I was thinking the other day about how I rarely think about Jesus as a human. Since my childhood faith, Jesus has been a historical figure of mythical proportions, someone who has always been and lives as The Savior in some strange spiritual realm. But do I ever think about Him as a man?
Mentally I affirm my Christian beliefs, that Jesus of Nazareth, an actual person, was both completely God and completely human. Every once in a while I realize how crazy this sounds, and so I sit there trying to figure out whether I am the intellectual equivalent of a sane person who truly believes in the tooth fairy. However, most of the time I do believe this.
But I also don't think about Him as an actual breathing person. Even now, writing His name, I am thinking of His spirit and His personhood in the Trinity, but to picture Him as someone who, on the surface, was so ordinary that Isaiah said there would be nothing to attract us to Him, I can't think of Him as a man.
I look around me and I see men. Some are tall, some are short; they are fat and thin, fair and dark, muscular and flabby, down-to-earth and erudite. I believe that Jesus existed from eternity, and yet at some point in the history of the earth, while continuing to be God, He voluntarily put aside some of His divine characteristics to take on the dust-based flesh of creatures that He formed and breathed life into a long, long time ago.
He was a real infant. He was born in a tiny body, without the ability to keep His head from flopping over, without the ability to see clearly more than a couple feet beyond His face, without the ability to consciously use His fingers to grasp something He wanted. Utter helplessness. His parents had to flee their country just to keep Him from being killed by Herod (Matthew 2:13).
Jesus is His name in Greek, and that His name in Aramaic would have been Yeshua (where we get our modern Joshua), a much more common name. It would be like if the Messiah were American and born in the States with a name like Mike or Chris. A completely ordinary name, with nothing special, at least on the surface, to clue someone in to the idea that this Mike or Chris is actually God Himself.
Because I am a Christian, I believe that Jesus never sinned. But does that mean Mary and Joseph never reprimanded Him? Sometimes kids have to be reprimanded simply because they are children and are ignorant and foolish. So did Jesus have to be disciplined because, at four years old, maybe He asked a rude question at a solemn social function? I just wonder. He was actually a kid.
And if He was a human, that meant He probably thought about sex. He wouldn't have sinned in thinking about it, again, because the Bible says that He "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21) But He had hormones (I'm thinking of you, testosterone), and pheromones, and He would have been adolescent at one point, and actual blood flowing in actual veins. I am not trying to be vulgar or write things just for shock value. I am trying to begin to grasp the idea that my Savior is a real human.
He had a brain. He thought and felt via firing neurons. I do believe that God feels emotions, yet is perfectly in control of them and they are right and justified every time. So when God the Son was in a human body, did He ever struggle with feelings? Maybe at some point His blood sugar was low, and His perfect soul was battling with the chemicals and neurons in His earthly brain, staving off unrighteous sadness or irritation. And the fact that Jesus was perfect and occasionally sad or irritated means that those emotions are not, in themselves, wrong.
Hebrews says that Jesus "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." (4:15) In every respect? Do I actual believe that Jesus can relate to the temptation to disobey God, or feel pride, or lust, or gossip about someone, or to wallow in anger; and what's more, do I not only believe that He can relate to those feelings but also never once sinned by giving in to those desires?
I was thinking about these facets of Jesus being human, and I pictured myself in front of the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth: someone who wasn't attractive, wasn't the fair, solemn, white man portrayed in old church portraits. He was probably not tall, bearded, dark rather than fair, plain, and essentially poor and homeless during His earthly ministry (at one point, He tells a potential follower that He has "nowhere to lay His head"). He was so clearly human that his disciples were terrified and surprised when He calmed the wind and waves, and John the Baptist tells the crowd that someone among them is the Messiah, and there is no indication that the crowd around Jesus has any idea who John is talking about.
I was reflecting on His humanity, and picturing myself prostrate before a Jewish man, and felt a sense of wrongness, of idolatry. And to fall down and worship any other person would be idolatry. Yet to cast myself at the feet of Jesus son of Joseph, of Nazareth, is to cast myself at the flesh-and-blood feet of God Almighty.
So anyway, that's all for today. It's still weird to me. If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.
