Why It Matters That Jesus Was and Still Is Human - by Dane C. Ortlund

Found here. Our comments in bold. 

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We discuss this issue in depth here.

This "Bible teacher" plows through almost 1300 words without quoting single syllable of Scripture. Not one. He can quote theologians, but not the Bible. How can a Bible teaching not contain the Bible?

One should think that the author would consider what the Bible actually says, like

1Co. 15:50-54 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” [Isaiah 25:8]

This passage would lead us to ask, did Jesus get raised in the same manner? And:

Jn. 20:25-28 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus clearly presents Himself to Thomas as human to prove He indeed rose from the dead bodily. So, how about this one:

Jn. 20:17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.

This mysterious verse implies that Jesus' status was such that something needed to happen, which would happen once He ascended to the Father. 

Now for a verse that appeals to Jesus' humanity:

He. 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin.

The writer of Hebrews describes Christ's nature to reinforce the idea that Jesus is just like us. But then, the Bible tells us we shall be like Him:

1Jn. 3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

This suggests that Jesus is in a state that we have yet to attain. And, it will be a revelation to us. But even then, there will be a final change in heaven:

1Co. 15:28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Once again something about the status of Jesus changes. This mysterious verse leaves us with more questions that the Bible doesn't answer. 

Last verses:

Re. 1:13 and among the lampstands was someone “like a son of man”, [Daniel 7:13] dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash round his chest. 14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

Re. 4:3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.

Re. 5:6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne...

Re. 19:11-13 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no-one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.

John the Revelator describes Jesus in several different ways. We would therefore be reluctant to agree to the idea that His unchanged human status, though now immortal, was carried into heaven. Rather, it seems like He possesses some sort of glorified human body, which will be what we receive as well. But of course, we can only speculate.

Now, notice we have taken the time to actually quote relevant Scriptures, which opens up rich topics of discussion. We would have expected no less from the author.

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The Importance of Christ’s Humanity

One of the doctrines in the area of Christology that is difficult for some Christians to fully grasp is the permanent humanity of Christ. The impression often seems to be that the Son of God came down from heaven in incarnate form, spent three decades or so as a human, and then returned to heaven to revert back to his preincarnate state.

But this is Christological error, if not outright heresy. The Son of God clothed himself with humanity and will never unclothe himself. He became a man and always will be. This is the significance of the doctrine of Christ’s ascension: he went into heaven with the very body, reflecting his full humanity, that was raised out of the tomb. He is and always has been divine as well, of course. But his humanity, once taken on, will never end. In Christ, the Heidelberg Catechism says, “we have our own flesh in heaven” (Q. 49).

One implication of this truth of Christ’s permanent humanity is that when we see the feeling and passions and affections of the incarnate Christ toward sinners and sufferers as given to us in the four Gospels, we are seeing who Jesus is for us today. The Son has not retreated back into the disembodied divine state in which he existed before he took on flesh.

And that flesh that the Son took on was true, full, complete humanity. Indeed, Jesus was the most truly human person who has ever lived. Ancient heresies such as Eutychianism and Monophysitism viewed Jesus as a sort of blend between the human and the divine, a unique third kind of being somewhere in between God and man—heresies that were condemned at the fourth ecumenical council in Chalcedon (in modern-day Turkey) in AD 451. The Chalcedonian creed that came out of that council speaks of Jesus as “truly God and truly man” rather than a reduced blend of both. Whatever it means to be human (and to be human without sin), Jesus was and is. And emotions are an essential part of being human. Our emotions are diseased by the fall, of course, just as every part of fallen humanity is affected by the fall. But emotions are not themselves a result of the fall. Jesus experienced the full range of emotions that we do (Heb. 2:17; 4:15).1 As Calvin put it, “the Son of God having clothed himself with our flesh, of his own accord clothed himself also with human feelings, so that he did not differ at all from his brethren, sin only excepted.”2

How does Jesus feel about his people amid all their sins and failures? This book takes readers into the depths of Christ’s very heart—a heart of tender love drawn to sinners and sufferers.
The Emotions of Jesus

The great Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield (1851–1921) wrote a famous essay in 1912 called “On the Emotional Life of Our Lord.” In it he explored what the Gospels reveal about Christ’s inner life, what Warfield calls his “emotional” life. Warfield did not mean what we often mean by the word emotional—imbalanced, reactionary, driven by our feelings in an unhealthy way. He simply is noticing what Jesus felt. And as he reflects on Christ’s emotions, Warfield notes repeatedly the way his emotions flow from his deepest heart.

