TEXT:

SUBJECT: Jesus Christ is God and Man

Jesus Christ is God, and with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He fully shares in the Divine essence and the attributes such as infinity, eternality, unchangeableness, and all the rest. When Thomas called Him My Lord and my God, he was right, for Jesus is God.

But not only God, He is also Man. This is a complicated doctrine and heretics have always tried to simplify it. Some said His body was an illusion, but it wasn’t. It hungered and thirsted and tired and bled just like yours and mine. Others said His body was human, but His soul wasn’t, that it was the Eternal Word, the Holy Spirit, or some other thing Divine. But they were wrong, too, for His mind and emotions are recognizably human: He grows in knowledge and He doesn’t know some things; He rejoices and He gets mad, He quakes with fear and is stung by disappointment. In short, He is human on the inside and not just the outside. In all things it behooved Him to be made like His brethren (Hebrews 2:17). His humanity is identical to yours and mine except it isn’t polluted with sin.

Was our Lord always Man? No He wan’t. But in the fullness of time, He joined a human nature to His Divine nature and suffered all the agonies of mankind—and for mankind.

This is the One we remember today at the Lord’s Table. The God who became a Man to save men from our sin and misery.

Prayer

Lord’s Supper