The Lords Humanity was truly human – sounds obvious but when you search out the extent of it, therein lies a real cause for worship. In other words, we know The Lord was truly human and worship Him for the great stoop He took that this might be so – but when you explore the extent of His humanity and realise that it went further than just the body He took upon Himself, it is then that you begin to truly appreciate what His ‘humanity’ actually means.
This step from knowing and appreciating is one which we should always be looking to make. Simply knowing is not enough for two reasons. Appreciating Christ should first lead us to worship and second, it should cause us to be changed.
Think for example of His prayer life. We pray because we are hopelessly dependant on God for our needs be that comfort, guidance, power, or forgiveness. God on the other hand is dependant only on Himself. Yet so complete was The Lords Humanity that He did pray and so perfectly was His submission as Son to His Father that He did show dependance. Yet which one of us has a prayer life on a par with His? He frequently spent long nights in prayer where we might spend minutes.
In John 17 we have on record the longest prayer He respectfully addressed to His Father, supplicating on behalf of the disciples. When we pray we know that God already reads the thoughts of our hearts. Expressing those thoughts is a true token of our dependance on Him. It seems it wasn’t beneath The Lord to do the same.
Of course His humanity first brought Him to the manger. How amazing to think that God is found in fashion as a man lieing in a manged. That baby was possessed of unsupressed deity. As such He would have known for example the thoughts of His mother as she wrapt Him in swaddling bands and laid Him in the manger. Could He have expressed those thoughts? Only if He had denied the confines of His humanity. And so it was throughout his childhood and adolescent years. He never misused His deity and never undermined His humanity. The two co-existed in a union beyond our comprehension.
The confines of Humanity meant The Lord felt tiredness, pain, hunger and many similar feelings. His death at calvary is as mysterious as His birth yet in it we appreciate how utterly He identifies with mankind. He refused for example, the vinegar, choosing to expose Himself fully to the physical and mental pressures of crucifixion.
And so it goes on. We will explore this subject for eternity. The mystery of His humanity and how fully he took it on – completely, yet without sin.