What then do we see in the Gospels of the emotional life of Jesus? What does a godly emotional life look like? It is an inner life of perfect balance, proportion, and control, on the one hand; but also of extensive depth of feeling, on the other hand.

Warfield begins his study of specific emotions in the life of Christ this way:

The emotion which we should naturally expect to find most frequently attributed to that Jesus whose whole life was a mission of mercy, and whose ministry was so marked by deeds of beneficence that it was summed up in the memory of his followers as a going through the land “doing good” (Acts 11:38), is no doubt “compassion.” In point of fact, this is the emotion which is most frequently attributed to him.3

He then goes on to cite specific examples of Christ’s compassion. Throughout, he is trying to help us see that Jesus did not simply operate in deeds of compassion but actually felt the inner turmoils and roiling emotions of pity toward the unfortunate. When the blind and the lame and the afflicted appealed to Jesus, “his heart responded with a profound feeling of pity for them. His compassion fulfilled itself in the outward act; but what is emphasized by the term employed to express our Lord’s response is . . . the profound internal movement of his emotional nature.”4 Hearing the plea, for example, of two blind men for sight (Matt. 20:30–31) or that of the leper for cleansing (Mark 1:40), or simply seeing (without hearing any plea) a distressed widow (Luke 7:12), “set our Lord’s heart throbbing with pity.”5

In each of these instances Jesus is described as acting out of the same internal state (Matt. 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13). The Greek word is splanchnizo, which is often rendered as “to have compassion.” But the word denotes more than passing pity; it refers to a depth of feeling in which your feelings and longings churn within you. The noun form of this verb means, most literally, one’s guts or intestines.

Seeing Jesus through His Compassion

Warfield is particularly insightful, however, on the implication of this compassion for how we understand who Jesus was and what his inner emotional life was actually like. Throughout his essay Warfield reflects on the fact that Jesus is the one perfect human ever to walk the face of the earth; how, then, are we to understand his emotional life, and an emotion such as compassion? What he helps us see is that Christ’s emotions outstrip our own in depth of feeling, because he was truly human (as opposed to a divine-human blend) and because he was a perfect human.

Perhaps an example would clarify. I remember walking the streets of Bangalore, India, a few years ago. I had just finished preaching at a church in town and was waiting for my ride to arrive. Immediately outside the church grounds was an older man, apparently homeless, sitting in a large cardboard box. His clothes were tattered and dirty. He was missing several teeth. And what was immediately most distressing was his hands. Most of his fingers were partially eaten away. It was clear they hadn’t been damaged by an injury but had simply been eaten away over time. He was a leper.

What happened in my heart in that moment? My fallen, prone-to-wander heart? Compassion. A little, anyway. But it was tepid compassion. The fall has ruined me, all of me, including my emotions. Fallen emotions not only sinfully overreact; they also sinfully underreact. Why was my heart so cool toward this miserable gentleman? Because I am a sinner.

What then must it mean for a sinless man with fully functioning emotions to lay eyes on that leper? Sin restrained my emotions of compassion; what would unrestrained emotions of compassion be like?

That is what Jesus felt. Perfect, unfiltered compassion. What must that have been like, rising up within him? What would perfect pity look like, mediated not through a prophetic oracle as in the Old Testament but through an actual, real human? And what if that human were still a human, though now in heaven, and looked at each of us spiritual lepers with unfiltered compassion, an outflowing affection not limited by the sinful self-absorption that restricts our own compassion?


Notes:

1 B. B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Oxford, UK: Benediction Classics, 2015), 137–38.
John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, vol. 1, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), 440.
2Warfield, Person and Work of Christ, 96.
3Warfield, Person and Work of Christ, 97–98.
4Warfield, Person and Work of Christ, 98.

This article is adapted from Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund.