Page 31 - Christology - Student Textbook

Study Section 7: The Humanity of Jesus Christ—Incarnation.

7.1 Connect.

It seems unthinkable to us that God, the Creator of the entire universe, would every consider
becoming a servant to those whom He created. He preordained from eternity past to not
only create man, but to die for him. But God is eternal and cannot die. He has always existed
and always will. God’s plan was to become a human being with all the limitations of a human
so that He could die as a human. He paid the ultimate price for every man’s sin by shedding
His perfect blood and paying the eternal penalty for our sin. He died, that we might live … the
greatest expression of love.

To deny the humanity of Christ Jesus is to deny His substitutionary death. Today we want to turn
our focus to Christ’s humanity. We will study His incarnation which means “becoming flesh.” Let’s
get started….

7.2. Objectives.

1. The student should be able to discribe passages that extensively discuss on the humanity of
Jesus Christ.

2. The student should be able to understand their meaning to the original recipients.

7.3. The Humanity of Jesus Christ as Revealed from the Scriptures

F.L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone suggest that the incarnation confirms that God’s Son took his
humanity from the human mother and that “the historical Christ is at once both fully God and
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fully man.”

Heresy (s) Concerning the Humanity of Jesus Christ
Docetism
Docetism was one of the earliest heresies to have emerged in history. They taught that Jesus “was a
spirit being, only appearing as a human being.” Other scholars, based on the similarities of views,
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suggest that the views of Docetism on Christ could have been influenced by Greek assumptions
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either by Plato or Aristotle. Plato asserted that “Spirit or mind or thought is the highest reality.”
They also taught that matter is “morally bad.” For Aristotle, “God cannot change, suffer, or even be
affected by anything that happens in the world.” Notice that both maintained that “visible, physical,
material world is somehow inherently evil.” So, the teaching of Docetism suggests that Jesus only
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“appeared” to be man since God could not add to His nature human flesh which is perceived as evil.

83 Cross and Livingstone, Dictionary of the Christian Church, 825.

84 Allison, Historical Theology, 366.
85 Ibid., 729.

86 Erickson, Christian Theology, 729.

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