Jesus’ humanity is often looked at as a stumbling block to his divinity. As I read about Jesus and study the nature of God, I’m finding more and more how Jesus the man shows us God.
Scot McKnight got me thinking about the term “flesh” to describe Jesus’ humanity. Normally, we think of the flesh as something we are fighting against. While the word may be used differently, Evangelicals have too strong a bias against our human form. Perfection, more often than not, is seen from a Greek philosophical perspective. When Jesus is angry, that’s not his divinity, that’s his human nature… or it’s some special kind of divine anger we are incapable of. When Jesus needs his friends, the disciples, that’s not an indication of God’s longing for our companionship, that’s just Jesus’ human nature.
If we take seriously God making humans in his image, and that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, we should not be so quick to discount those things we see as “just human.” Certainly, we can learn more about the divine from the life of Jesus than our preconceived notions of deity flowing from our Western philosophical roots.
This Advent season, consider how the man Jesus is the image of God.
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