I wonder if you have ever thought hard about the fact that Jesus is both God and man. This is a truth that we can and must accept from the scriptures, but it certainly is a great mystery. The earthly Jesus had human limitations – he could hunger and thirst, and he could ask to be told things that he did not yet know – but he also showed divine knowledge, power and authority.
Christians have sought in faith to understand how this could be. Some have ended up teaching doctrines which fall short of Jesus being fully God and fully man. For example, some (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians) hold him to be a uniquely favoured and powerful man, but not God. Others, like some ancient gnostics, held that he was God but that his earthly life was an illusion: he was not born, nor did he suffer or die.
In contrast to these theories, the scriptures present us with a Jesus who is truly man, and yet can also be worshipped as God, as the apostle Thomas did after Jesus resurrection (John 20:28). As man, he can sympathise with us. As God, he can truly reveal God to us, and most importantly, his death can truly pay for our sin.
