The Man Christ Jesus, Part 2

By John Hooper

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We must insist that Jesus derived His humanity from the virgin Mary, because, in the words of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), “the doctrine of our redemption ultimately depends upon it. If [Christ] had not taken our human nature, He could not have saved us.”¹ The key word in that statement is the pronoun “our.” Dr Lloyd-Jones goes on to explain,

Some people have taught that God created a new human nature for His Son, and that this human nature merely passed, as it were, through Mary. That is wrong. The doctrine states that He derived His human nature from His mother, the Virgin Mary. It was not a new creation. He did not bring His human nature with Him. He received it from her. And therefore, as the Scripture often emphasizes, He is truly of the seed of Abraham and of the seed of David. Here it is in Matthew 1:1, ‘The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ Now if a special human nature had been created for Him, He would not have been the son of David nor the son of Abraham. But He was both, because His human nature came from His mother, the virgin Mary. Again, let me emphasize that what He had was not a human nature that was merely like ours but not really a part of ours, not organically related to us. He actually did receive our nature. Go back again to those verses in Hebrews 2:14-18. He really does belong, therefore, to the human race, He is one of us.

Let us take a closer look at those and some other passages from the Word of God.

The seed of the woman

Scripture maintains that the promised Saviour would be the woman’s seed (Genesis 3:15), hence Jesus was born of Mary (Galatians 4:4). And since He is born of Mary, He is of the seed of Abraham (Luke 3:34; Hebrews 2:16), of the tribe of Judah (Luke 3:33; Revelation 5:5), and of the line of David (Luke 1:32; 3:31; Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8; Revelation 5:5). It is striking that the genealogy recorded in Luke 3 takes us all the way back to Adam (v. 38), establishing Jesus’ manhood as not only a true manhood but our manhood, with our nature.

Jesus is related to us, and we to Him, and yet He is without trace of either original or actual sin. Even though He was born of Mary and with a recorded lineage traceable back to Adam, there was in Him not a whiff of corruption, no guilt, and therefore no condemnation. No thought of envy, pride or malice ever crossed His mind; no hint of lust or greed ever entered His heart; and no lying word ever crossed His lips. Never did He stray from the ways of His Heavenly Father. He alone, as the Greater David, could truly say, “I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me” (Psalm 119:102). And again, “I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee” (v. 168). When the psalmist writes, “The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works” (145:17), he is saying something that is as true of Jesus of Nazareth as of the eternal Son lying in the bosom of the Father. Always He has loved His Father with a perfect love, with all His heart and mind and soul and strength. He “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and yet He was born of Mary. This is a miracle beyond our feeble understanding, but we believe it. Indeed, we must believe it for our salvation.

Made of a woman

Another most apposite passage of Scripture is Galatians 4:4, “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman….” There are many Greek words that can be translated of, and each one has its own distinct shade of meaning. W. E. Vine (1873-1949) points out that the one used here in the phrase “made of a woman,” ek, means out of or from². The Dutch Reformed commentator Herman Ridderbos (1909-2007) explains the implication of this: “… from her He took all that belongs to the human. She was in the full sense His mother.”³ And so it is that He shares with us a human body (Luke 2:7), a human soul (Mark 14:34; John 12:27), a human will (Matthew 26:39; John 6:38), and a human heart (Matthew 11:29). In the words of Ambrose of Milan (d. AD 397), “He did not assume an appearance of incarnation, but a reality,”⁴ so that He might redeem us through and through. We do not have a redeemed heart and yet not a redeemed will or mind. Neither do we have a redeemed soul but not a redeemed body. We may be assured that every part of us is encompassed in His mighty and glorious work of salvation.

A Man amongst men

As we read the Gospel records of the life of our Lord Jesus, we discover that throughout His thirty-three years among us He shared with us all the normal activities of human existence, such as growing and learning (Luke 2:52), eating and drinking (Mark 2:16), sleeping and waking (Mark 4:38). Moreover, He shared with us our human emotions, affections, feelings and passions (e.g., Mark 3:5; 8:2; John 11:35; 13:23). He knew our griefs and our sorrows. Writing on the words “he … began to be sorrowful” (Matthew 26:37), John Calvin (1509-64), insists, “Those who pretend the Son of God was immune from human passions do not truly and seriously acknowledge Him as a man.”⁵ B. B. Warfield (1851-1921) begins his profound little work, On the Emotional Life of Our Lord, with the statement, “It belongs to the truth of our Lord’s humanity, that he was subject to all sinless human emotions.”⁶

