The Rambling Disciple

This one isn't based on any particular verse or passage, but rather a misguided assumption. Since Jesus is God and didn't sin, then he must be not quite fully human. To put it another way, Jesus was special in his humanity in a way we are not. While I obviously absolutely defend the uniqueness of Jesus as being fully God and fully man I do not think Jesus was some sort of superhuman. We look at Jesus and see all the wonderful things he did and the fact that he lived a perfect life and just assume that he wasn't quite as human as the rest of us. After all, to err is human. Part of what it means to be human from our experience is to fail, but Jesus never failed. So, he must be something unique. The truth of the matter is it isn't Jesus who is less than human but us. God created human beings in his image, to live with him and for him. We routinely fail to live up to our own design. God sets the standard for what it means to be human, and it looks like we have all failed. F...

As we've been looking at the Incarnation I think that there are underlying theological issues that lead to many of our misconceptions. The last two weeks we have looked at basically one issue; the hypostatic union. That is technical theology talk for the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully human at the same time. As we've seen many have trouble with that basic concept of these two, different natures coexisting in one person. So, in order to simplify the mystery, we tend to diminish either Jesus' divinity or humanity.  This week is a little different. The misconception we will examine this week is that God became a man in order to understand and relate to us better. This is usually drawn from the book of Hebrews in the discussion of Jesus being our great High Priest, something we discussed last week.  "For we do not have a high priest that is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." - Hebrews 4:15 Many t...

I remember a couple of years ago seeing a post on Facebook where a young mother was explaining to her child what happened to Jesus after he went back to heaven. The long and short of it is that the mother explained that Jesus transformed from being a human being back to being God. It's a common enough error that I see all over the place that is related to our discussion from last week. If you assume that whilst on Earth Jesus stopped being God in order to be a human being, it only follows that when he returned to heaven the reverse happened. However, many that would deny that Jesus' lost any divinity on Earth would also maintain that he ceased to be human following the Ascension. In essence, they make the Incarnation a thirty year or so stint as a human being. The truth is far more impactful. The Incarnation wasn't a short term role played by God for only thirty years. It was a permanent addition to the Son's nature and identity. Just as he never ceased to be God during...