The Mystery of Christ's Human Nature

Eugene Shubert

There is a mystery in Scripture regarding Christ’s human nature:

Eugene Shubert · Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2002 10:39 pm Post subject:

I believe Jesus had the awareness within Himself that He was not to use His divine power to ease His own difficulties. As I’ve explained in the link, I believe Jesus had to struggle with and resist exercising His divinity for Himself and submit to His Father’s will in exactly the same way we are required to yield our own will, to walk by the Spirit and not carry out the desire of the flesh.

I believe that Jesus’ struggle with His nature is comparable to our own struggle and that this is what the Bible means by Jesus coming in “the likeness of sinful flesh.”

Eugene Shubert · Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2002 11:19 am Post subject:

How can a person have a divine nature and a human nature at the same time in the way that we believe Jesus Christ did?

To this question R. C. Sproul writes: “It is so difficult for us to understand how one person can have two natures. You are asking me the question ‘How?’ I don’t know how; I know that Jesus is one person with two natures.”

I believe I answered R. C. Sproul’s question reasonably well. Does anyone believe that I didn’t answer this ancient mystery in theology satisfactorily?

RonA · Seventh-day Adventist Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 17

We all know that our Lord was God incarnate. That is, he resided in a human body. But was the body he indwelled in as inclined towards sin as ours is? This has been debated for centuries. The bible clearly says "he KNEW no sin." It doesn't just say he had no sin, but that within himself he knew no sin. We are aware of sin every day. We lust, we feel anger, we sometimes tell little white lies and we're not always faithful in our worship. I personally believe Jesus Christ the MAN was a perfect man, as Adam was before the fall. He had no sinful desires as we have, yet he was tempted by sin from outside himself. That is quite different. The devil tempted him repeatedly. That is my belief on the fleshly nature of Jesus. He was the PERFECT sacrifice for our sins. A lamb WITHOUT BLEMISH.

tewall

My first post! We'll see how this goes.

I believe Christ's human nature was similar to ours in that He could be tempted and was tempted in all points as we are. That Christ was "holy, pure and set apart from sinners" is referring to that fact that Christ never sinned in thought word or deed.

From the Spirit of Prophesy we read: "It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life." DA 49

This is a well-know statement, of which I would like to especially point out the phrase, "What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors." There are those who think that Christ inherited only such results of sin as hunger, thirst and tiredness, but clearly the results E. G. White was referring to here are not such things.

Another point is that there was no disagreement within Sevent-day Adventism regarding the human nature of Christ during E. G. White's lifetime. Her views were in harmony with her colleagues, such as W. W. Prescott, S. N. Haskell and scores of others. One can see what the views of the S. D. A. church were by reading the Signs of the Time articles, Review and Herald articles, books and so on.

I find it ironic that there was no controversy regarding the human nature of Christ in the 19th century, but there was on the divine nature of Christ. Now we have controversy regarding the human nature of Christ, but not regarding the divine.

Eugene Shubert

Hi tewall,

Welcome to the forum. I'm no expert on SDA church history but it seems to me that there was less of a struggle in the Seventh-day Adventist church of the 19th century over both the human and divine nature of Christ than there is today.

With respect to the specific question raised in the opening of this thread, I've noticed that different Seventh-day Adventists are able to formulate an answer to the mystery from the writings of Ellen G. White, coming up with diametrically opposite conclusions. Based on EGW, one chap in our jail forum says, in effect, that Jesus Christ had Satan's nature. Naturally, I have reached the opposite conclusion.

Since the Midheaven and High Mountain forums are for teaching truth as this ministry sees it, I am of course interested in what side you take in the great debate. Did Christ have a sinful human nature or did Christ have ascendful human nature?

Eugene Shubert · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:26 am Post subject: Sinful or ascendful?

There is a controversy over describing the "human" nature that Jesus had while on earth. There are four contending interpretations:

1. The nature that Jesus possessed and struggled with was to not manifest His divine nature.
2. Christ's human nature was degenerate. It tended to pull him downward toward moral depravity.
3. In Christ's flesh were corrupt principles, tendencies to evil, but the mind of Christ was so much higher than His sinful flesh that Christ had no evil urges, no propensities to sin.
4. Spiritually, the human nature of Christ was exactly like that of Adam before the fall.

The value in option 1 is that it makes Christ's experience fighting temptation comparable to ordinary human experience. The drawback in option 3 is that it interprets Christ's nature as that of a weakened super-being that could be tempted by evil. By definition, a divine nature requires that Christ could only be tempted to manifest his true self and to change his mind about the contract he made with his Father, to be a probationer in behalf of the human race.

Mrod3910 · is under review Joined: 07 Mar 2005 Posts: 1

Based on the following texts:In order to save fallen beings, Christ “had to be made like His brethren in all things” (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus appeared on earth “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). He was tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11) and by what He suffered (Hebrews 2:18). “He was tempted in every way, just as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). Scripture also teaches that Christ is “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26), the only contradiction is the one we assign to them when we do our own interpretation. If we look at the overall picture of the great controversy we know that Adam became the focal point in the battle between God and Satan. Romans 5:12 clearly tells us "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." And vs 18,19 "So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous."
This can only determine that when Christ came to earth, he put himself in place of Adam, before the fall. That his human physical flesh was of those 4,000 yrs after Adam did not change in any way the 'nature' of Christ. That he hungered, thirst and tired . . . who is to say Adam did not? These are not traits of sin. Are we to say Adam was never to eat, drink or rest???