It is especially in the psalms that we find a window opening up for us into the heart and soul, the human emotions and affections, of our Lord Jesus Christ. There we see Him joyful (e.g., Psalm 16) and troubled (e.g., Psalms 13 and 77), lonely (e.g., Psalm 22) and perplexed (e.g., Psalms 42, 43, and 77), distressed (e.g., Psalm 55) and trusting (e.g., Psalms 3 and 16). When our minds are so filled with thoughts that we say they are ‘buzzing,’ Psalm 94:19 points us not only to the example of the psalmist but forward to our Lord Jesus: “In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.” Yes, our Saviour too needed comfort at times to still the vortex of His thoughts, and found it. Sometimes He knew weakness in His very soul, but He cried for strength, and was granted it (Psalm 138:3).

As we experience our own troubles, battle with our own temptations and struggle with our own sufferings, emotions and grief, there is immeasurable comfort for us in the knowledge that there is no experience common to man (apart from sin) that our Saviour Himself has not known. He understands our sorrows, and sympathises with us in our tears, in a way that no other human being can. We may and we must call upon Him to draw alongside us, and we will find His sympathy to be a perfect sympathy, uncontaminated with the flaws of character, the hypocrisy and mixed motives that spoil our own weak efforts and make them so ineffective.

Rather than stoically holding back our tears and hiding our grief, let us pour them out before Him and find our comfort and relief in Him who knows and understands us better than our nearest loved one, and better than we know ourselves. In a way that perhaps we cannot fully grasp, He is our nearest loved One, our nearest and our dearest. He assumed the nature of those whom He came to save, our nature, and hence we are His brethren and He is not ashamed to call us so (Hebrews 2:11). He is our elder Brother (Romans 8:29). He belongs to us and we belong to Him in one family. There is no path we travel that He, as Firstborn, has not travelled before us, for “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Matthew 8:17). As William Gouge (1575-1653), wrote, “Christ is thus touched with the feeling of our infirmities, that we might be better persuaded to ask Him for succour in all our needs.”⁷ Why do we hold back? There is a comfort to be found in Him that those who remain outside of Christ cannot know. Does this not explain, at least in part, the sense of loneliness and desolation so many feel in our day? 

Temptation

But could Jesus truly be tempted? What a question that is. It is reminiscent of the trick questions of the Pharisees. If we answer ‘yes,’ are we not also saying that it was possible for Jesus to sin? And if we answer ‘no,’ how could it be said that “he himself hath suffered being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18a)? C. H. Spurgeon (1834-92) helps us find a way through:

It is a common-place thought, and yet it tastes like nectar to the weary heart – Jesus was tempted as I am…. He was tempted to the very same sins into which we fall. Do not dissociate Jesus from our common manhood. It is a dark room which you are going through, but Jesus went through it before. It is a sharp fight which you are waging, but Jesus has stood foot to foot with the same enemy. Let us be of good cheer, Christ has borne the load before us…. There is something sweeter yet – Jesus was tempted, but Jesus never sinned…. Ye tempted ones, come to your tempted Saviour, for He can be touched with a feeling of your infirmities, and will succour every tried and tempted one. (Evening by Evening, October 3^rd)

Yes, it is because Jesus was of our nature that He suffered being tempted, and having suffered He is “able to succour [come to the help of] them that are tempted” (2:18b). Every temptation is a test, a trial, but Jesus came through victorious on every occasion, and as Philip E. Hughes put it so well, “It is precisely because we have been defeated that we need the assistance of Him who is the victor.”⁸

The line between temptation and sin is a very fine one, but it is a line Jesus never crossed. Indeed, unlike us He could not cross it.⁹ Do we want to know what we would be like if we had no sin in us? All we need to do is look to our Lord Jesus Christ and we will see in Him the true but perfect man, our brother without sin.

Our Saviour’s human nature was real, complete and sinless, and also weakened. By this is meant that He was subject to all those dread consequences of sin that we are so familiar with day by day, such as tiredness, sickness, ageing, sorrow, weakness and pain. Jesus stooped to enter willingly into our cursed estate as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), and He knew what it was to weep, to suffer, and to die. All His life long He suffered both with us and for us (see 1 Peter 2:24, margin). There is no trial we are called on to experience and no temptation we must bear that He has not borne before us as part of His humiliation and saving work. He was “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15), by which we understand the infirmities that plague us in both body and soul.

