The Real Meaning of "Fully Man"
The Real Meaning of "Fully Man"
4 Amazing Implications of Jesus' Humanity
Reading Time: 5 minutes
There’s nothing worse than finding out someone is a fraud.
Imagine going into surgery and meeting a man in scrubs with a scalpel, only to find out he has no medical degree! Or talking to someone online who claims to be a young woman but is actually a creepy old man.
There is something disconcerting about fraud.
I wonder if many Christians feel that Jesus’ claim to be “fully human” is a bit of a fraud. Technically, yes he has a human body and human features. But deep down, isn’t being God not human?
I think too many Christians are ignorant of what it means for Jesus to be fully man and the beauties this brings. This isn’t to deny he is God, but to show that he really is human at a very deep level.
We’re going to do that in three successive emails between now an Christmas. These will cover three areas:
To do that we’re going to look at three areas
The real meaning of fully man
3 Mistakes about Jesus’ humanity
What Jesus’ humanity means for you
Today we’re going to look at Jesus being fully man. What does it really mean that Jesus is fully man?
1. Jesus had a human body
Jesus’ body was like any other body.
Don’t believe the Renaissance art. No halo floated around his head adverting for all “This is God”.
In fact, it’s likely Jesus was pretty ugly. Isaiah says:
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2).
No halo. No special glow. Not even handsome. Just an ordinary human being. The one whose splendour heaven adored was just an average man.
Think of all that comes with having a human body. You are used to it, but of course the divine Son of God had no body. Having a body he had to go through the trials bodies bring. Such as:
When he fasted for forty days, he felt hunger.
When he fell asleep, he felt the exhaustion of stressful ministry.
When he died on the cross. he felt the nails, the whip and the crown of thorns.
Remember, the divine Son of God could never suffer. But in taking on human flesh, he really did go through the human condition. No cheat codes. No water down effect. He really did suffer.
Jesus had a truly human body.
2. Jesus had a human mind.
Many Christians wrongly think that the body of Jesus was human, but the mind was divine. They imagine Jesus like an empty shell filled up with divinity.But the Bible teaches Jesus took on all humanity, including a human mind.
A human mind has to learn things and so did Jesus’ mind.
Now this does get a little confusing. His divine nature knew everything. But his human nature had to learn.
For example, in Luke 2:52:
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
That means Jesus had to go through the normal process of a person learning. He wasn’t born preaching the Sermon on the Mount. He had to cry for his mother’s milk, to learn to talk, to learn to walk.
And he had to learn the Scriptures. We read in Luke 2:46
After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
This seems to suggest there that Jesus learnt like a normal human, listening and asking questions.
Now Jesus was a child genius. he astonished the teachers of the law. The biggest problem we have with the Bible is our own sinfulness, blinding our understanding. Jesus had none of this so he learnt quickly. But his human mind had to go through the process of learning truths like we did.
Indeed we see in some areas he didn’t know
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Mark 13:32).
How does the all-knowing God not know the time of his return? Well it would be impossible for his divine nature to not know. But his human nature could be ignorant of things.
Now admittedly how that works is a bit of a challenge. How can his divine nature know something and the other not?
The answer is we don’t know. We can’t understand what the inner life of Jesus was like any more than a fly can understand the inner-workings of a nuclear physicist.
But we are told plainly Jesus both knew everything and needed to learn as life went on. The divine all-knowing one had a truly human mind.
3. Jesus had human temptations.
One of the most wonderful texts about the incarnation is this one:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
He is perfectly able to empathise with us because he has been tempted just like we are. Throughout his life, Jesus was tempted by Satan. Of course, Jesus never sinned. But that doesn’t make the temptation any easier.
In fact, it makes it harder.
Imagine two people are put in a room with a bowl of Lindor chocolates. They are both told “You mustn’t eat them.” The first waits about ten minutes, feels hungry and just wolfs them down.
The second waits and waits. Hours he’s left there staring at this bowl. His tummy rumbles. His mouth begins to grow moist. He can’t think of anything else.
Who was truly tempted there? Surely the second.
In the same way, Jesus never sinned and therefore had greater temptations. He was never proud, never sinfully angry, never lazy, never gossiped, never lied. And Satan would have tried to push those buttons every single day.
He was tempted as we were, as hard as that often is. But he never sinned
4. Jesus had a truly human will.
A will is a plan of action. As God the Son, he had one will from all eternity. It never began, never stopped. It was always there. He always knew how the world would work and what he would do.
Human wills don’t work like that. For Jesus to be fully man he had to have a human will separate from his divine will.
Don’t think think this led to contradiction. He wasn’t torn like a person with split-personality syndrome, arguing with himself. His human will always submitted to the divine will.
But it seems the human will had to go through a process to accept the divine will. It’s hard to explain this mystery but we get a glimpse in Gethsemene. Mark 14:36 Jesus says, before he dies
“Abba, Father…everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Notice Jesus never says “No I don’t agree with your will”. He asks for the cup to be taken, but eventually comes to the same conclusion as God “…not what I will, but what you will.” His human will had to go through things his divine didnt’.
Again exactly how this works is a mystery, but Jesus had both a human and divine will at the same time.
Conclusion
Now just take a step back and think about all those things.
Jesus had a truly human body – nothing special and able to suffer.
Jesus had a truly human mind – able to learn and not know things.
Jesus had truly human temptations – urging him to sin.
Jesus had a truly human will – that needed to be conformed to God’s.
None of these were true for the Son of God before he took on human flesh.
What we see here is not Jesus pretending to be a human, but being an ordinary human being like you and me. What an astonishing truth!
However, there are some grave misunderstandings people make when it comes to Jesus’ humanity. Next Tuesday I’m going to outline some mistakes people make when it comes to Jesus’ humanity. Hope to see you there!
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