With all my heart I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. Tis the season! Doesn’t Christmas have the best music? Christmas is the time each year we remember and celebrate the glorious moment when the Son of God entered the world as a human being. We glory in this when we sing Hark The Herald Angels Sing
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Or, What Child Is This?
“Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.”
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Jesus, to Thee be glory given;
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing!”
These wonderful songs don’t only feel good, they communicate in such a beautiful way the astounding truth that the Word of God became human flesh. Why am I talking about Christmas? Because Paul is in Galatians. Look at verse 4 with me, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…” Born of a woman. That is Christmas. That is an emphasis on the true humanity of Jesus Christ.
How does this fit into Galatians? Why would it matter in Paul’s message to point out the humanity of Jesus Christ? Paul is merely stating that the arrival of Jesus as a human happened at a set time determined by God, and that with the arrival of Jesus on the earth the time of the Law was coming to an end. Rather than following the Law, it would be faith in Jesus Christ that would free a person from spiritual slavery to the Law and make them a child of God; faith in Jesus would result in receiving the Holy Spirit; faith in Jesus would make someone a seed of Abraham; faith in Jesus would make someone an heir of the promises made to Abraham. Ergo, our series within our series is called “Heirs, Part 3.” But in these verses describing how we are heirs, Paul points out in verse 4 some important truths about Jesus that bear down on the reality of our own “heirship.” Verse 4 is like a well, very short across but very deep down. By pausing on verse 4 and looking at each of the four things Paul says about Jesus we are richer for it in the faith, because Who Jesus is is the basis of who we now are: 1) He came in God’s time, 2) He is the Son of God who is fully God, 3) He came born of a woman and is fully human, and 4) He is the prophesied one, born under the law. We looked last week at the first two: he came in God’s time and He is God’s Son. Lets look at the next two.
JESUS WAS TRULY HUMAN
Verse 4 says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman….” Now this may be so familiar to you that you are tempted to be bored with this point. But do not. This is a far deeper truth that is beyond fully understanding than you may realize. There is a reason we make a big deal out of Christmas, and there is a reason the Chalcedonian Creed was written. There is a reason it is grave heresy to deny or confuse the fully, perfect humanity of Jesus. I want you to see several important things about Jesus being born of a woman:
First, Jesus was truly human. We see here he was born to a woman, Paul’s point being he was born like every other human in history – through a woman. Now of course his conception was unlike any other human in that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, and no man had anything to do with her becoming pregnant, and her virginity remained intact. But the One who created man in Genesis, created human flesh in her womb, and he grew in that womb like every other human and was born from that womb like every other human.
Jesus’ humanity was foretold by the Scriptures long before He ever came in the flesh. God told the serpent in the Garden that the offspring of the woman would come and crush his head – offspring of the woman meaning a human being would come, born from a woman, and this special human would destroy Satan and his works. The anticipation of this coming human was built in the prophets as well,
- Daniel 7:13-14, 13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
- Isa 7:14 and 9:6, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel,” and “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…”
While we may not think them the most exciting part of Scriptures, the lineages are critical. They show the true human history of people. And what does the entire New Testament begin with in Matthew chapter 1? The ancestry of Jesus, beginning with Abraham and traced all the way down to Jesus. The human lineage from which Jesus descends proves he was human. This is critical because the coming Savior who would destroy Satan, deliver Israel, be the Seed of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed, was prophesied to come as the descendent of certain people. This human Jesus had to have the right human ancestry. He did. Jesus ancestry proves he was human (Mt 1; Rom 1)
As self-evident as it is from Scripture that Jesus was human, the Scriptures go further: His humanity is forcefully and clearly asserted. It is not implied or left to any confusion. John 1:14 says that the eternal Word “became flesh and dwelt among us.” Romans 1:3 says “regarding his earthly life the Son of God was a descendent of David…” Later Romans 8:3 says, God sent “his own Son in the likeness of human flesh…” Do not confuse that with Jesus being sinful like all other human beings – it is an assertion that He became human just like every other human was human, but Scriptures are clear that unlike every other human He did not have any sin. Philippians 2:7 says He was “made in human likeness” and was “found in appearance as a man.”
Turn to Hebrews 2:14 with me, and then 17…. Jesus the man was not merely some illusion as Christian Science says, or Gnosticism, or Docetism says. Jesus “shared in” our humanity and “became like us, fully human in every way.” Jesus fully participated in our humanity. He had human flesh and bones and blood – remember when the disciples were looking at Him raised from the dead they were in disbelief and He said to them, “Why are doubts rising in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” (Luke 24:38-39). He was raised physically (which we’ll get to) – but his physical resurrection was showing that He existed physically as a human before He died.
- He got tired like humans do as when he slept in the boat during the storm – you have to be tired to sleep in that weather.
- He became hungry and enjoyed bread and fish with the multitudes.
- He became thirsty like he did in John 4 with the woman at the well.
