“For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Hebrews 4:15 (RSV)
It’s easy to say “I’m only human,”when I fail to follow the things Jesus taught me, but sometimes I forget that Jesus was human too. We focus on His divinity through the gospel stories and His miraculous ministry, but He had a human side which He lived out as a boy and a man for thirty years, before ever revealing His divinity. We have no recorded stories of miracles that Jesus performed until His ministry began at thirty years old, so what about those thirty years before He began His ministry? He probably lived a normal human life, since scripture tells us He was fully acquainted with all the tests and temptations of life, except He was without sin. He was perfectly sinless, but He still knew what it felt like to experience the emotional storms of temptation and testing that we do. He felt betrayal, disrespect and rejection from some of the very friends and relatives He knew and loved during those first thirty years of His life. He performed miracles, signs, and wonders as He accomplished His mission of salvation during the last three years of His life, but we seldom reflect on His humanity for the thirty years beforehand. His ministry consisted of the last 10% of His entire life. He was fully divine and fully human, but today I’m reflecting on the fact that He lived 90% of His life span in His humanity. Scripture tells us He was tested in all ways as we are, therefore He had His entire life to experience many types of tests and temptations, and yet He was without sin. He never retaliated against people, never lost His faith, and never sinned against God, His Father. He felt hurt, frustration and anger when He was scorned and mistreated, but He worked through everything and followed the will of God in every aspect of His early life as well as at the end of His life. His life’s purpose was not to punish or retaliate, but to spread the truth and love of God to others. He spoke the truth and then moved on to whoever would listen next. Jesus asks us to follow Him, and in our humanity we follow His humanity, with His grace to reach His higher goals for our lives. He calls us to imitate His obedience because He is available to help and intercede for us. He is not merely a sympathizer, but a veteran of all testing, trials and temptations. He knows what we struggle with and fully empathizes with us. God loves us so much that He clothed His Son in a human body to fully relate to us, and then gave us His Spirit to help us live for Him. This makes Jesus the best high priest intercessor we could ever ask for. The next time I fail or want to retreat saying, “I’m only human”, I will remind myself, so is my Savior and high priest. As we confess our sins, He removes them farther than we ever deserve. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
(2 Corinthians 5:21)
Jesus, thank you for both your humanity and your divinity. We love you and trust in you as our high priest and intercessor.