Re: The Mystery of Christ’s Human Nature

Steve · pseudo 7th-day Adventist Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 148

The human nature is relatively easy to define, describe or delineate since we live with it and were born with it. Some find it difficult because they try to separate the components of the whole but to adequately define the human nature one must take into account the whole being because a person is the sum total of his environment and how he experiences this environment.

First of all the body is a machine like a car and is designed to take your mind where it wants or needs to go. the body is also the means by which your mind experiences to world around it. Without the senses of the body the mind would be in total darkness.

Secondly, the mind this is who you are, this is what separates human beings from the animals, this is what separates human beings from each other. You can lose a body part and still being the same person but if you lose brain cells your personality will change. Interestingly, the brain cells are the only cells in the body that do not regenerate. That is if you kill one off it's gone and unlike other cells in the body it will not come back. Whatever function that cell had another brain cell will have to take over.
Consequently what you start off with when you are born is what you have throughout your life.

Now, human nature defined by Webster is "the complex of behavioral patterns, attitudes, and ideas which man acquires socially." Our minds therefore experience the world through the sensations provided by the body (i.e. sight, taste, smell, hearing, touch) and that registers in our brains and we then interpret it according to our previous experiences and that shapes how we respond to it. Now animals respond to the sensation only and that is instinct but human beings can further interpret these sensations and then decide how they want to respond.

On that level the Bible describes the "Carnal mind" and that the opposite as the mind controlled by the Spirit of God. The "Carnal mind" seeks to please itself by the sensations provided by the body (the "avenues to the soul) whereas the Spiritual mind seeks to please God. This is very well described in Romans chapter 8.

Now, to get to the point. The battle field is the mind. Good verses evil, right verses wrong, these elements war in our minds for supremacy. And what controls the mind, Spiritual or Carnal defines the nature before God. Human nature verses the Divine nature. The divine nature, the nature of God or being "God-like" is only attained by following completely the will of God which is communicated to us by His Spirit. That's why the Bible says: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (Romans 8:14) We are also admonished to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 2:5) And "be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) We can be partakers of the divine nature according to Peter in 2Peter 1:3,4 and this comes through the knowledge of God and of Jesus "whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." (2Peter 1:4)

Christ had a divine nature and a human nature the same way we have a human nature and if we allow, a divine nature. Christ like Adam only knew the divine nature until the incarnation when "the Word was made flesh". When Adam was created the flesh was not corrupted but, by the time Christ came the flesh had at least 4,000 years of corruption. After the sin of Adam the flesh (i.e. the senses) began crying out for satisfaction. From then on the battle for the mind has been raging. And it is only the divine mind the divine nature that can keep "the lust of the flesh" under control eventually to extinguish its power.

Steve · pseudo 7th-day Adventist Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 148

The fact that this was moved to this forum suggest to me that you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. Sorry for the confusion.

This was only an attempt to explain the human and the divine nature as described in the Bible, but one still cannot explain how Jesus was God and man at the same time. I see these as different because as human beings we can through Christ be partakers of the divine nature (2Peter 1:4) but we could never be God because we will always be created beings. But how Christ could be God and Man, that is a mystery that human words could never explain.