A Real, Human Jesus

Thanks for the recommendation, Scott - added to my Amazon wishlist. (Now all I need is someone to offer to buy me everything on my wishlist!)

Rob

You do seem to like walking on the edge of the precipice, Scot.

Did Jesus curse like a Phoenician sailor when he smashed his thumb with a hammer? Did Jesus have eyes for the ladies? For the men? Boxers or briefs?

Please.

Scot-
You're too nice! In reality, most who name the name of Christ don't really accept the humanity of Christ, thus--and this is the real issue--they really don't understand who YHWH is,that is,the divine humanity of Jesus is the image of God.This is who YHWH is,and this is what we are to become (theosis).

Every Sunday at the Liturgy,as a part of my responsibilities, I incense the congregation and bow to them, signifying who they (we) are as created in YHWH's image. What most people think this has to do with transcending our humanity;but it's really about the realizing,in Christ,our full humanity in Christ.

Glenn - I like the basketball example - the thought of Jesus losing at anything would bother some people.

How about this quote from Billy Graham in 1958:

I'm not believing in some sissy. I'm not believing in some effeminate character. I'm believing in a real he-man, a real man who had a square jaw and strong shoulders. I believe that Jesus Christ was the most perfectly developed physical specimen in the history of the world. He never had sin to deform His body, His mind was perfect, His nervous system was perfectly coordinated with the rest of His body. He would have been one of the great athletes of all times--every inch a man. I can believe in Him; I can follow Him.

Bob, "Did Jesus curse like a Phoenician sailor when he smashed his thumb with a hammer? Did Jesus have eyes for the ladies? For the men? Boxers or briefs?"

Are you being sarcastic? Because I think these are legitimate questions. Maybe not boxers or briefs (he wore a seamless garment, right?), but certainly the way Jesus dealt with sexuality, anger, and pain should teach us a lot with how we are to deal with those things.

Much of the anxiety around this issue has to do with WWJD in reference to his sinlessness. Most Christians tend to look at this from the wrong way 'round. We project our ideas about sinfulness from our socioreligious heritage and then try to understand the sinflessness of Jesus and what it may mean for us. But,this is a thoroughly theological dictum, grounded in YHWH's vindication of Jesus' life in his resurrection.According to the socioreligious understandings of most of his contemporaries, Jesus was the Sinner:how he spoke of his unique relationship with YHWH,how he did not subscribe to the understanding of holiness of the "Religious Right" of his day, that he fraternized with all manner of sinners and marginalized people in his time,etc. Jesus was fully human.

Travis (#9), yes, I was being sarcastic.

I think too many of us hope Jesus acted just like us so that we don't have to try to act like Him.

Fully God and fully human. Yes, of course. But when you and I think "fully human" we include sin in the mix. He had none. Sure, He hung out with publicans and sinners, and people *called* Him gluttonous and a winebibber. Doesn't make it true.

We need to see Him high and lifted up. We need to seek to be holy, because He is holy. We need to see that love grew where the blood fell.

winebibber....*giggle

The vast majority of Christians I know are not prepared to grapple with Jesus as human.

Whatever understanding I have about Jesus as human has come to me through NT Wright's "Jesus and the Victory of God". When I finished it, all I wanted to do was fall down on my face and worship Jesus- precisely because I saw his humanity so blazingly clearly. It did not negate Jesus as God at all- it was astoundingly the opposite for me. In one fell swoop, Jesus became approachable as a human, something that had eluded me all my life, and more worthy than ever of worship as God.

The condescension of God in love and God's humility and goodness are astounding.

Dana

Ah Bob (#18) – now we get to the reason for the immaculate conception. Mary was, from the moment of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin. Thus Mary was sinless – and of course she was perfectly attentive to the needs of her newborn son as no selfish need or desire could intrude. Jesus did not need to cry to get attention.

I like the idea of the book. I also remember the " I can beat Jesus in basketball" line. I agree that we tend to pay lip service to the humanity of Jesus but can we really gain insight into how Jesus thought about some of the issues the book addresses? I mean, aren't the Gospels meant to introduce us to the Kingdom of God and the Kingship of Jesus.Do the writers intend to answer the questions the book brings to them? Just wondering....

