The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Weighing more than 380 million kilograms, it stretches over one mile between San Francisco on one end and Merino County on the other. The bridge is suspended from cables several miles in length. Each cable is three feet thick and is made up of over twenty seven thousand wires, woven and bound together. But the entire weight of the bridge, all those hundreds of thousands of kilograms, the entire structure, rests on two towers set in the water. The cables run over the two towers and all of the weight is transferred to those two towers. In a similar way, our understanding of Jesus Christ, and therefore the very heart of Biblical Christianity, rests on two towers – the two towers of Christ’s deity and His humanity.
In our study of God in these last three Sundays, we considered first of all the Trinity: the unity of the one God who exists in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then we looked at who God the Father is.
Now we are turning our thoughts to God the Son, Jesus Christ. Last week we considered his deity. Today we look at his humanity for Christianity affirms that Jesus Christ is at once fully God, and fully human.
Now for some people, the issue of the deity of Christ presents a real obstacle: that the man Jesus of Nazareth is really the eternal God is difficult to believe.
For others, though, usually those who have been Christians for some time, it is the humanity of Christ that is the greater difficulty. We have no trouble worshiping Jesus, affirming his eternity, and so on. But we have a hard time believing in his real humanity. We consider him more super-human: temptations just rolled off his back and were not a real struggle, his supernatural power and divine insights remove him from our level. He didn’t really face the things we face every day. We can say, “Jesus was a man”, but in our subconscious we qualify that: “He was a man, but not really like us.”
So today we’ll look at what it means to say: Christ was not only God, but fully human.
Throughout history some, who believed that only the spiritual reality is good, and that all physical matter is inherently evil, have taught that Jesus only appeared human, but did not in fact have a material body. But 1 John 4:2 says, Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
The full humanity of Christ is the clear teaching of Scripture: He was born through blood and water through the woman, Mary; he was born into history, in Roman-occupied Israel; he grew up with a mom and dad, brothers and sisters.
We assume he went to ‘synagogue school’ in small town Palestine, learned a trade, acquiring the skills of a carpenter from his father Joseph. As an adult he had close friends, and knew what it was to be hated by enemies; he experienced fatigue and exhaustion, so that even in a small boat in a storm at sea, he fell asleep; he had demands on his time, and occasionally had to just get away by himself to escape the crowds; he got angry at injustice; he wept at the death of a friend; he felt compassion at the suffering of others; got frustrated with his own friends at times, (Are you still so dull? he asked his disciples); he ate, drank, got thirsty. All the things we associate with being human, living in a real, flesh and bone body, these things were Jesus’ reality also.
In the words of Hebrews 2, he shared in our humanity.
Why is this so crucial to grasp? Why does it matter that Jesus whom we worship as God, is also fully human? Hebrews 2 suggests three reasons why it is so crucial to understand that.
The first reason is that, in his humanity, Christ identifies with us. We say that it is we who need to identify ourselves with Christ. To point to Christ and say, “I belong to Christ. I’m with Him.” (We sing, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” or “Who is on the Lord’s side?”) Isn’t it amazing that in Christ, God would point to us and say, “I’m with them”. Verse 11 of Hebrews chapter 2 says, Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So, Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.
For some twenty years now, a man named Bill Wilson, has been leading a ministry to kids in one of the toughest areas of New York City. At the beginning of his ministry when he first went to New York – before anyone even knew who he was – Bill Wilson moved into an apartment in one of the worst areas. He was the only white guy in that area. He had been threatened, robbed, and even stabbed. He stood out like a sore thumb.
But he has developed a Sunday School program that now ministers to thousands of kids each week – from terrible home situations, kids that are involved in gangs, drug use, broken homes – murder is not uncommon in that area. Out of his ministry to those kids has been born a thousand member church called, “Metro Church”. Every week kids are bussed in. Every week, workers are sent out into the neighborhoods of the kids to do work. This is what he says, ‘When you stop to think about it, there is no logical reason why I should be treated as an equal by people living near our church. I am white, that’s not too common and that will never change. But you can earn the right to be heard, it just takes more time than most folks are willing to spend. Why am I accepted? Because I climbed the same filthy stairways the children do. I hug them whether they have on designer trainers or no shoes at all. Whether they have lice in their hair or not. People respond to love and concern. They are tired of promises from people who disappear into the night. They want reality.’
