QUESTION No. 16 - SUNDAY August 2, 2026
Q. How human was Jesus?
Jesus was either 100% human, or He wasn’t. There’s no in-between.
If He wasn’t, Christianity doesn’t exist. It’s all just historical fantasy.
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argued that Jesus cannot be considered just a great moral teacher: He was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.
• A liar claims to be God but isn’t.
• A lunatic is human but believes he’s God.
• The Lord because He is what he claimed to be – both God and man.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
- John 1:14
Why would Jesus need to be 100% human, and not a trifle less?
How would we know if Jesus was truly 100% human?
What would prove to us that he wasn’t?
.....
One major debate in early Christianity nearly tore the church apart. The issue: Was Jesus human?
Some Christians embraced a view later called Docetism: Jesus only appeared to be human in body and that his physical life and suffering were illusions. Therefore, His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection did not actually happen in a physical sense.
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”
- Isaiah 53:2–3
In appearance, Jesus was said to be physically unremarkable. And yet according to Scripture, He demonstrated distinctly human characteristics: He ate, drank, slept, prayed, bled, wept, became angry and frustrated, and even grew in wisdom.
“And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
- Luke 2:52
We accept Jesus as existing as both God and man while on earth. Historic Christianity claims that the eternal Son assumed a complete human nature - body, mind, emotion, and will - without ceasing to be divine.
But was Jesus 100% human flesh, bone, blood, brain, and mind? Or was there something not fully human about Him?
A WORD ON THE WORD: In his Gospel, John had other word options for “body” - sōma (body) or anthrōpos (human being). Yet he chose the word sarx or sarkos meaning flesh - meat, the physical stuff of a living body. Ho logos sarx egeneto -"the Word became flesh." Jesus as the Word, the logos, the living power through whom all things were made, became flesh. He was not hidden, covered, or disguised by it. He BECAME it. In His becoming flesh, Jesus came to share utterly in our humanity and all that being human entailed.
Flesh indicates weakness, vulnerability, mortality. In Scripture, “flesh” is often used to describe humanity under the coercive power of sin.
Ironic, because Jesus was said to be without sin, and it was sin Jesus was sent to save us from.
By becoming “flesh”, Jesus assumed a human frailty inconceivable to those living in His day. Greek and Roman gods often disguised themselves as mortals. But never BECAME one. No divine being would allow himself to be so humiliated.
Yet through his trial, torture, and execution, Jesus was willingly and ruthlessly ridiculed, degraded, defeated, and punished like a common criminal.
“…he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!”
- Philippians 2:7-8
In the process of becoming wholly and unequivocally one of us, Jesus assumed the volatile human characteristic – free will. His human mind vulnerable to capricious and rebellious nature of the free will of mortal men.
In the final hours, as the reality of His earthly mission began to unfold, His human mind was revealed.
"Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me.”
- Luke 22:42
With a single word He held the power to decouple His will from divine will and escape the horror about to be unleashed upon Him.
“No.”
If He had said it, where would the world be now?
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
- Mark 13:32
To be Christian- a created being freed from sin and death - a single event is an absolute imperative. Jesus, a mortal being, had to die and be raised from the dead without question.
Not a half-god, half-man who magically raised himself, but a 100% human being made of flesh who could suffer, die and live again.
Man could be redeemed by nothing less.
In his letter to the early Christians, the apostle Paul put it bluntly: If there’s no resurrection, Christians have staked everything on a false hope.
“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:19
BoBQ Vol. 8 pg. 43-44