How Is Jesus Both God and Man?

in making those statements the main point is to say that jesus is both god and human at the same time he's both divine and human now the word nature may have some philosophical ramifications and so if you don't want to use that that's fine but basically what i'm saying deity and humanity and i believe this is the essential message of the bible and it's essential to understanding the oneness of god in scripture another term is used in incarnations a latin term simply meaning manifest in the flesh we do find this statement in john 1 in the beginning was the word the word was with god the word was god john 1 1 and then verse 14 and the word was made flesh the word it literally says tabernacled in the flesh so that the word which is god in self-expression god the one true god himself revealing himself that's the word became flesh became human now when we say flesh we don't just mean body most the time flesh in scripture means human identity and of course for us it's sinful human identity but jesus was born without sin and he never sinned so in his case it was the kind of human humanity with which god originally created adam and eve because adam and eve were created as truly human but they were not sinful they were innocent they were capable of sin in their human life but and they did sin but they were not created with a sinful identity or sinful nature or a compulsion to sin so jesus comes in in a sense we might say he's more human than we are in that we're fallen humans we're marred distorted humans but he is original human uh so it's a true human identity likewise we find in first timothy 3 16 god was manifest in the flesh there are many statements of the deity of christ another example is john 20 28 thomas confessed jesus as my lord and my god he was a jew who believed deuteronomy 6 4 hero israel the lord our god is one lord he knew there was only one lord one god and he identified jesus as the one lord and one god yet jesus was standing before him right there as a human being so you can't escape the fact that he was also human another good example is the prophecy of isaiah 9 6 which says unto us a child is born unto us a son is given obviously human a child a son but this child and son is more than that because his name shall be called wonderful counselor the mighty god the everlasting father the prince of peace so this child and son is also the mighty god the everlasting father so that's what i mean when we say jesus had a two-fold identity maybe that's the way i would phrase it if i was writing the book now he had a two-fold identity and has a two-fold identity both deity and humanity we see this again in colossians 2 9 for in him which is christ jesus the lord in the context in him dwells present tense all the fullness of the godhead bodily bodily a real human identity godhead the true god everything that makes god who he is unless you would think that that that could be a portion of deity it says the fullness and unless you think that's still not definitive enough it says all the fullness so we have in unequivocal terms that jesus is the one true god in all his fullness yet revealed bodily or in flesh now when i say i mentioned a moment ago flesh body don't think of it as just god in a body or god putting on a piece of flesh like i put on a coat that's an inadequate explanation it's god in human identity or god personified god coming as a human person why do i say that well what makes us human is more than just a body if jesus is going to be our kinsmen redeemer our substitute sacrifice if he's going to take our place if he's going to pay the punishment for our sins he can't be just a body he has to be a human now not a sinful human as i've already said but a true human nevertheless now if you think of what makes us human not only do you have a body we have an inward person now we could debate what does that inward person consist of and what kind of components but just for the sake of discussion the inward person is variously described in terms soul spirit mind heart will well all those terms are used to jesus in his humanity when he prayed in gethsemane not my will but your will there's a human will my soul is sorrowful exceedingly sorrowful even unto death he's speaking of humanness in his soul at the cross he cried out father into your hands i commend my spirit there's a difference he's not talking about god's spirit he's talking about human spirit now i would hasten to add we shouldn't think of two different spirits in jesus because that would imply these two persons or you know he's schizophrenic or it might imply that he's no different than us because after all we are human beings we receive god's spirit at some point in our lives god's word dwells in us but there was a time in our life before we had god's spirit and we could backslide turn against god reject his leadership in that sense we could live without god's spirit so we have a separate human identity jesus did not have a separate human identity the incarnation means humanity and deity were united in his spirit so if you're going to speak of his spirit i think you have to say he was both human and divine in spirit and when his spirit left that's when the body died and not before so by saying that that distinguishes jesus from us jesus was not just a man who happened to have god's spirit living inside of him and he could live without god's spirit if he wanted to but no he was god by identity by nature in a way that we're not we can say i have god's spirit we can't say i'm god jesus could and did say i and the father won before abraham was i am he made direct claims of deity he was god manifest in the flesh now we see this dichotomy we can distinguish humanity and deity in him we cannot separate the two in him that's my point but we can certainly distinguish it in the sense that as a human he grew hungry as god he fed 5 000 