In ministering to these kids, he decided he was going to identify with the people in that community. He was going to live there. Their neighborhood was going to be his neighborhood. And that’s exactly what Jesus Christ did. John 1 verse 14 says, The word (God in Christ) became flesh and dwelt among us. He didn’t just swing by or pop in. He set up shop. He camped out. Eugene Petersen says, ‘He moved into the neighborhood.’
That’s what Christ did. I find that amazing. Rather than keeping his distance and separating himself, holy from unholy; perfect from imperfect; God not only cared for us but became one of us and moved into the neighborhood. We often sing the chorus that contains the line, ‘You came from heaven to earth’. Do we understand what we’re singing when we sing that line? The distance from heaven to earth is infinite. How far Christ traveled, how low He stooped! The Bible says in Philippians 2 that Christ Jesus being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing (literally He emptied Himself) taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Christ identified Himself with us.
The second reason it is crucial for us to understand his humanity, then, is because he identified himself with us in His humanity. Christ also understands us.
We long to be understood. Not just in our words, not just in our conversation, but on a deeper level. A song on the radio a few years ago has these lyrics: “I don’t want the world to see me, I don’t think they’d understand. I just want you to know who I am.” Often, what we need is for someone who can understand us, who understands what we are dealing with. That’s the premise behind groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. People who are battling addiction find help and support from others who are experiencing the same thing and understand the struggle that’s involved. There’s solidarity and strength when one is understood. We worship a God who understands. He has entered the human condition and has experienced fully what it means to be human. As we mentioned a few moments ago – that he understands hunger, tiredness, family life, working for a living, friendship, rejection. But there’s two specific things in our passage this morning that Jesus understands by experience.
One is that he understands suffering. In verse 10 it says, In bringing many sons to glory it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom, everything exists should make the author of their salvation perfect, through suffering. What does it mean that Christ was made perfect? Hasn’t he always been perfect? Well, the word does not refer to the correcting of flaws as if something was wrong with Jesus and he needed to be fixed. The word carries the meaning of complete or fully developed. In other words, Jesus had a necessary process to go through. A process that included suffering in order to become the ideal and perfect sacrifice. Later in chapter 5 we read, He learned obedience from what he suffered and once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. His suffering taught him obedience and it was in His obedience to the Lord, his sinless life, his perfect keeping of God’s law that made him the perfect sacrifice for sin. But, we’ll come back to that in just a few moments.
Jesus suffered. He understands suffering. He knows what it’s like to have your friends abandon you. He knows what it’s like to be poor, to feel physical pain. He was beaten, whipped, slapped, spit on, cursed and murdered. He knows what it’s like to just be busy, exhausted and on the go and have demands on your time. When we cry out to God in our hurt and in our pain, we cry to a God who’s been there. He understands it and has experienced it himself.
And two, Jesus understands temptation. We often miss the significance of that. We think that He was never seriously tempted, that he never struggled with it but that temptation just bounced off Him like he was spiritual teflon. But verse 18 says that He suffered when He was tempted. His temptation had to be real or it wouldn’t be temptation – right? Hebrews 4:15 says that he was tempted in every way, just as we are. Christ understands temptation. Isn’t that hard to believe? It’s hard for me to believe. It’s hard to believe that Christ would ever be tempted to fly off the handle or react in anger. Or that he was ever tempted to disobey his parents or to fudge the truth, or to look inappropriately at a woman. But the temptations he faced were real.
In fact, in a sense, Christ is the only one who really knows fully what it means to be tempted. All of us, when temptation gets increasingly strong, have caved in. Our knees have buckled long before we’ve felt the full weight of temptation. Christ never gave in to temptation, and so only he knows the full weight of it. So Christ knows the power of temptation more than you or I do.
Hebrews says also, because He knows what it is like to be tempted, He is able to help us then when we are tempted. Jesus understands us. He has identified with us, become one of us and he understands us, he knows what it’s like to be human.
