The Reality of Christ's Humanity #2

And when you remember the majesty of His glory, the greatness of His being, the infinite value of His eternal essence, that He stepped down to this, I want to tell you, Jesus is someone special. Thanks for joining us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues our series for the season called The Most Blessed Birth. Don has part two of a message titled The Reality of Christ's Humanity. Last time Don began looking at the significance of Christ's humanity. He noted that our Lord had a human lifespan, an ancestral line, and a real live birth. Jesus thus had human needs and felt human emotions able to identify with us.

On today's program, Don will further explore these emotions, helping you better appreciate the one we celebrate this time of year. Let's join our teacher now in The Truth Pulpit. And so we see that Christ is feeling the limitations, feeling the need of humanity just like you and I do. When you're tired, when you're tempted, when you're hungry, when you're thirsty, let those bodily urges, those bodily needs, tonight, tomorrow, for however long this stays present in your mind, let the simplicity of the feeling of those human needs be a reminder that points you to Christ. And a reminder that says, oh my Lord felt something like this, but without sin my Lord knew what it was like to be hungry and thirsty. I'm tired, my Lord knew what that was like.

I've been tempted, my Lord knew what that was like. I've sinned, my Lord knew nothing of that, but in these aspects of humanity that are not connected to our sinfulness, we find our Lord walking through them, experiencing them himself. Now you know what I find so striking about this? You know why this is so remarkable? You know why it's so wonderful? This is striking because it is so ordinary.

It is so ordinary. And you remember who this Jesus is, right? You remember that he was the pre-existent son of God. You realize that he dwelt with God and he was with God and he was God before the beginning of time. You realize that he was on the receiving end of the worship of angels and he left his heavenly abode and came down to earth to live amongst us as a man, as a human. And in the ordinary nature of this, the glory of the condescension of Christ is displayed for us in remarkable splendor. This one who created the worlds by his spoken word, subjected himself, voluntarily took on humanity and identified with us so completely in it that he experienced hunger and thirst, temptation and fatigue. That's how great our Lord Jesus is. And you see the humility of Christ put on glorious, splendorous display by the fact that he who left his heavenly home identified with us in our humanity to the fullest extent.

He is unlike any other. You know, our men of power, what we're used to in our society, what we're used to in our world is that the ones that have the most live the highest. They've got the biggest houses, they've got the fastest cars, they've got everything that this world has to offer and they're insulated from a lot of the difficulties that you and I experience in our more humble existence. And they like it that way.

Well, they can have it. What we see with Christ was he who was infinitely above them, however, chose out of love for the sake of us, for the sake of everyone who would ever believe in him to identify with our humanity down to the lowest, most common, basic nature of human needs. He voluntarily did that.

He gladly submitted to his Father's will that this would be what he would do. And when you remember the majesty of his glory, the greatness of his being, the infinite value of his eternal essence, that he stepped down to this, to walk through what you and I walk through, I want to tell you, Jesus is someone special. And it's shown in the way that he identified with our very ordinary humanity and those physical needs. Now thirdly, Jesus had human emotions. He had human emotions, unmixed with sin, but Jesus knew the texture of human feelings.

He was not a robot. And we see this in multiple ways. When Jesus saw people distressed and dispirited, his reaction to them was one of human compassion. He sympathizes with us. The humanity of Christ gives him a capacity for care, for compassion, for gentleness, for an attitude of mercy toward you because he has walked through this difficult sod. He has felt the weight of the human experience. And when he saw others, when he saw sinners in that dispirited, discouraged sense where all hope seemed to have been extinguished, his reaction was one of compassion, of love, of gentleness, of kindness. He identified with us in the fullness of our humanity, in our flesh and blood, in his life experience. He identified with it all. Why did he do that?

What was his point? What was he trying to accomplish? He did this so that he could show mercy to us. He did this so that he could offer that perfect life as a sacrifice to turn the wrath of God away from us. He did this out of love. This was an expression of the perfection of his love, the perfection of his grace, the perfection of his patience, the perfection of his kindness. He did this to redeem us.

And need we say? Need we realize that the one who came as a faithful, merciful Redeemer is one who's viewing us in sympathy, viewing you tonight in your affliction with the arms of compassion held open wide, willing to receive your troubled soul that you might find rest and peace in him. He had real human emotions. His compassion on the dispirited was great. It was deep. It was broad. It was wide.

It was wonderful. He hasn't changed. He's the same now that he was then. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Hebrews 13 verse 8. And so even though I understand that the nature of affliction and the darkness that you sometimes feel inside your mind and inside your own feelings makes you think that there is a black cloud between you and God, and you tend to view God through the lens and the perspective of your immediate human experience and you project that darkness as though God were looking on you in darkness. Beloved, if you're in Christ, it's not like that at all. He came to save you. He came to show mercy and faithfulness and kindness and love and all of those wonderful aspects of his attributes to you, to reconcile you to God, to help you to be the one who would be your helper.