He experienced humanity for himself. He even experienced human pain: He wept at Lazarus’ death. But most significantly, He willingly subjected Himself to the pain of shame, mockery, abandonment, pulling out his beard, repeated punches and slaps to the face, whipping his back until it was shredded, the screaming pain of a crown of thorns on his head, nails in his hands and feet, dangling by those nails on a cross, and finally suffocation.
You’ll notice as you read the Gospels there is one title that Jesus keeps referring to Himself over and over again. He keeps referring to Himself as the “Son of Man.” Its an emphasis on his humanity, born of a woman, born a human, born in the right human lineage. Jesus is the Son of Man because He is fully human.
APPLICATION: Do not listen to anyone who denies or confuses the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is antichrist to do so and it was fiercely rebuked by the Apostles and the early Fathers. First John 4:2-3 says, “Every spirit (teaching) that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit (teaching) that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist…”
APPLICATION: The humanity of Jesus was like our humanity, except for sin. Sometimes people think Jesus had a sin nature and a desire to sin but the God “part” of Him kept it in check and kept him from sinning. They think this because they are confused about theology. Humans existed before sin in the garden, and then sin entered into the human condition as a result of the Fall. Fallen sinfulness is not the design of what is “human,” it is a defect that came after God’s “very good” creation. Do not be in error in thinking Jesus had a sin nature and a desire to sin that was simply kept on a leash. Jesus was without sin in every way, there was nothing in Him that wanted to sin. Temptation was external, temptation was from teh devil trying to seduce him, but nothing in Jesus was inclined to anything the Devil was saying. His experience of that temptation was to put on display His perfect righteousness, and to demonstrate that He was the spotless, righteous lamb of God who was qualified to die for sinners precisely because He himself was without sin. Furthermore, if sin is essential to the human condition, and in order to be “human” someone erroneously thinks Jesus had to also be sinful, then what is the resurrection? How can anyone be human in the resurrection if sin is part of the resurrection? No, just like cancer is not essential to being human, but a corrupting and death-creating thing, so too is sin. The best example to clarify this is to imagine a forest where every tree is diseased. But one tree is planted in the middle that is a tree of the same species as all the other trees, but it is the one single tree that is not diseased.
JESUS’ ETERNAL PRE-EXISTENCE
Jesus didn’t begin as a human. Actually, He never had any beginning because He is the Eternal Word, the 2nd Person of the Godhead. Listen to how John’s Gospel opens up with this very point: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God.” He existed in the beginning with God – meaning He was already in existence along with God when the beginning happened because He as the Word is God and caused the beginning to happen. Then it goes on to say, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” The eternal Word that was God came in the flesh and His name is Jesus. This is why Jesus would say to the crowds, “Before Abraham was born I am!” – referring to the fact that He existed as the eternal Word prior to even Abraham’s existence – which was nearly 2000 years prior to Jesus saying this.
This brings up an important point about the nature of Jesus. He is one person with two natures: one God and one Human. The best expression of the Bible’s teaching on this truth is the Chalcedonian Creed, which I urge you to read carefully. It refutes the Eutechean error that insisted Jesus had one nature after blending and mixing the human and divine nature within himself so that it was some new thing, a combined mixture. Let me name the errors people have had about Him:
- Jesus was fully God but not man
- Jesus was fully man but not God (Arianism)
- Jesus only appeared to have a body, but his body and his physical sufferings were only illusions (Docetism)
- Similarly, Jesus set aside His divinity and stopped being God to come down and become a human while on earth (Kenoticism)
- Jesus was two separate Persons in one body, like he’s schizophrenic (Nestorianism)
- Jesus had a mixture of the divine and human nature that dissolved the distinction of both natures (Eutychianism).
As usual, there is one truth and innumerable errors to confuse the truth. As the Chalcedonian Creed (449) says so elegantly and forcefully:
“the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, [is] to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ…
JESUS RESURRECTION AS A HUMAN
We saw that Jesus existed eternally as God before coming as a true and real human being. Three days later, after His death, Jesus was resurrected as a human in a physical body (Jn 20:27; Lk 24:39-43; 1 John 1:1-3)
APPLICATION: His bodily resurrection as a human is a statement of the truth that we are going to have a bodily resurrection. We will not evolve into something different. We will not come back as something different. We will always be human. What will change is that what is mortal will be replaced with what is immortal, what is temporary will be replaced with what is permanent, what is shameful will be replaced with what is glorious. These bodies are going to be set aside, and they are seeds for the future glorious bodies we will have. Those future glorious bodies are going to be patterned after Jesus’ own resurrected, glorious body (Php 3).
CONCLUSION: Redemption
The reason Jesus became a human being is because He came to redeem human beings. Hebrews 10:10 says, “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” His once-for-all sacrifice, of His own human body, was to make us holy. We were unholy, but He made us holy. To be the substitute for sinful humans he had to become a human. To be the sacrifice for humans he had to be human. To save humans he had to become human.
Jesus was born of a woman. He didn’t set aside His divinity in doing so, He set aside His glory, coming humbly. Its time for you to set aside your sense of your own glory, and come humbly to Him. You’re only a human, you can’t save yourself. The only One who can save you is the One who is both Human and God – Jesus Christ.