What should each of us learn from the
humanity of Jesus?
“We need not place the obedience of Christ by
itself as something for which He was particularly adapted, because of His
divine nature; for He stood before God as man’s representative, and was tempted
as man’s substitute and surety. If Christ had a special power which it is not
the privilege of a man to have, Satan would have made capital of this matter.
But the work of Christ was to take from Satan his control of man, and He could
do this only in a straightforward way. He came as a man, to be tempted as a man,
rendering the obedience of a man. Christ rendered obedience to God, and
overcame as humanity overcome. We are led to make wrong conclusions because of
erroneous views of the nature of our Lord. To attribute to His nature a power
that it is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, is to
destroy the completeness of His humanity. The obedience of Christ to His Father
was the same obedience that is required of man. Man cannot overcome Satan’s
temptations except as divine power works through humanity. The Lord Jesus came
to our world, not to reveal what God in His own divine person could do, but
what He could do through humanity. Through faith man is to be a partaker of the
divine nature, and to overcome every temptation wherewith he is beset. It was
the Majesty of heaven Who became a man, Who humbled
Himself to our human nature; it was He Who was tempted in the wilderness and
Who endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself. The
Signs of the Times, April 10, 1893.
“The power of an angel could not make an atonement for our sins. The angelic nature united to the
human could not be as costly, as elevated, as the law of God. It was the Son of
God alone Who could present an acceptable sacrifice.
God Himself became man, and bore all the wrath that
sin had provoked. This problem, How could God be just
and yet the justifier of sinners? baffled all finite
intelligence. A divine person alone could mediate between God and man. Human
redemption is a theme which may well tax the faculties of the mind to the
utmost. The reason that Christianity is not more elevated is because there is
so little effort put forth in the great, grand, holy work of struggling for
immortality. Satan is constantly trying to make the salvation of the soul an
indifferent matter—that man has but little to do to secure this priceless
treasure. This is why eternal things are not discerned; this is why there is a
cheap, spurious article passed off as religion. … We cannot be saved in
indolence and inactivity. … We have to wrestle against pride and against the
human passions, which the light of God’s word reveals.” The Youth’s Instructor, August 31, 1887.