For the past few years, I've been living a double life. No, I have not been scandalously committing immorality. What I mean is that for this season of my life I have been working both as a writer and a minister. I currently write on a full time basis while also serving in our local church as coordinator and director of discipleship programmes.
In some way or another, we're actually all fully one thing or another. We're fully parents and workers, students and children, executives and ministers of the Gospel. We can take that concept, magnify it a few times and apply it to Jesus being fully God and fully man.
Jesus was not a demigod—half-man, half-God. He was fully man in every way. But at the same time He existed as one of the facets of the Trinity as He walked this earth.
It's hard to understand the implications of Jesus being human, but it's important for us.
Here are three implications of Jesus being man that significantly affect how we live today.
1. He Lived the Way We Should Live
Jesus was man. However, at every occasion He showed the drive to live under the spiritual disciplines which we are given today. He prayed on a regular basis, studied and applied God's Word, and moved in dependence to the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is our best example of right living, proving to us that it can be done.
I've heard some people sluggishly give up spiritual disciplines because they're "just human."
But Jesus was human as well. But He faithfully kept the disciplines and faithfully attached Himself to the Father and to the Spirit. We can and should do the same.
2. He Overcame What We Can Overcome
Jesus had overcome the world (John 16:33) even while He was fully man. He overcame the temptations of sin and the struggle to remain pure and holy to prove to us that it's possible. While we are not Jesus, we are just as human as He once was and yet He overcame the pattern of sin.
Sure, we need time to progress, but we should never stay complacent and think we can't live holy lives. God is in the process of sanctifying us and helping us through His Holy Spirit.
3. He Identifies With Our Suffering
John 1:14 tells us, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."
Because Jesus was flesh on earth, He experienced everything we experience and we still have to experience.
He knew what it was like to be sick, to be hungry, to be tired and even to die. With that Jesus empathises with our pain and suffering. He knows what it's like to go through the things we go through. He understands because He went through the same things that we go through now. More importantly, He has found and given a way for us to overcome and offers it freely if we put our faith in Him.