miraculously as a human he grew thirsty as god he told the woman at the well i'll give you living water that you'll never thirst again as a human he was beaten so he suffered as god he healed the sick as a human he died as god he raised himself from the dead so in all these things we see that he had a dual identity he was both god and human at the same time now sometimes we might say as oneness people well the son was the flesh and the father was the spirit i think that's inadequate the son is the total person god as he is manifested in the flesh but the term son always has always has reference to the incarnation so we think of father we're thinking of god and his transcendence we think of son that's god in the flesh so there is a distinction again not a separation not two persons but the father-son language is essential to protect the true humanity of jesus christ to show he was a real human being some people have questions about this well well did he speak his man one minute and speak as god wouldn't well he spoke as a whole person he acted as a whole person he was the son of god so no you can't say that but you can say like when he cried out on the cross i thirst well god doesn't get thirsty so it was because he was a human that he could say that but it was jesus who said that i'm not it wasn't the flesh saying that it was jesus saying that you know and and likewise when when he said i forgive your sins a mere human can't do that only god can forgive sins so was it just the god part speaking no it was jesus the son of god the whole human being speaking but he was able to do so because he was god so we can distinguish these characteristics in him and we can say his words and his actions represented this but we can't separate them so that's why i won't say well what was going on when jesus prayed well the flesh was praying to the spirit now that's inadequate one nature is playing praying to another nature that's can a nature pray what is the nature can a can a f can flesh a piece of flesh pray knows jesus as a human a real human like us now if that surprises us think of it this way if he didn't pray he wasn't a real human you know he had to be just like us in every way except for sin everything we say or do he had to be able to say or do except he never needed to repent or he never needed to receive the holy ghost but every way we relate to god speak to god speak about god jesus had to do the same in order to be in our place so the shocking thing would be if he didn't pray now um how do we describe that and does that mean jesus is praying to himself no again that's inadequate that's trying to reduce jesus to one sidedness the best way to say it is like the scripture says jesus as a human prayed to god that's all you have to say but as a oneness believer we understand at the same time the spirit of god was fully incarnated him you say well that's hard to understand well that's because you're trying to understand the incarnation which by definition is a mystery now we know it's true it's revealed but the inner workings of how god could be a man at the same time our human minds will never comprehend because it's outside of our experience i mean that that baby that three day baby in his mother's arms is god that child running around in the yard is god that teenager is god that 30 year old man dying on the cross is god how how do we understand what's going on his head we we can't understand that i would say his human mind grew and understood as much as was capable so as a baby i don't think he was staring up his mom saying i'm god manifested the flesh he was a baby of course the spirit of god was all-knowing but even as a year old he did have an awareness of his identity so you could see and and that luke says he did grow wisdom stature favor with god a man he grew intellectually socially spiritually physically so and only in those terms can we describe the incarnation but again i go to first timothy 3 16 great is the mystery of godliness it's a mystery not how many gods there are there's only one that's not a mystery how many persons that's not a mystery god is not a plurality of persons the bible never even says that but what is the mystery how that god could be manifest in the flesh and that same verse goes on to say scene of angels what do you mean scene of angels no angels of spirit beings so i don't know how they relate to god in heaven they i don't think they need uh light waves and retinas to to see god so i think c is metaphorical however they relate to god but there is something curious why would it say jesus incarnate he was seen of angels the implication is something happened that never happened before so i think the angel was saying well yeah i know god but wow god is a human yeah that's shocking i actually seen physically of angels and and let me just close with this thought isn't it amazing the infinite god of the universe loved us so much that in order to redeem us he became one of us now he never stopped being who he was but somehow he became something he'd never been before and he did it for us and he's permanently identified himself with humans because in heaven we're going to see jesus christ god manifest in flesh as the one sitting on the throne god in the lamb as one personal being one face one supreme name on one throne in in revelation 22 3-4 isn't that incredible so god created the angels maybe he's created other universes maybe he's created other worlds maybe there are millions of other races over the millennia that he's created who knows but yet god is eternally identified in human identity we're going to see him in the face of jesus christ to me that's a profound statement of the love of god so the fact that jesus is both god and human the same time that is the miracle of the incarnation which was for the miracle of atonement and what it teaches us is the grace of god and the love of god for us