adam chose to identify with the sin of his wife in order to assure his continued relationship with her, without regard to the consequence to himself. In the same way, Jesus Christ chose to identify with us in order to assure our relationship with Him regardless of the serious consequences to Himself. He laid aside His glory, He took upon Himself the body of man. But He did more. He became sin for us, that we might be given His righteousness; He died our death, in order to give us His eternal life.
There is only one possible motivation for such sacrifice-love. There is nothing in us to love; we are all sinners. There is nothing in us that He needs; He is the all-sufficient One. There is no obligation to us; we forfeited that by sin. There is only His love, springing from within Himself, reaching down to us when we have no goodness, no hope, no future, no life.
Why did Jesus come as a man? Paul says:
. . . God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (NIV)
John stated Jesus’ motivation in these well known words:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
We need no longer search for God in ignorance, He is no longer unknown. He has revealed Himself for all the world to see, and all those who acknowledge Him can share in His life.
The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen His glory; the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 (NIV)
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