The obedience of One

Another reason why we must insist on Christ being of our humanity is so that He, the Law-giver, might submit Himself to that same law so as to perfectly fulfil on our behalf all its holy requirements. We often think of Christ as being our substitute on the cross, but we are not so accustomed to thinking of Him as our substitute in His life. Calvin, preaching on Galatians 4:4, said, “He was clothed with our nature, for else He could not have yielded obedience to God in our behalf, that we might be set free….” The Reformer of Geneva goes further, saying, “our Lord Jesus Christ took our nature upon Him, to the end He might yield obedience to God His Father, as it were in our person.”¹⁰ Note well those last words: as it were in our person. This is no less and no more than what Paul is saying in Romans 5, where he writes, “as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (v. 19). Just as Adam had once disobeyed God, as it were in our person, so Christ Jesus yielded to God a perfect obedience, as it were in our person.

Yes, every requirement of God’s holy law was fulfilled by our Lord Jesus on our behalf. This not only means the penal consequences, in shedding His precious blood and dying for our sins, but also its preceptive demands, so that there might be imputed to us a perfect righteousness, His righteousness. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Romans 8:3,4). In Him, and only in Him, we are able to join with David and exclaim, “I have … done thy commandments” (Psalm 119:166). How else can we say with David, “Thou hast proved mine heart … thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing” (17:3). What a marvel of grace this is! Though the Son of God came “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” He was without sin, and by grace He has united us to Him and made us one with Him.

Furthermore, if Christ were not of our humanity, He could not be our mediator. With emphasis on the manhood of Jesus, Scripture affirms that “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Matthew Henry (1662-1714), wrote of Christ, “He was both the Son of Adam and the Son of God, that He might be a proper Mediator between God and the sons of Adam. And might bring the sons of Adam to be, through Him, the sons of God.”¹¹ Prof. Louis Berkhof (1873-1957), has pointed out, “If the human nature of Christ was not derived from the same stock as ours but merely resembled it, there exists no such relation between us and Him as is necessary to render His mediation available for our good.”¹² If He were not of the very same manhood as ourselves, He could never have truly represented us and we would have no Mediator.

A Man on the cross

As we have been at pains to establish here, our Lord Jesus Christ is one of us. The eternal Son took our body, though Himself free from any stain of corruption, so that He might pass voluntarily through the corruption of death for our sakes. In ancient times, Athanasius of Alexandria (c. AD 328-373) wrote, “He took our body,” and then “surrendered His body to death.”¹³ A key Bible passage on this overwhelming subject is Hebrews 2. There we read, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage…. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (vv. 14-17).

In this passage the Word of God makes clear to us beyond all dispute that Christ partook of “the same” flesh and blood as the children, meaning that He was flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. This is the way it had to be. It leads us on to consider briefly the atonement in its legal framework. For a just and acceptable atonement to be made for sin, Christ must partake of “the same” flesh and blood that has sinned. Or to look at it negatively, if Jesus were not of our human nature, the human nature that has sinned, He would not have qualified to be our substitute. He would not legally have been able to suffer on our behalf, “to sanctify and redeem us as our Goel.”¹⁴ He would not have been able to satisfy the justice of God in our place.

All this is taking us into deep doctrinal waters, but let’s not disparage the doctrine. Let’s not skip over it, or switch off at this point and move on to something else. We must strive to grasp it because these things take us to the heart of the gospel itself, to the heart of what it means for us to say, “Jesus saved me; Jesus died for me.” They are vital for a proper understanding of our Lord’s redemptive work and how it applies to every one of us as believers. They are vital, too, for our ability to recognise error and give an answer to those who ask us a reason for the hope that is in us, so let’s not confine them to the seminary lecture room. May they be preached from the pulpits of our churches and chapels so that we, believers in the pew, can feed upon them, delight in them, and rejoice in the God of our salvation.

Without blemish

At this point it might help us to think back to the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Whether the sacrificial animal was to be a lamb, a ram, a goat or a bullock, it was always to be “without blemish” (e.g., Exodus 12:5 and many more). This pointed Old Testament saints forward – urged them even – to Christ who would come to pour out His own precious blood “as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19). However spotless the lamb or the bullock may have been, no mere beast could ever have atoned for sin. A better sacrifice was needed.