You remember, don't you, that that's one of the names that Jesus ascribed to our indwelling Holy Spirit, the Helper. Well, if he's helping us, he's favorably disposed toward us. And his view toward us, his interactions with us are flavored by the fact that he had compassion while he was here on earth. He knows the difficulty of life here and in kindness and in mercy, he extends that grace to us.

And so don't go by the way that you feel about it tonight. Don't go simply by the perspective of your difficult circumstances. Look to who Christ really is. Look to what Scripture says about him. And by faith, receive and believe what Scripture says, that he did all of this, that he might be a faithful and merciful high priest to you.

And find in that your hope and your confidence and your strength to go forward, beloved. His humanity points you to all of those things. Do you see how precious his humanity is?

Do you? And all of a sudden, the affliction of this life is swallowed up into something of greater transcendence. And we remember our Lord was afflicted more than we ever were.

We're never going to bear the sins of anyone. On the cross, he bore the sins of the entirety of the church in his body. He knew what affliction was like.

He knew what unjust treatment was like. And he's come through on the other side. He's come through the grave. He's resurrected.

He's ascended on high. And now, he's in heaven where he represents us as our brother, as our faithful high priest, the one who loves us and gave himself up for us. You see, this is where your soul rests. This is where your soul finds hope. Not in anything about circumstances, but in Christ and who he is and in his love for you.

I love him, don't you? Now, Matthew 26. He had human emotions, compassion. Scripture shows him feeling human sorrow. Matthew 26, verse 36. And then Jesus came with them, with his disciples, to a place called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and distressed. And then he said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

Remain here and keep watch with me. His disciples stumbled, faltered. You know, they couldn't even stay awake in his hour of need. But the point here is that his soul felt the grief of the hour. And he knew what it was like to be abandoned in his time of greatest need. Well, beloved, don't you think after he gave his life for you on the cross, don't you think as he represents you before God in heaven and you go to him with your broken heart, you go to him and say, Lord, I've been betrayed here.

People I trusted have violated my trust. Don't you think that after all that he's been through and the purpose that he came was to become a faithful, merciful high priest to represent you to God and represent God to you? Don't you think that he'll hear that with sympathy, that cry of your heart and sympathy?

Of course he will. That's why he came, was that he would be that kind of high priest to us. When you go to Christ with your broken heart, you can have the assurance he knows what deep grief of the soul feels like. And you can know that therefore he will receive you with sympathy.

There is no one like him. There is no one more wonderful, more important in your life than the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you have Christ, you have all.

If you don't have Christ, you don't have anything. Well, as you continue to read in Scripture, you'll find him experiencing the human motion also of anger. Mark chapter 3 verse 5.

He was going to heal a man. There were opponents who didn't think he should do that on the Sabbath. And he said in Mark chapter 3 verse 4, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill? This is Mark chapter 3 verse 4 as you're flipping there in your Bibles.

But they kept silent. And in verse 5, after looking around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of heart, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and his hand was restored. Instant immediate healing.

He didn't need a physical therapist to straighten out the stiffened joints. He healed him immediately. The point is that he looked at those people with righteous indignation. Their attitudes were sinful.

They were wicked. And Jesus felt the human emotion of righteous indignation against them. Scripture describes him as feeling joy, compassion, sorrow, anger, joy, the breadth of human emotion. Without sin, I keep saying and repeating that, the breadth of human emotion found in his human experience.

How could those human emotions be experienced by the Lord of glory? It's because his humanity was real. It was real physically in his physical growth. It was real in the nature of his inner life as well. There was a, if I can use this term, using it broadly not as a field of study, there was a psychological dimension to his humanity as well. And he entered into the fullness of the range of human experience even in his emotions. Finally, you see him expressing human love in John 11 verse 5.

He says, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He had genuine human feelings, human emotions. And so when we come to him, we realize that we have someone that has identified fully with our humanity.

Human lifespan, human emotions, human needs. And finally, point number four is that he was recognized as a man. Recognized that Jesus faced adversaries, faced critics who would have loved to have done anything to discredit him.

And they wanted to do that. And his contemporaries, the men and women who lived at the same time in the same region who actually interacted with him during his earthly life, his contemporaries saw him as a human being, saw him as a man, not as some celestial being, not as some apparition, not as a ghost, not anything like the false teachers were promulgating in the days of the Apostle John. Look at John chapter 10 verse 33. Jesus had just made an astonishing claim to deity. In verse 30, he said, I and the Father are one. I am of one essence with God the Father.

We have an identical essence that we share together. Well, the Jews didn't take too kindly to that in verse 31. They picked up stones to stone him.

