Humanity of Jesus
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
Definition
The humanity of Jesus is the doctrine that Christ possesses a complete, genuine human nature — “a true body and a rational soul,” together constituting a perfect and complete human nature — not a mere appearance of manhood.1 This humanity is united to Christ’s divine nature in one person.
Confessional Definition
The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states that the Son of God took “man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin.”2 Christ’s humanity is therefore complete in every essential respect — body, soul, and the ordinary limitations that belong to human nature — excepting sin alone.
Biblical Basis
Hodge argues that Christ’s true body is established by his birth, growth, and physical sufferings: he “was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nourished of her substance… His body increased in stature, passing through the ordinary process of development from infancy to manhood,” subject to “pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, suffering, and death,” and capable of being “seen, felt, and handled” — confirmed by Christ’s own words to his disciples, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39; cf. Heb. 2:14). Equally, Hodge argues, Christ had a true rational soul: “He thought, reasoned, and felt; was joyful and sorrowful; He increased in wisdom (Luke 2:52); He was ignorant of the time when the day of judgment should come” (Mark 13:32) — a genuine, finite human intelligence, not merely a divine mind wearing a body.1 Because Christ shares fully in human nature, he can represent human beings before God: “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God… For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:17-18), and “we do not have 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” (Heb. 4:15).
Objections and Responses
If Christ has a genuinely human, rational soul with its own finite intelligence, doesn’t that create a rival mind alongside his divine mind, in effect two competing persons? This concern — that a complete human nature, mind included, threatens the unity of Christ’s person — is exactly what the ancient church debated in the fourth and fifth centuries, settled in how two complete natures cohere in one person. Whatever the correct account of that union, the human nature united to it is not partial or diminished but complete — “a true body and a rational soul.”1