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Jesus as the Man

It’s probably unnecessary to remark on the fact that Jesus was a man. There is good historical evidence that a man, named Jesus, existed in the first century. He was born under the reign of Herod the Great and died later under the Roman governor Pilate when Tiberias was Emperor. It is not just significant that Jesus was a man, though that is true, Pilate declared when he brought Him out to be seen by the public “Behold the man.”

Jesus was a man, but he was in a category of one. He was different from all others. He was ‘the man’ because he was God’s man. Jesus did things that no other man could do. He was God in the form of a man so that he could do God’s specific will. Because the sin of humanity was so great, something had to be done about it. But because humanity was a special creation of God only a human could intervene for man.

For thousands of years the blood of animals had been shed to cover the sins of individual persons but Hebrews 10:4 tells us “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” Something else had to come into play. There needed to be a valid substitute. A lamb, a couple of pigeons, a bullock, a goat could cover a specific sin, but had no power to remove the guilt of the sin from an individual’s record. Consequently people remained guilty before God and needed a permanent kind of salvation.

Faithful Jews in the Old Testament were saved, not by the sacrifice itself but by their faith in God and their faith that He would receive the sacrifice that He had identified as necessary to cover their sin.

When Jesus came as “the man,” He was charged with the responsibility of being the substitute for every other individual human being that had ever lived or would ever live. Jesus was “the man” in God’s great plan of salvation. Adam the first man brought sin into the world as Romans 6 tells us.

I don’t think Pilate had any idea what he was saying was so significant. Like others whose words are recorded in the Bible, he was unaware that the significance of his words were far more important than the words themselves that he spoke. Pilate declared “Behold the man,” and delivered the Lord Jesus Christ to be crucified. It was clear by this act that he had no clue of who Jesus was as God’s man - the man God Himself had prepared as the substitute for every individual in the entire human race.

This is a bit of a sticking point because while many recognize that Jesus was a real person, a real man, recognizing Him as ‘the man’ takes a step of faith that many are not prepared to make. Christians take great comfort in the fact that God became a human being. He experienced life on this planet just as we do. He knew the daily hustle and bustle of life, He walked in market places, He drank from wells, He visited places of worship, He had friends, He had enemies. These are things all of us are familiar with at one level or another.

We take consolation knowing that whatever troubles we have in some way they were faced by the Lord Jesus, Himself. He experienced hunger, thirst, weariness, He knew what is was to be rejected, He was betrayed by a friend, He experienced levels of physical pain which probably can not be exceeded, He saw the pain of others as He suffered. He knew what it was to see His mother’s grief as she watched Him on the cross.

This fact that Jesus was a man and experienced life as we do helps us in our troubles as we deal with them day by day. Some of us have chronic pain of either the physical or emotional variety and it heartens us to know that our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ knows what we go through. But Christians also accept the fact that Jesus was not only a man but “the man,” God’s man, God’s substitute for each one of us specifically.

What is worthy of special note is that it is only when we have accepted Jesus as “the man” that we can receive His ministry to us as a man. Today, we have the privilege of accepting that He was not only a man, in many ways like any other, but God’s specially prepared man - the Man who died on the cross, the Man who rose again defeating death for us, the Man at the right hand of God pleading our case to the Father, the Man who will one day usher us into our eternal home.

Ron Hughes
© July 2006