If you are a mature, active par­ticipant in a church community, you have probably participated in the sacrament of Lord’s Supper at some point in the last few months. In so doing, you commemorated the death, and the life, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You did this by eating the bread and drinking the wine: the bread signifying the body of Christ, the wine signifying his blood.

In doing this, you were reminded in a very concrete way of the hu­manness of our Savior. He was a real flesh and blood human being, just like each one of us.

We remember that flesh and blood. We celebrate that flesh and blood. We celebrate the wonder of His humanity.

How Human Was He?⤒🔗

But all right, so Jesus Christ had flesh and blood. So he was human. The question can be asked: just how human was he?

After all, we are talking about the second person of the Trinity. We are talking about God himself. How is it possible that God Himself could dwell among us as one of us? How is it that the eternal can step into time, the invisible step into visibility, the infinite step into the finite? How human could he have been, being fully God?

You might think this is an ab­stract question. But in fact, this matter has vexed believers through­out the centuries. And there have been many different answers given to this question.

Not Completely Human?←⤒🔗

Some have said that Jesus only looked like a human being. Just like when the angels came and visited people, sometimes looking like hu­mans, so it was with Christ. His hu­man appearance was just a dis­guise that He wore, as a way to identify with us and live among us as one of us.

Romans 5 does not allow for this thinking. In contrasting the first man Adam with the second Adam, Christ, there’s no room for the first Adam to have flesh and blood, while the second Adam only looked like he did. If he only looked human, he would not be able to shed real hu­man blood. Someone who only looked human could not die a real human death as punishment for the transgressions of the first Adam and his descendants.

Others have said that He had a real human body. But when it came to his soul: that was divine. When it came to the core of who he was, his nature, he was actually divine. He only sort of took on flesh and blood, wearing it like we might wear a set of clothes.

Still others have said that Christ may have had a divine and human nature, but the two kind of mixed together into one nature. So you would say he was a mixture of 50% human and 50% divine.

Say you mixed together Kahlúa and milk. It looks like you have one drink, but you know that a percent­age of it has the nature of Kahlúa, and the rest of it has the nature of milk. That’s kind of how it is with Christ, according to some.

Completely Human?←⤒🔗

So, what can we say? Just how human was he anyway?

If we are to accurately hold to what the Bible as a whole teaches about who Christ is, we have to say that he was fully and completely human, just as He was fully and completely God.

How this can be, we can’t fully understand. It doesn’t seem to fit in with human logic. The world would say that it doesn’t make any sense.

But we know that ultimately it must make sense, it must be true, because it is consistent with the whole of what the Bible teaches about Christ. It is consistent with what Christ teaches about himself. And when it comes to truth, that’s far more important than whether or not it happens to make sense to our limited minds.

That’s not to say we abandon our minds when it comes to consid­ering all of this. God uses our minds to help us gain a fuller ap­preciation for His truth, including the truth of Jesus being 100% man and 100% God.

But nevertheless, we recognize that our minds have limitations, and that is certainly evident when it comes to thinking on these truths.

Yes, Completely Human!←⤒🔗

All right then, when it comes to how much Christ is like us, we confess that he is 100% human. He is 100% just like us. What does this mean? It means He was like us in every respect, ex­cept of course for the fact that he did not sin. This means that his human nature was not depraved, fallen, affected by sin at the core of his human nature, like we are. But still, He had a body like ours, with blood just like ours. He had a beating heart. His lungs took oxy­gen out of the air just like ours do. He had to eat just like us.

He was in the same danger of getting sick. Mind you, he was never going to get sick as a result of a sinful lifestyle, because he did not sin. But apart from that, if a mosquito bit him, it’s not inconceivable that he would get an itchy bump, just like we would. If that mosquito had carried a transmitta­ble disease, his body would have had to fight that disease.

He needed to sleep, just like we do. He could sweat, just like we do. He had a brain which worked just as ours works. Mind you, his sinlessness must have affected his intelligence in ways we could not even begin to imag­ine. Still, it was a human brain.