They wanted to kill him. And Jesus answered them, I show you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you stoning me? I have done nothing but good during the course of my ministry here.

I have taught. I have healed. I have lived before you. Which one of you convicts me of sin? Why are you stoning me? What guilt do you find in me that justifies the fact that you have rocks in your hand cocked and ready to throw them against me? On what righteous ground do you do that?

Fair question, right? What's the charge against me? Before you execute me, why don't you tell me why? And the Jews answered him, verse 33, for a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy.

And because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God. They said, we see you. They acknowledged him. They recognized him as a man, as a human being with full humanity. And they could not handle the fact that he made claims to deity because he was a man. Those who saw him acknowledged the reality of his humanity.

Which kind of brings us full circle, doesn't it? We started in 1 John, the first four verses of 1 John. What we've seen with our eyes, touched with our hands, heard with our ears, concerning the word of life, this is what we proclaim to you. The only difference in his humanity from ours was that he was without sin. Now, I could hear somebody, perhaps new to the teaching of Scripture, asking this question.

Fair question. Does this even matter? Why are we spending so much time on the humanity of Christ?

Does this even matter? Well, the Apostle John thought so. In 1 John, chapter 4, verse 2, he said this. He said, by this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist. The Apostle John, writing as the appointed representative of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, says this. He says, false teachers who deny the humanity of Christ are threatening the very essence of Christianity. If Christ is not a man, then there is no Christianity. If a teacher denies or questions the humanity of Christ, he is automatically identified as a false teacher who is from the devil himself.

Why is that so? Well, beloved, you have to remember the purpose for which he came. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, the Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, verse 15, of whom I am foremost, Paul said. By the way, just an incidental side note in light of that verse prompted a thought in my mind. If Paul was the chief of sinners, he said that he was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If Paul was the chief of sinners and the Lord saved him and forgave him of all of his many sins, you know what that means for you and me? It means that he'll forgive our sins too. If he saved the worst sinner, then everyone else is included in the realm of his saving intention, his saving invitation. There is no sin that you have committed that places you beyond the grace of God in light of that. It was the whole reason he came, was to save a sinner just like you. Well, praise the Lord for that, huh? I don't know about you, but I got a lot of sins that needed forgiven.

I got a lot of remaining corruption that needs to be cleaned out. There will be more sins in my life in the future. How wonderful to know that the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, 1 John 1-7, cleanses us from all sin. That those who come to him by faith alone find a merciful, receptive Savior, glad to receive, glad to forgive, glad to set aside the punishment that we deserved and to return instead of punishment the full blessing and love and mercy of God upon our souls and to welcome us into his family. There ain't no one like him.

Love like that, grace like that is amazing, but his humanity was necessary for him to be a Savior like that for us. Why is that so? Well, just follow with me here.

We're almost done here. You're a man, you're a woman who has sinned. Well, if there's going to be a Savior for you, it needs to be someone who shares your humanity. If Jesus Christ was not a man, he could not have died for the sins of men. If Jesus Christ was not a man, he could not be a human example to us.

If he was some celestial being, whatever a celestial being does is not an example for us in our human living. But if Christ was a man, and he is, then his example is one that we can look to. If Jesus Christ was not a man, he could not sympathize with you in your human trials.

But as we've seen here, Jesus Christ is a man, greatest man who ever lived. That is essential to your salvation and your walk with God because his humanity identifies him with us. And his humanity and his perfect righteous life qualified him to be a human sacrifice to appease the wrath of God for sinners just like you.

Without his humanity, that whole structure collapses and is ruined with his humanity. This God-man offered himself as the perfect atoning sacrifice for sinners just like you at the cross. And that's why faith in Christ is well placed. That's how we can know that by trusting him that he is able to deliver real salvation for real sinners just like you because his identification with our humanity was complete.

And God imputed to him at the cross the guilt of all of your sin, punished him as though Christ had committed every sin that you ever committed, punished Christ like that so that he could treat you as though you had lived the perfectly righteous life that Christ lived, the great exchange, your guilt on Christ, his righteousness on you. What a great Savior. Well, we've almost run out of time for today, but Pastor Don Green will have more of our series, The Most Blessed Birth, next time as Christmas approaches. We hope you'll join us then here on the Truth Pulpit. But right now, here again is Don with a special invitation. Well, friend, if you are anywhere near the Cincinnati area and you don't have a good church home, I invite you to visit us at Truth Community Church. I'm in the pulpit almost every Sunday, and we have a loving congregation that would simply be thrilled to meet you and welcome you to our body.

We are striving to manifest the principles that you heard taught today. Why not come and see us? Bill will help you find us on our website. Just visit thetruthpulpit.com for directions and service times. That's thetruthpulpit.com, where you can also learn more about this ministry and find out how to receive free CD copies of Don's messages. I'm Bill Wright. Join us next time for more from the Truth Pulpit.