Since man is the sinner, man is accountable; since man bears the guilt, man must bear the penalty. Hence, our substitute could never be a sheep or a bullock, or an angel, nor even a specially created man sent down from heaven, such as some have thought. Only a true “son of man,” our brother in the flesh, would be sufficient. Here the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), is helpful: “the justice of God requires that the same human nature which hath sinned should … make satisfaction for sin.”¹⁵ 

A. W. Pink (1886-1952) was quite right when he asserted, “They who deny Christ’s derivation of real humanity through His mother undermine the atonement.” He went on to say, “His very fraternity (Hebrews 2:11), as our Kinsman-Redeemer, depended on the fact that He obtained His humanity from Mary. Without this He would neither possess the natural nor the legal union with His people, which must lie as the foundation of His representative character as the ‘last Adam.’”¹⁶ Jesus of Nazareth must be and is, to borrow the words of Martin Luther, “the proper Man.”¹⁷

Of course, while we are focussing on the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, it needs to be remembered that His uniqueness lay not so much in his humanity alone, as in His being one divine person with two natures, human and divine. The Heidelberg Catechism comes to our aid again: the Saviour must be very God “that he might, by the power of His Godhead, sustain, in His human nature, the burden of God’s wrath….”¹⁸ That burden was of such a weight that had Jesus been only man, He would have been overcome by it. But as both man and God, He had the capacity to “endure an infinite punishment, without sinking into despair or being crushed under it.”¹⁹ Jesus was not crushed. He endured to the end, meeting every one of God’s just and righteous requirements on our behalf. He endured because He was incarnate Deity.

A Man in the heavens

God was pleased with the work and sacrifice of His Son. We know this with absolute certainty because on the third day God raised Him from the dead, and forty days later received Him back into heaven. But let us not think that, His work done, Jesus had no further need of His humanity. His work goes on. We see Him risen from the dead as the same real and representative man who had lived and died for us. In His resurrection body He was seen and heard, recognised, touched and handled, a man of “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39) as we are, and He was all this in order that He might be “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

The apostle goes on to explain, “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming” (vv. 21-23). In fact, not only is the believer’s resurrection a future certainty, it is in principle a present reality for each one. Scripture assures us that even now we are risen with Him and seated with Him in the heavenlies (Romans 8:30; Ephesians 2:6). No-one can take that from us. Christopher Wordsworth (1807-85) uses poetry to express this deep theology in a way that is clear and simple for our dull minds:

He has raised our human nature
In the clouds to God’s right hand;
There we sit in heavenly places,
There with Him in glory stand:
Jesus reigns, adored by angels;
Man with God is on the throne;
Mighty Lord, in Thine ascension
We by faith behold our own.²⁰

Those words are worth reading again, thoughtfully and prayerfully. As a proper man our Saviour ascended to heaven, and it is as a proper man that He is now ministering for us there as our advocate and high priest in the true Holy of holies. 

The writer to the Hebrews assures us that “he continueth ever … he ever liveth to make intercession” (7:24-25). Let us not lose sight of the truth that there is a real and proper man at the right hand of the Father, a true representative, our Brother, the One who is made “like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest…” (Hebrews 2:17). Let us not doubt as to whether He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (4:15). In glory still, 

His heart is made of tenderness, 
And overflows with love. 

And again, 

He, though exalted, feels afresh 
What every member bears  (Isaac Watts).²¹

 Let us not question whether we have a sympathetic advocate and intercessor, appearing for us in the presence of God (Hebrews 9:24). We can be assured that He intercedes for us and pleads on our behalf against all our accusers, including the accusations of our own heart. “O what a comfort when the heart is straitened in prayer, when the mouth is closed in guilt, when the spirit is harassed by temptation, to know that Jesus as our Advocate appears and pleads for us above!”²² (James Smith, 1802-62).

“If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). It is striking how John refers to Christ in this verse. He is in the glory but He is still Jesus. Mark that! The One who is “set down at the right hand of the throne of God” is “Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). There “we seeJesus … crowned with glory and honour” (2:9). Jesus is the name given to Him at His incarnation, the name associated with His humanity, and God would have us to know that He still bears it. He will never relinquish it, and in that there is immeasurable comfort for us. We go through many painful experiences in life and often we might feel that no-one really understands our case, no-one can sympathise with us, but we cannot say that of Jesus our advocate with the Father.

