07/22/2019
We talk a great deal about being like Jesus, but we rarely speak of those instances when He was most like us; those moments when His humanity was most evident. Perhaps we are afraid that by doing so we might denigrate Him, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Man called Jesus was just as important to our redemption as the divinity of Christ. Crucifying either one alone would not have been sufficient.
“So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold the man!"”
John 19:5 ESV
Pilate saw only a humbled and beaten man when he looked at Jesus, and presented him as such to the crowd. He had questioned him like any earthly authority figure would, and could see no evidence of his royalty, much less His divinity... he saw only the man. This is in answer to Meseanic prophecy...
“Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."”
Isaiah 6:10 ESV
And Jesus spoke of this to His disciples as well when they questioned Him about teaching in parables...
“Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: "'"You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive." For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.' But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.”
Matthew 13:14-16 ESV
Yet here we are as Christians and we see clearly, and hear clearly. We see the image of God in Jesus, and worship Him... yet we often ignore the fullness of man that is in Him as well. Certainly we say that He is man and God, but we don’t really like considering what that should mean to us, because we know who we are. We are frightened to affix that decrepit person, which is ourselves, to Jesus. Perhaps we feel this way because we are afraid that our sin will rub off on Him, and don’t trust that His Divine Perfection will scrub us clean instead.
I have only purchased one new vehicle in my entire life. In 1985 I bought a brand new pickup truck. It was shiny, clean, and smelled so new! Although I bought it to haul various things, and to work with, I treated it as if it were a passenger car that I wanted to keep pristine. Then one day I had to haul some concrete blocks in it, and when I reached my destination I saw many scratches in the bed of my truck. At first I walked around distraught, angry at myself for doing this, but then it dawned on me that this was the purpose of my owning a truck in the first place... I bought it to do these rough and dirty jobs. A pickup truck is a lot like Jesus... it has a cab that is a lot like a car, and a bed that makes it a work vehicle. Jesus was God incarnate, but His body, hungers, thirsts, and its temptations were man’s.
So He lived out His life in the most remarkable way, He was outwardly a man, but spiritually without sin. Those around Him saw only the child, boy, adolescent, and the man, but there was so much more. Then He began to do His Father’s work... preaching, teaching, and doing the miracles, but despite this He was still a man. A moment that shows this so dramatically comes in this verse... the shortest verse in the Bible...
“Jesus wept.”
John 11:35 ESV
Jesus wept over Lazarus, even as He was preparing to raise him from the dead. The man in Jesus was revealing itself.
Jesus didn’t come to earth to become a crucified God, nor was He simply a man to be sacrificed. He came as the child of both mankind, and God. When He was crucified both hung on the cross, and even as he was without sin... he received the sins of man and bore them on the cross.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
1 Peter 2:24 ESV
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV
Now the risen Christ is once more without sin because sin has been destroyed, and He is alive because death has been defeated... not so that God would be free of these things, but so that man would be, and so that we could walk once more in purity with God.
“so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Hebrews 9:28 ESV
Jesus gives us hope, and promise through the Word and will of God, and by His humanity we were cleansed on Calvary. He gave mankind salvation, and redemption... purity, and eternal life. The grace of God flowing through Christ the Son into mankind through the wounded Christ... the man.
It is natural for us to want to protect Jesus from ourselves... just as natural as it was for me to want my pickup truck to remain clean, and free off scratches, but just as that truck was meant to work and haul loads, Jesus was meant to be scourged, and haul the sins of the world. So our seeing Him as simply Devine, is not seeing Him as God willed Him to be. Jesus was sent to give us hope... to allow us to see ourselves stripped of sin, and death; to see the man who walked with God in Eden. So don’t protect Him from the man He was meant to be because without that, and without the sin He took from us... the blood that He shed in sacrifice for us... what hope do we really have?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for sending your Son Jesus to be born both Divine and human. Thank you for the blood sacrifice that He became to free us from sin and death. Thank you Holy Father for teaching us through His life, and gospel, how to come to you as your children. Help me Lord to see Him as not only your Heavenly Son, but as a man just as I am, and to understand how this was your perfect plan and will, which He lived and suffered, so that I might be redeemed, and freed of sin and death. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you my God who made provision through His Son for my salvation and redemption. Great are you who gave His Son as a blood sacrifice, into sin and death to save all mankind, and creation. Praised be your name for raising Him from the tomb, and following His ascension, seating Him at you right hand. All glory is yours Father for the souls Jesus didn’t lose, and for those He was yet to call to you through a His emissaries. I worship you Holy Father, and lift up your name as I praise you before all creation. Though I am man you have loved me, and while I was blinded as a sinner you sent Jesus to restore my sight, and redeem me. I adore you in your goodness, mercy, and grace forevermore.
Rich Forbes