The Coming Messiah Part Six: Why As A Man?

 Today, much of the church’s focus on the person of Jesus is on His divinity, to the point that aspects of His humanity are often overlooked. This can lead to a lack of understanding regarding such a critical part of His nature. It is important, therefore, to understand why Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us.

 

There is no doubt that the New Testament claims that Jesus was fully God (Mark 1:3, 2:7–11, 14:61–64; John 1:1–3, 8:58–59, 10:28–33, 17:1–5; Romans 9:5, 10:9, 13; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Philippians 2:5–11; Colossians 1:15–16, 2:9; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:1–3; 2 Peter 1:1). Yet, it tells us that Jesus was also fully human: Jesus was wrapped in ordinary infant clothing (Luke 2:7), grew in wisdom as a child (Luke 2:40, 52), was weary (John 4:6), was hungry (Matthew 4:4), was thirsty (John 19:28), was tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1–11), was sorrowful (Matthew 26:38a), and after His Resurrection He still had a human body (Luke 24:39).

The belief that Jesus is both fully God and fully man is also known as the Hypostatic Union. Jesus will in fact be the God-man forever (Matthew 26:29; Luke 24:39–43; Acts 1:11; 1 Timothy 2:5).

However, the question we need to ask is why did Jesus take on human nature?

The openings of the Gospels clearly teach the virgin birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:26–31). The fact that He was to be called holy indicates that He was free from sin—something that no other human can claim. This is because sin came into the world through a man, Adam, and therefore all people have sinned by the fact that they are in him (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:22). Just as a man brought sin and death into the world, it needed to be removed by a man.

Much of Christian teaching focuses, rightly, on the death of Jesus. However in focusing on the death of Christ, we often neglect the teaching that Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father. Jesus not only died for us, He also lived for us. If all Jesus had to do was to die for us, then He could have descended from heaven on Good Friday, gone straight to the Cross, risen from the dead, and ascended back into heaven. Jesus did not live for approximately 33 years for no reason. While on earth, Christ did the Father’s will by taking specific actions, teaching, working miracles, and obeying the Law in order to “fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). Jesus, the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), came to succeed where the first Adam had failed in keeping the law of God. Jesus had to do what Adam failed to do in order to fulfil the required sinless life of perfection. Jesus did this so that His righteousness could be given to those who put their faith in Him for the forgiveness of sins.

Although God provided an atonement for Adam’s sin through an animal sacrifice in the garden (Genesis 3:21), the blood of animals is ultimately insufficient to deal with sin, (Hebrews 10:4) which is why Jesus, the Last Adam, gave Himself as a sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 2:17, 9:11–14). Jesus became our sympathetic High Priest (Hebrews 2:18, 4:15) who now stands before the Father as our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5).

Jesus was sinless in the life He lived, keeping God’s law perfectly. Jesus was confident in His challenge for His opponents to convict Him of sin. Even the Roman governor, Pilate, found no guilt in Him (John 18:38), and Pilate’s wife recognized Jesus as a righteous man (Matthew 27:19). We must remember that Jesus was a “lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19). Jesus’ sinless life qualifies Him to be a sacrifice for the sins of others.

But how did Jesus, as a true human, not fall into sin? Some believe it was because of the bond between His divine and human nature. On the other hand, theologian Bruce Ware says,

“The answer Scripture suggests to us is this: Jesus did not sin, not because his divine nature overpowered his human nature, keeping him from sinning, but because he utilized all of the resources given to him in his humanity. He loved and meditated on God’s Word . . . he prayed to his Father; he trusted in the wisdom and rightness of his Father’s will and Word; and, very significantly, he relied on the supernatural power of the Spirit to strengthen him to do all that he was called upon to do.”

In his Gospel, Luke, a trustworthy historian (Luke 1:1–4), traces Jesus’ genealogy to the first man and father of all humanity—Adam (3:38). Luke then focuses on Jesus’ temptation by Satan (4:1–13). This is interesting as “unlike Adam, another ‘son’ of God, who sinned (3:38), Jesus overcomes the tests.”

Luke tells us that, before Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, He was filled with the Holy Spirit and was led by Him into the wilderness (Luke 4:1). Moreover, after His temptation and at the time when He began his ministry, Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit. In fact, when Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath, He opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (61:1–2) to the place where it said “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” which Jesus said had been fulfilled in Him (Luke 4:21). In His life and ministry, Jesus was empowered by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38).

Not only was Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit, but He also relied on the Word of God to defeat Satan in His temptations (Luke 4:4, 8, 12). Jesus overcame Satan’s temptations by quoting Scripture, saying to him, “It is written,” which has the force of or is equivalent to “that settles it”; and Jesus understood that the Word of God was sufficient for this.

Furthermore, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and was facing the temptation of giving up on going to the Cross (Luke 22:42), He was committed to pray to the Father (Luke 22:42–44). Jesus fought and struggled with temptation (Luke 22:44), yet He was always victorious.

This Christmas season, let us be thankful that God was so willing to do this for us.  When we look at the babe in the manger, it means so much more.  We worship the divine, but we are also humbled by the fact that God would go through such a length as to humble Himself as a man and experience the same pains we do, even to the point of the Cross.