That human heart He still retains,
Though throned in highest bliss;
And feels each tempted member’s pains,
For our affliction’s His.²³
Joseph Hart (1712-68)

How good it would be for us to remind ourselves of this as we begin each day. Pastor James Smith (1802-62) wrote in his Daily Remembrancer,

Beloved, Jesus is before God for you this morning, and every morning; and the benefit of His intercession you daily enjoy. When doubting and fearful, put your cause afresh into His hands, and leave Him to carry it; He can plead well; His arguments are powerful, and His manner is divine.²⁴

Let us cast the eyes of our faith heavenward to gaze on Jesus, the One whom the apostle Paul calls “the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). His presence there gives us a firm confidence, blessed assurance and solid joys as we thread our way through this troubled earthly life. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones expresses perfectly the believer’s certain hope when he wrote, “Eventually, you and I shall be perfectly conformed in essence to that perfect glorified humanity that is there at this moment in the Son of God…. Because He is there, we shall arrive there.”²⁵

Amen! And all because He was born of the substance of Mary.

Behold, he cometh!

As the disciples watched their risen Lord ascend, two men standing by in white apparel said to them, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:10,11). Note those words, “this same Jesus”! Yes, as a man He is coming again, in a return that will be as physical as His incarnation, but this time it will be in great glory on the clouds of heaven and every eye shall see Him. That is our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), and we are to make ourselves ready for Him (Matthew 24:44). How? “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). 

May this brief survey of the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ encourage us to enter further into the wonder of our salvation and our one-ness with our Saviour; may it encourage us to turn to Him in our personal struggles; may it move us to a greater Christ-centredness in thought, word and life; and may it bring us to our knees in humble adoration of the One who is incomprehensibly “the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

(Concluded)

1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003), p. 259. ↩︎
2. W. E. Vine, A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Original Greek Words with their Precise Meanings for English Readers (McLean, VA: MacDonald Publishing Company, undated), p. 810. ↩︎
3. Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle to the Galatians (London, Edinburgh: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1953), p. 155. ↩︎
4. Cited by John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1972), 3:147. ↩︎
5. Cited by John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1972), 3:147. ↩︎
6. B. B. Warfield, On the Emotional Life of our Lord, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022), p. 27. ↩︎
7. William Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, [1655], 1980), p. 338. ↩︎
8. Quoted in David B. McWilliams, Hebrews (Powder Springs, Georgia: Tolle Lege Press, 2015) p. 87. ↩︎
9. For our editor’s excellent treatment of this subject, see the previous issue of the Quarterly, no. 503, pp. 446-54. ↩︎
10. John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians (Audubon, New Jersey: Old Paths Publications, [1574], 1995), p. 521. ↩︎
11. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 5, “Matthew to John” (McLean, Virginia: Macdonald Publishing Company [1721], repr. undated), p. 618. ↩︎
12. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth), p. 334. ↩︎
13. St Athanasius on the Incarnation (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1953), p. 34. Please note that the emphasis on the word “our” is original.  ↩︎
14. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 2, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, [1682], 1994), p. 308. ↩︎
15. Heidelberg Catechism, answer 16. Emphasis added. ↩︎
16. A. W. Pink, Gleanings in the Godhead (Chicago: Moody Press, 1975), p. 148. ↩︎
17. From Luther’s hymn, A safe stronghold our God is still. ↩︎
18. Answer 17. Emphasis added. ↩︎
19. Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (Jenison, Michigan: Reformed Free Publishing Association, [1584, 1851], 2025), p. 88. ↩︎
20. From the hymn See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph, no. 438 in Christian Worship. ↩︎
21. Lines from Isaac Watts’ hymn With joy we meditate the grace, no. 455 in Christian Worship (slightly adapted). ↩︎
22. James Smith, The Believer’s Daily Remembrancer (Plas Gwyn, Trelawnyd: K&M Books, [c. 1840], 2007), p. 64.  ↩︎
23. Verse 4 of the hymn A Man there is, a real Man, no. 379 in Christian Hymns. ↩︎
24. Footnote 22. (January 28th, morning) ↩︎
25. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans 8:17-39 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), p. 227. ↩︎