Finally, the third reason it is crucial for us to understand Christ’s humanity is that Christ represents us.
This summer again the Olympic Games will be held, and athletes from this country will be there participating. Hopefully, one of them will win a gold medal. When that gold medal is won what will we say? We will say, “Our country won a gold medal.” Well, our country didn’t win the medal. The athlete won it. But he won it on our behalf and so we will say that our country won the medal. So with Christ. Christ the human, a representative of humanity, has won a medal on our behalf.
Christ represents us in His rule. When God created, he gave man dominion over creation. He said, “You are in charge.” Genesis 1:26 says, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and livestock over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. The Psalmist in Psalm 80, which our writer quotes in Hebrews 2, marvels that God would do that. He says, ‘What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him. You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet?’ But he goes on to say that in our current experience, at least, we don’t see that. At present we do not see everything subject to him. We forfeited our rule, we have given ourselves over to sin in rebellion against God, in whose name we were to rule over His creation. In doing so, we have thus served Satan ever since Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. So the Bible calls Satan ‘the god of this world’.
But God’s design is that humanity would exercise dominion over creation, in God’s name. But we don’t and we see the effects – terrorism, war, genocide, starvation. We do not see everything subject to humanity according to God’s plan.
But what do we see? We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. Philippians 2 says, Christ being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. In other words, by his death, Jesus Christ took back the rulership of God’s creation. As a man, he disarmed the god of this world, disarming the powers of the authorities, making a public spectacle of them by the cross, says Colossians.
And now, he rules. Once again a man is on the throne of the universe. The irreversible process has begun by which all things are being brought under Christ’s feet and the Bible promises that we will reign with him. Man forfeited his rule but Christ became man and reclaimed it and regained it.
He represents us in redemption. Here’s the message of Christianity, that he shared in their humanity, says our Scripture, so that by His death he might destroy him who holds the power of death and free those, who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. He had to be made like his brothers in every way in order that He might become a merciful, faithful, high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people. What does the author have in mind here? The reality, that in God’s plan it was necessary that God become a man in order to deal with sin. You see, sin is not just a question of us forfeiting the rule of what God has given to us to be sovereign over. It’s much worse than that. Sin means that we objectively stand guilty before God. Humanity owes God an infinite debt that we cannot pay. Our sin must be dealt with. Sin is our responsibility and yet we, being sinful, do not have the resources to pay the debt or bear the punishment that is due. So, when Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross, a human being took the punishment for the sin that was humanity’s sin. In his life He kept God’s law perfectly. In other words, he did not sin. Later on in chapter 5, when the writer of Hebrews discusses the priesthood in more detail, he reminds us that the priest too was a sinner and had to deal with his own sins and so was unable then to deal with, effectively, the sins of other people. But Christ, when he died, did not have his own sins to deal with and so, He was able to bear the punishment and pay the price for our sins. This is the gospel. This is Christianity. Jesus Christ, God made man, came to earth to die in our place, to represent us on the cross. And so Paul could say, ‘I have been crucified with Christ.’ In hockey, when the goalkeeper gets a penalty, another player will sit in the penalty box and the goalkeeper can stay in the game. Christ served our penalty. Served the penalty for our offenses against God.
Christ represents us in his priestly role, as well.
The priest was chosen from among the people to represent people to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. To intercede for the people through ceremonial ritual.
Christ is our high priest, the only mediator between God and man, who intercedes for us, who offered the perfect sacrifice for our sins – himself. Christ as a human, represents humanity and did the work that we needed to do but couldn’t. On our behalf he has done it. The person of Jesus Christ, God became fully human. We worship a God who fully experienced what it means to be a human being. He identified with us. He understands us perfectly. He represents us as ruler, and as redeemer and in his role as high priest. Christ the man took humanity’s sin on himself in his death on the cross. For all who accept that sacrifice, for those who have put their faith in him, there is forgiveness. There is freedom from the fear of death, freedom from the coming judgment, for our sins have already been dealt with. If you’ve never trusted Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, now is the time. Pray and say something like, ‘Lord, I know I have done wrong things, I have sinned against God. I accept your death Jesus as payment for my sins. As a man, you died in my place and as God, I submit my life to you.’
Amen.