December 2025

“This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.  Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).  When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus” 
(Matthew 1:18-25 NIV).

In last month’s newsletter, I shared with you all that I wanted to take the time in my November and December articles to focus specifically and intently upon Jesus so that we would remember the real reason that we celebrate Christmas.  Specifically, if you remember, I wanted to focus upon Jesus’ divinity and His humanity.  So, last month, we looked at the evidence of the fact that Jesus was, and is, divine; that He is, in fact, God.  This month, we are going to look at His humanity; that is, we are going to look at the fact that, while Jesus is fully God, He is also fully man.

And this is another topic, Jesus’ humanity, that led to heretical movements, such as Docetism, within the early church.  While the Arians asserted that, though Jesus was similar to God, He was not actually God, the Docetists asserted that Jesus was an incorporeal, pure spirit; He only seemed to have a body, it was really just an illusion.  They held the belief that Jesus was never really human.  This concept, Jesus’ humanity, is not generally as debated or controversial as Jesus’ divinity but it is still just as important.
 
Any reader of the New Testament encounters the fact that Jesus was a human from the beginning; Matthew begins his account of the Gospel, in chapter 1, by tracing the genealogy of Jesus.  This would be a pointless endeavor if Jesus was not fully human because He would not fall into any genealogy.  Matthew 1 further highlights the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, as in the passage above.  If Jesus wasn’t human, there would be no recounting of His birth story because there wouldn’t be a birth story.  Indeed, what Matthew 1 shows us is that Jesus is the realization of God’s Word made into flesh through the birth of a particular Israelite…Jesus, the Descendant of David and the Son of Mary.  All over the New Testament, from the Gospels to the early chapters of Acts to the epistles, especially the epistle to the Hebrews, the concepts of the Son, the servant, and the Word of God are tied together to describe the work of the man Jesus as He reveals the Father’s will of love and reconciliation and puts it into effect.

So, it becomes plainly clear that the authors of the New Testament had no doubts or concerns about Jesus being fully human.  For example, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ is able “to empathize with our weaknesses (and) has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15 NIV).  This human Jesus truly knew and experienced the reality of everyday existence in first-century Palestine: He lived among the poor, He counted people like Martha and Mary as his close companions, He was known as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matt. 11:19 NIV); these descriptions, straight from the words of Scripture, show Jesus was truly, fully human.

However, Jesus’ humanity, unlike His divinity, is not something that is only attested to in Scripture.  In fact, the fact that Jesus was a real, historical person who walked the face of the earth is something that is widely accepted by virtually all secular scholars and historians.  Author James Dunn expounds, “No one with any sense of history can dispute that Jesus existed and that he was active in some sort of mission in Galilee, probably in the late 20s or early 30s of the first century, prior to his execution in Jerusalem ‘under Pontius Pilate.’  We know this because he left his mark on history. The historical fact of Christianity is impossible to explain without the historical fact of Jesus of Nazareth and of the impression he left. What he said and did evidently ‘got home’ to many people, and the impact that he made on them has resonated down through history.”

The fact that even secular scholars acknowledge and accept that Jesus did exist, that He was really a human who was born, lived, and ministered in the Ancient Near East, should remove any doubt from the minds of believers.  Jesus, undoubtedly, was a fully human individual.  And the fact that Jesus is fully human is of the utmost importance to our faith and to our salvation.  If Jesus was not fully human, then He would not have been able to stand in our place as the sacrificial lamb bearing the weight of our sins.  Jesus HAD to be fully, 100%, human so that He could pay the price of the penalty for the sins of humanity.  On the cross, Jesus bore the weight of the punishment for our sins, which is a sacrifice that would not have been sufficient had He not been, Himself, a human.

May the blessings of the Father and the peace of the Son be with you this Christmas and into the future,

Pastor Keith