His Only Son, Jesus’ Human Nature

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.

            In five little words, “His only Son, our Lord,” the Apostles’ Creed directs us to one of the central mysteries of the faith, namely, that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism explains these five words like this, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.”

            Let’s begin with Jesus’ human nature. Jesus is completely human, just like us, as the book of Hebrews says, “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way” (2:17). The writer of Hebrew notes the singular exception later on, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (4:15). Of course, sin is not integral to our human nature; sin is a corruption of that nature.

            Jesus is like us in every way. He has a body and a soul, just as we have. (His divine nature does not ‘replace’ some element of His human nature; His divine nature infuses every part of His human nature.) He is subject to temptation, just as we are. He know grief and hunger and weariness, so He weeps and eats and sleeps.

            The import of His humanity is manifold. As the Hebrews passage says, He is able to empathize with our weaknesses. He understands us and our trials. That in itself is amazing! The Son of God does not just stand there in judgment over us; He sympathizes with us, knows our weakness, knows our struggle.

            That’s amazing, but it’s not the most important thing about Jesus’ humanity. The most important thing about His humanity is that He is a perfectly appropriate substitute for us. Hebrews 10 talks about the limitation of Israel’s system of animal sacrifice: animal sacrifice must be repeated over and over again, year after year. An animal is not a fully appropriate substitute for a human life. But when Jesus offers His life in sacrifice for us, it is a human life for a human life. The sacrifice completely fits. You can know you are fully redeemed because the One who offered His life for you is just like you.