PS: I am with Dana (#17), Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God is a book that really hammered home the humanity of Jesus for me.

Travis (#16), even admitting that what you say is true, it occurred only during a 33year period between the Incarnation and the Ascension (He did eat after the Resurrection, after all, in the body). In light of the fact that Jesus has always existed from all eternity past and will continue to exist through all eternity future, His earthly life was about as long as a blink.

He became like us, that we might become like Him. No flesh should glory in His presence.

And RJS (#19), from a different Bob, we have had this conversation before, I think. Now I think you are the one being sarcastic.

My assumption is that Jesus did indeed get sick, that he did indeed fart as Travis said. I do not believe that baby Jesus threw temper tantrums. Cried sure, but no losing his temper.

I think comparing Jesus to Adam is relevant. Adam was perfect, and so very frail. We make a great deal of human perfection, but look at what derailed Adam, fruit and the offer of knowledge? The perfect man is a very fragile thing, and the only way that Jesus Christ could live as a man under the law and not sin was because he was also God.

Interesting post.

Charles (#24): Not to draw too fine a point -- Adam may have been sinless, but he was not perfect. To be perfect suggests having passed the test, and Adam failed his. That is why the writer of Hebrews can say that Jesus was made perfect through His suffering (2:10).

[The non-obsessive compulsive among you may simply ignore this comment!:)]

So is the earthly Jesus not the 2nd person? Language is a problem, but I don't like your solution.

The fact that Jesus was fully important as well as divine, is one of the main attractions of Christianity. After all, if Jesus was just some sort of super-hero, who knew everything and had no physical weaknesses, whose body never reminded him he was a man with biological urges - then what is the big deal? Easy for him to tell others not to sin, if his Godlike nature allowed him to resist all temptation. Easy to tell others not to worry about tomorrow, to turn the other cheek, to give everything away if he knew that he didn't have to worry about what was going to happen to him. What is a few hours of suffering on the cross, if you know for certain, without doubt, that it will be all over soon and you will be in paradise. How stupid the humans around you must seem if you have all of God's knowledge and nothing can surprise you. If you are already see face to face, do you really have sympathy for the creatures who can only see through dimly through a mirror? The reason Jesus MUST be fully human is because that humanity gives him an authority to tell and show us how we can live, an authority that is more full than if he was "just" God. His forgiveness, his suffering, his example means so much more if he is fully human. If God does not share our nature then how can there truly be a relationship?

#29,

So is the earthly Jesus not the 2nd person? Language is a problem, but I don’t like your solution.

You completely misunderstood me, in fact suggesting the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. The earthly Jesus IS always the Second Person, but the Second Person is not always the earthly Jesus.

Those "pre-Incarnation theophanies" are not necessarily (although they might be) God, in person (or rather, any particular person of the Trinity), but rather angels (messengers) appearing and speaking for God, and therefore might be out of bounds for this discussion. I was simply trying to get at language for describing a fairly simple concept: The existence of the Second Person of the Trinity prior to the Incarnation. For example, when John speaks of the Word (logos) being there at the beginning with God, we understand this to be the Second Person: The Son. This person "became flesh and dwelt among us" in the human form of Jesus.

Seriously, I wasn't even trying to say that anyone was wrong for using Jesus-language before the Incarnation, so much as that this can be confusing, and was trying to offer an alternative. But if the "cure" is more confusing than the disease, it's better off dropped. I think you guys are making too big a deal about it.

From the perspective we hold as members of the human race, the Incarnation changed everything. It has to be the most momentous moment in all created history. Creation stood on tiptoe and rejoiced. Angels marveled. Satan shuddered. Humans were clueless. (Not much has changed there!).

