What kind of man is this!

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him… Hebrews 5:7-9

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God… The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us… John 1:1-14

Very soon after I was ordained to the ministry I tried to help a young woman in the church who suffered from serious depression. I’m afraid I didn’t do her much good, and she understandably turned to another minister for support (a healthy blow to my youthful arrogance!). She later told me that he did indeed say something which helped her: namely, that, in turning to Jesus, she should think of him more as human rather than as divine, as a man rather than as God-in-the-flesh. She was still a very new Christian, and this advice led to her seeing Jesus in a whole new way.

The other minister wasn’t denying that Jesus was divine. Not at all. But he was pointing out a different aspect of the truth, and taking that aspect on board seemed to be a significant stepping stone in the life of that young woman.

As Christians we tend to emphasise, indeed to glory in, the truth that we sometimes call the “incarnation”, the “enfleshment” - that Jesus really is “God-in-the-flesh” – and we gloss over his humanness: that he really was fully human, like you and me, “though without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Is it time for a re-think?

No books of the New Testament lay a greater stress on Jesus’ superiority over all men and women (not to mention angels) than John’s Gospel (especially chapter 1) and the Letter to the Hebrews. Yet at the same time it is Hebrews that gives us the striking words of chapter 5:7-9, where he is portrayed in unmistakably human terms, and John 4 too shows us him resting and “tired from the journey” when he met the Samaritan woman. He experienced agonies of prayer, “with fervent cries and tears” (can you see him, hear him?). Even more startling, he had to “learn obedience through what he suffered”, and had to be “made perfect” (but wasn’t he already perfect?).

How do verses like those help us? Regarding the young woman, I can’t remember now, some fifty years on. But here are one or two thoughts that I find helpful.

First, such verses, however startling, make Jesus more real for us. We see that, even though fully divine, he needed to grow, learn and endure hard times, just like us (and far, far worse).

The New Testament nowhere gives us a picture of Jesus as, say, a five-year-old boy or, at his synagogue school, playing with his friends in the playground (was he ever naughty, mischievous?). We find it hard to imagine him sitting at his desk frowning with concentration as he learned to read and write (nor, come to that, crying as a baby needing to have his nappy changed.)

But these are phases he must have gone through if indeed he was truly human. There’s a tiny glimpse into Jesus’ youth in Luke 2, which tells us exactly that: “Jesus went down to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary and was obedient to them… And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man”.

When Hebrews tells us that he “learned obedience through what he suffered”, that suggests that we too should accept the hard experiences of our lives not as grumble-points but, by God’s grace, as growth-points in our spiritual and moral development. Though he was without sin, it seems that obedience didn’t come naturally or easily to him.

As for being “made perfect”, that can’t mean being perfected in matters of right and wrong, but rather that he had to go through the normal human process of slowly, gradually reaching full manhood, progressing from childhood to adolescence to adulthood – as The Message translation of the Bible puts it, thus arriving at “the full stature of his maturity”. Yes, God in the flesh wasn’t spared the kind of growing-pains we know so well.

Some of those medieval “Madonna and child” paintings you see in art galleries portray the infant Jesus as a little man-baby perched grotesquely on Mary’s knee – a portrayal, surely, far, far removed from the truth. Likewise, I heard a preacher once, speaking about the psalms, make an off-the-cuff remark: “Of course, Jesus would have known all 150 of the psalms off by heart, because he was the Son of God”. No, no! That comment precisely illustrates the kind of misunderstanding that Hebrews 5:7-9 and Luke 2:52 exist to puncture.

Summing it up… Jesus, in his humanity, had to grow and learn, both in the “ordinary” business of everyday life and in the spiritual battle of walking in holiness with his heavenly Father.

And if him, how much more us? As the old hymn puts it, “Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer”. He will help us and if, like him, we persevere we too will “grow in favour with God and man”.

I’ve run out of space for my second thought, so I’ll have to do a second instalment. Please join me again next time.

Father, I can’t begin to fathom how the Lord Jesus could possibly be both fully human and fully divine. I simply rejoice that it is so. Lord Jesus, be my comfort, my strength and my hope. Holy Spirit, be my life, my guide and my energy day by day. Amen.