And as for a soul? He had one, just as we do. Oh, we know so little about the make-up of our own souls. So it would be impos­sible to try and speculate on what his soul must have been like, be­ing without sin. Pure, that’s for sure. But he had one neverthe­less: a real human soul.

Some have tried to divide Christ up into three parts: body, soul and spirit. They go on to say that He had a human body, even a hu­man soul, but His spirit was divine. But you can’t end up dividing Christ up like this. He was completely hu­man: body, soul and spirit, any way you cut it.

He had the same chemical make-up we have. He had cells and genes and all the internal organs we have. He had the same physical make-up.

But not only that, he had the same spiritual make-up. Again, he never sinned. But if you talk about heart and soul and spirit, or how­ever it is that you want to divide up human nature: he was human in every part. You can’t get any more human than that.

He Chose to Be Human←⤒🔗

So then, He was fully human. Now, the question becomes: how did He get this way? After all, He wasn’t always like that. When He was the Word who was with God in the beginning, He did not have a human nature at that point.

Well, here’s the thing: He, who was the divine second person of the Trinity, voluntarily put on his human nature.

Think about it. We were born with a human nature, but we didn’t have a choice. It’s who we are. It’s who we were created to be. But Jesus did not have to take on his fully human nature. It was a choice for him.

You and I would be nothing without a human nature. We would have no being, no exis­tence. But Jesus did not need a human nature in order to exist. He did not need to have this human nature in order to become a person. He already was a person: the sec­ond person of the Trinity. But he gave up the glory that was rightfully his as God, he gave up his majesty, he gave up the honour and dignity that was His, and He took on a hu­man nature. “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obe­dient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” He made Him­self nothing. He took on the nature of a servant. He humbled Himself.

We can’t emphasize enough how significant this really is. This was all a part of Christ’s being obedient. He didn’t have to, but He willingly obeyed His Father’s will to do what needed to be done in order to save us.

For us, being human is not a matter of choice or obedience. We simply are human. But for Him, it was all a part of the obedience that won for us our salvation.

Sometimes when kids are espe­cially angry at their parents, they might shout out, “I didn’t ask to be born!” That’s so true. None of us asked to be born. And when we say this in anger, we’re showing our sinfulness, our disobedience. But Christ did ask to be born, in order to fulfil obedience on our behalf.

We can’t imagine that kind of obedience, because we can’t imag­ine the depths of humiliation he went to. Amazing love, that He should leave His Father’s throne, and empty himself, all for love!

He Became Human for Our Salva­tion←⤒🔗

To help us appreciate the won­der of all of this even more, remem­ber the words of Romans 5:15. “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” He became man to overcome the death that had been brought in by man. He be­came man to counteract the effects of the trespass of the first man. He became the second Adam in order to bear the weight of God’s anger, which is due to us because of the sin of the first Adam. He became man in order to win mercy for men. He became man to win for us the free gift of salvation. He became man in order that grace might overflow to us, overflowing to cover all our sins.

And how, as a man, did He win for us the free gift of salvation? Quite simply: by dying. Think about that. His main purpose in life was to die! That is why Jesus came to be among us.

He did not come to be a hu­man so that humanity could ex­perience something of what it is to be divine. He did not come to be a human just so that he could of­fer some nice teachings that might make us better people. He came to be a human so that he could die our death. It is in his death that his life found ultimate mean­ing. It is by his death as a human mediator that He could remove from God’s sight all our sin, ours since we were conceived. He was conceived as one of us that He might redeem those conceived in sin.

A Sacrament Celebrating His Humanity!←⤒🔗

Remember this the next time you participate in the Lord’s Supper. Remember that the blood signified in the wine you drink was shed so that you might be washed by that blood and be saved. Remember that the body signified in the bread you eat was broken so that you might know life everlasting. It’s really quite something that God, in giving us the Lord’s Sup­per, would set it up in such a way that would highlight the body and blood of Christ. God gave us this sacrament to help us to remember and rejoice in what Christ has done, and this sacrament empha­sizes his humanness! Flesh and blood. Just like you and me. A human Saviour. God confirms and strengthens our faith with a sacrament that points to the ways in which our Saviour was just like us. Thanks be to Him!