Is Jesus God or Man?
GOD AND MAN
This is the baby we celebrate every Christmas. He seems so innocent. He looks so human, because He is human, human like you and me. But that does not make Him any less God. Billy Graham coined the phrase “the God-man,” 100% God and 100% human, not 50/50.
John continues to describe Jesus, the Word, in this passage. Let me pick it up at verse 14, “14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14, NIV). This Word who was with God from the beginning and actually WAS God…the Word through which the entire universe was created…came to earth as a human being.
Throughout the history of Christianity the world has become imbalanced at times in its perception of Jesus because of its emphasis on one or the other of Jesus, either His deity or His humanity. And there has been an ongoing debate over Jesus’ miracles in an attempt to determine whether they were unique due to His divinity (God-ness), or if He performed them as a human being solely through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Many paintings depict the baby Jesus in a manger with a type of glowing halo around the baby’s head, since He was so holy. We can see how this was an attempt to portray the divine, the holiness, the purity of Jesus. Folks, I am almost certain he had no glowing Frisbee around His head so that all the other neighbor kids poked fun at Him. It is an artist’s attempt to revere and adore the “God-man” focusing upon His “God-ness” and purity, so we should not perhaps have any problems at all with it.
But, on the other hand, it may subtract from our view of Jesus who was in every other way exactly like any other baby born on the same night or any baby born in human history. Jesus, the baby, cried and cooed and dirtied His diapers. He learned to crawl and then gradually learned to walk through trial and error like any other infant. He was not a “super baby” who began walking at age “two days” and held donkeys over His head by age five to show off His superhuman strength. He ate and drank and slept. We see Jesus with perfectly human qualities throughout His ministry including pain, heartache, loneliness, joy. He got tired and took naps. He was hungry. He was tempted. We could go on and on with our list of characteristics basic to humanity, but He possessed them all. He was human…100%, no doubt about it.
Other than the conception of Jesus (called the Incarnation) which was by the power of the Holy Spirit empowering the womb of Mary, everything else about the pregnancy of Mary and the birth of Jesus was like any other precious child born into the world…as far as His human qualities. Granted, some of the events surrounding the birth were far from ordinary including the visits of Wisemen and shepherds, prophecies concerning the child, King Herod’s attempt to murder Him, etc., but the actual pregnancy and delivery of the child was ordinary.
GOD AND MAN
This is the baby we celebrate every Christmas. He seems so innocent. He looks so human, because He is human, human like you and me. But that does not make Him any less God. Billy Graham coined the phrase “the God-man,” 100% God and 100% human, not 50/50.
John continues to describe Jesus, the Word, in this passage. Let me pick it up at verse 14, “14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14, NIV). This Word who was with God from the beginning and actually WAS God…the Word through which the entire universe was created…came to earth as a human being.
Throughout the history of Christianity the world has become imbalanced at times in its perception of Jesus because of its emphasis on one or the other of Jesus, either His deity or His humanity. And there has been an ongoing debate over Jesus’ miracles in an attempt to determine whether they were unique due to His divinity (God-ness), or if He performed them as a human being solely through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Many paintings depict the baby Jesus in a manger with a type of glowing halo around the baby’s head, since He was so holy. We can see how this was an attempt to portray the divine, the holiness, the purity of Jesus. Folks, I am almost certain he had no glowing Frisbee around His head so that all the other neighbor kids poked fun at Him. It is an artist’s attempt to revere and adore the “God-man” focusing upon His “God-ness” and purity, so we should not perhaps have any problems at all with it.
But, on the other hand, it may subtract from our view of Jesus who was in every other way exactly like any other baby born on the same night or any baby born in human history. Jesus, the baby, cried and cooed and dirtied His diapers. He learned to crawl and then gradually learned to walk through trial and error like any other infant. He was not a “super baby” who began walking at age “two days” and held donkeys over His head by age five to show off His superhuman strength. He ate and drank and slept. We see Jesus with perfectly human qualities throughout His ministry including pain, heartache, loneliness, joy. He got tired and took naps. He was hungry. He was tempted. We could go on and on with our list of characteristics basic to humanity, but He possessed them all. He was human…100%, no doubt about it.
Other than the conception of Jesus (called the Incarnation) which was by the power of the Holy Spirit empowering the womb of Mary, everything else about the pregnancy of Mary and the birth of Jesus was like any other precious child born into the world…as far as His human qualities. Granted, some of the events surrounding the birth were far from ordinary including the visits of Wisemen and shepherds, prophecies concerning the child, King Herod’s attempt to murder Him, etc., but the actual pregnancy and delivery of the child was ordinary.