The Word, the eteral logos, the One by whom all things were made, the One who had never not been the eternally begotten Son, who had never not been spirit, who had never not been in total oneness with the Father and the Spirit, limited himself to a human zygote; to Mary's gene pool, to the local economy, culture and diet as others have noted. To the limited, culture-bound, history-determined world- view of 1st century Palestine -- meaning, no Copernicus or Gallileo, certainly no Einstien, nor quantum physics, no germ theory etc.

Reflection on what this means regarding Jesus' tenure on earth is mindblowing and "theology shaking" at times. Jesus "grew" in wisdom and in favor with God and man; Jesus "learned" obendience; Jesus "became" perfect (mature, complete), and many other well-made points in the omments.

The impliation is that he lived totally as a Spirit-filled, Spirit instructed, Spirit assisted and empowerred human, miracles and all. That his understanding of who he was and his destiny as Messiah was progressively revealed by the Holy Spirit through Jesus' growing relationship with His heavenly Father. (He chose to know Him only as we know Him.) There really is a level playing field.

What would Jesus do? Chose to live in the power of the Spirit, not his essential God-nature. What should we do? The same. Deny the sinful nature, die to it and "empty" ourselves of it (or at least it's influnce) and live in the power of the Spirit. If this is not true, then Jesus has a distinct advantage and it's not really "fair" (just) for him to tell us to live as he lived and to do the same works he did.

OK. I've heard all the above taught, and I've owned it and taught it myself.

But how much reflection has been spent on the "post asencension" reality that "Jesus IS a man", as somebody above said. Jesus didn't stop being human after the resurrection or ascension. Glorified human, yes, but human none-the-less. A man died on the cross; a man rose from the dead. And post-resurrection, a man appeared to his disciples and told Thomas to touch him; ate breakfast with them on the sea shore; walked in the dust on the road to Emmaus; taught his disciples for 40 days, appeared to at least 500 at one time, gave the great comission, gave instructions about waiting for the Holy Spirit. A man ascended into heaven and the angel said that "this same Jesus" (the same man) would return.

Has anyone reflected or written on the reality that when Jesus limited himself to humanity, it was permanent, not temporary as many seem to think or at least imply. It seems that we won't even let our minds go to this idea for fear of entering into hearsey.

But when Jesus limited himself forever, how did that effect the Trinity? By allowing Jesus to limit himself has the whole Trinity been limited? I understand that in God's omniscence and foreknowledge that this was planned from the beginning and therefore, no surprise. And yet, how could God fully know, experientially until the deed was done? What kind of "agony of soul" must it have created in the eternal God-head? I know that these questions open up a pandora's box of "openness" and who know what else? Maybe "over anthropamorphaizing" God? But questions and ideas like these keep popping up in my head.

Has the nature of the Trinity been "changed" by the Incarnation? How can that even be possible? And yet how can it not be true, if we believe that the Word became flesh, fully divine, fully human.

Am I going too far? If my understanding is accurate, there is a man, a God-man, albiet still a man, in the God-head. This sounds heretical, yet can we escape that conclusion, or at least that question.

It gives a whole new understaning and meaning to Jesus being our elder brother, the first-born from the dead, the first fruit of redemption, and the reality that the "Holy of Holies" including the mercy seat and the Shekinah glory stands wide-open for us to boldly enter as redeemed humanity.

Am I entertaining heresy? Am I going too far and treading on ground that should be left alone? I would like input.

I'll show my ignorance here. Did any of the Fathers venture here? What about others? I know Athanasius pushed the envelope even posing the possibility that the Incarnation would have occurred even without the fall (or at least he asked the question). But I'm not aware of him asking the quesionts I'm asking here. I'm sure there must be others. Can anyone point me to some sources? What about your own thinking?

Scot, Thanks for the book recommendation! I like this topic very much because it was understand Jesus was all man helped me with my faith. Not the Jesus we find with a halo above his head and the flawless physique those depictions displayed, but a Jesus who embraced humanity.

I have also wondered if the addition of eternal humanity to the Trinity in the Person of Jesus the Christ brought "change" to the Trinity. How could it not? If a robust Trinitarian theology espouses 3 eternal Persons as One God and one of those Persons adds humanity (in the kenosis), is this not a substantial change?