The Man Christ Jesus

There is not only a deep mystery but also great comfort, encouragement and joy for the Christian’s faith in Paul’s words that the mediator between God and men is ‘the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim. 2:5). Explicit is his affirmation of Jesus’ humanity; implicit is his affirmation of Christ’s deity. This is why it is far more than an anachronistic nicety when the Chalcedon creed states, ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood.’ Jesus Christ is the God-man; one divine person who possesses two natures for, as J. W. Alexander writes, ‘in his humanity was divine perfection incorporated … blended but yet not in confusion … and for the Christian there is a … sweetness in recognising our Redeemer in each of his natures.’
One of us
Some football crowds like to sing of their home-grown players, ‘He’s one of our own.’ In taking to himself a human body, the eternal Son joined the race known as homo sapiens and became one of our own. He became our elder brother (Heb. 2:11) when he was born like every human child, travelling down the birth canal of his mother Mary to come into the world. Possessing a human body just like every other, he was recognised as a human male (John 1:30; 10:33). Jesus would not have stood out as an extraterrestrial being in an identity parade.
According to the BBC Earth website, to be human is ‘to be at the centre of our own universe, to experience life in all its colours and all its potential.’ In becoming one of us, he became the only one of whom it could be truly said that he did walk in the ‘centre of his own universe experiencing life in all its colours and potential.’ Jesus knew the experience of growing up in a working-class home as the son of a carpenter, whose trade he followed. Jesus passed through all the developmental processes common to every human child (Luke 2:40,52), and his physical, intellectual and emotional growth honed his human character as he matured into adulthood. Like all of us Jesus possessed a reason and a will, and he knew the full range of human emotions, such as joy, grief and compassion (Matt. 26:38; Mark 8:2; Heb. 12:2). Truly, Jesus was one of our own.
Human limitations
In choosing to live a life on planet Earth the man Jesus willingly embraced an experience he had never known. As ‘our God who was contracted to a span’, Jesus humbled himself to embrace the confines of living a human existence. He willingly adopted the frustrations, restrictions and weaknesses common to all the children of Adam and Eve, knowing weariness, hunger, thirst and the need for sleep (John 4:6; 19:28; Matt. 4:2; 8:24). He knew the pain we experience when those who say they love us fail us. He knew the anguish of a friend’s betrayal. He tasted the physical, mental and emotional fatigue that is our lot here on Earth. He knew, more than any human being, not just the fear of facing death but the prospect of enduring an agonising death; a death he could have easily avoided (Matt. 26.53) but he chose to embrace.
It is a matter of awe and worship to the eyes of faith to contemplate the mind-boggling wonder that, in the limitation of his humanity, the man Jesus experienced some things being hidden from him (Mark 13:32). Even as a fully grown adult, Jesus knew what it was to go through a learning process (Heb. 5:8). One that included knowing an intensity of suffering and temptation beyond anything any other human being would know or could bear. What an encouragement to the Christian in their walk of faith, that their Saviour, the man Jesus, knows the limitations and frailties of their existence!
The crown of humanity
In days when the core foundation of our biological existence as human beings is being deconstructed, the eternal purpose of the Son of God in becoming the man Jesus brings the Christian view of man (to borrow Gresham Machen’s title) to its highest expression. The man Jesus gives a unique panoramic perspective of what humanity is to be, being the crowning beauty of what it is for humankind to be created in God’s image.
The perfect life of the man Jesus gives a unique panoramic perspective of what it means for humanity to be created in God’s image, whilst it reveals too the tragic extent of humanity’s fall, and eloquently expresses the latent propensity of sin present in every human being (Mark 7:21-23).
The man Jesus faced troubles without faltering (Heb. 4:15); endured trials without capitulation; and experienced temptations without succumbing. His life was one of perfect obedience to God’s law, fulfilling all righteousness. He laid down his life to pay the price of redemption by suffering as the substitute for his people. How could one human being bear the sins of so many? It was because the man Jesus who died on the cross was also fully God. Only God in a human frame could endure the punishment due for the sins of others. Only a perfect man, who was God, could be the mediator between God and his fallen race. Jesus, the man from heaven, blazes the pathway for what his people shall be. Robert Murray M’Cheyne writes: ‘his human heart is at the right hand of God … (and) his human heart is the same yesterday, today and forever; it pleads for you, thinks on you, and plans deliverance for you.’
Our model
The Christian finds freedom and joy in living a life that seeks to imitate the man Jesus. The New Testament is clear that our calling is to have the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5-8). Following in his footsteps we are to humble ourselves and imitate the servant spirit of the man Jesus: his submission and obedience to the Father’s will, his meekness, patience, love and compassion. Faith’s pursuit of the man Jesus in all the fullness of his deity and humanity is the sum and total of Christianity. Christ is the sum and source of all the grace God’s children need to fulfil the command to be ‘perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48), which flows from the God-man Jesus through faith in Christ alone.