Jesus' Humanity

Jesus is the Lord of heaven and of earth.  He descended to the earth, taking the form of a man so as to live a human life, took on the sins of all mankind, and, dying on the cross, atoned for those sins by paying the sin debt of judgment due every man.  This is the gospel, the good news: that God Himself would pay the price of sin for all mankind and remove the dividing wall of hostility between Himself and us by the work of His Son, Jesus the Christ.

This is the unified, irrefutable, non-negotiable, irreducible truth of Jesus: that God, in all His infinitude and eternal omnipotence, condescended to a human form, eschewing some of His divine attributes so as to live a perfect and holy earthly life.  Therefore, Jesus was qualified both to atone for all of mankind's sin, and to perfectly relate to all of mankind's earthly pains, having Himself experienced the deluge of struggles that characterize this earthly life.

Simply put, Jesus was God and man.  However challenging the theology of this assertion may be, the account of Scripture in this regard is intensely unified.  John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, is clear that Jesus was a flesh and blood man while also being the God of all creation (1 John 1:1-3).  This is essential.  Jesus had to be a man in order to take on Himself the sin of all mankind.  Being a man was  the sine qua non of Jesus' work; He needed to be a man.

However, this fact has met much controversy over the centuries and many heresies have tried to detract from the reality of the true nature of Jesus.  The various heretical reactions to Christ's true nature can be summarized into one main camp, called Docetism, a similar and related heresy of Gnosticism.  The Docetists believe that, because Jesus was God, He could not possibly have inhabited an earthly human body.  

Furthering this heresy to its logical conclusion, Jesus was not born of a virgin, did not live a sinless life, did not live with and teach His disciples, was not arrested, was not crucified, did not die, and, because He wasn't ever alive in the flesh, did not resurrect.  Needless to say, this is flat-out heresy but even some Christians have fallen victim to this heresy.

The reality is that Jesus was both fully man and fully God.  His humanity should not be underemphasized to protect His divinity and vice versa.  As the fully-incarnate God-man, He had/has a dual nature, both man and God.  This is challenging for finite beings to understand but is essential biblical theology that should be defended and protected from any and all heretical incursions.  But praise be to the Lord Jesus, who condescended to take the form of a man so as to become the propitiation for the sins of all mankind!