One day Jesus was born of a human virgin to be a God-man. After His birth, He lived on this earth for thirty years in a carpenter’s home. How mysterious it is that God became a man and lived as a man in a poor home for thirty years. Then He came out to preach and to do things for God and for man.
The four Gospels present us a portrait of a wonderful Person. This Person had all the divine attributes. He had the divine power, He had the divine authority, including the authority to forgive people’s sins, and He had the divine wisdom. Furthermore, He was omnipresent and He was omniscient. He was everywhere and He knew everything. Jesus lived as a God-man with the Godhead. People worshipped Him as God because He actually was God. He was God in the Godhead, and He was God with all of God’s divine attributes.
The people who were around Him often wondered who Jesus was (Matt. 13:54-56; Luke 7:49; 8:25). He was God, yet He lived as a man in the human nature with all the human virtues. He was humble, kind, and merciful, and He was always full of sympathy. He was a genuine man, a man with the highest morality and with the highest standard of ethics. He was God living in man. He was God expressing all His attributes in the human virtues. He was the complete God and the perfect man. He was perfect, not only in the human virtues, but also in all the human makeup. He had skin, bones, flesh, and blood. He ate as a man, and at times He even wept as a man. He was a genuine man, yet, at the same time, He was the real God. He was both the real God and a true man at the same time. It was not that at one moment He was God, then at a later time He was no longer God, but a man, and then after another period of time He became God again and was no longer a man. No, at all times He was both God and man. In John 11, while He was weeping as a man He was also God. Hence, it is difficult to say whether God was weeping or man was weeping. We may say that both God and man were weeping, but actually it is better to say that a God-man was weeping there, because at that time God and man were one.
After thirty-three and a half years of living as a God-man, Jesus went to the cross to die. It is important to realize that the One who died on the cross was a God-man, and that the blood shed on the cross was the blood of a God-man. Two verses, 1 John 1:7 and Acts 20:28, give us the biblical ground to say that the blood shed on the cross was the blood of a God-man. First John 1:7 says, “...the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Jesus no doubt refers to man, and God’s Son refers to God Himself. This verse shows us that the very blood shed on the cross was the blood of Jesus the Son of God. This blood is exceedingly precious (1 Pet. 1:18-19). Because Jesus died for man, the blood which He shed had to be the blood of a genuine man. The blood that washes away our sins must be the genuine blood of a genuine man. Only man’s blood can wash away man’s sins. Yet, if it is only man’s blood, it does not have the guarantee of eternal efficacy. In the One who died on the cross and shed His blood there was the divine nature. When Jesus died on the cross, He died not only in the human nature, but also in the divine nature. Therefore the blood which He shed was not merely the blood of a genuine man; the divine nature was also involved. The divine nature ensures the effectiveness of that human blood.
Then, Acts 20:28 refers to “the church of God, which He obtained through His own blood.” The blood of Jesus was man’s blood, but in Acts 20:28 this blood is referred to as the blood of God. In this verse we are told that God obtained the church through His own blood. When I read this verse as a young man, I asked myself, “How could God have blood?” In Himself God could never have blood, but in Jesus God did have blood.
Jesus is the God-man. In Him we have both the human nature and the divine nature. In Him we have both God and man. At the same time He is both God and man. Hallelujah! This is our God. The Jews believe in God according to the Old Testament, and the Moslems follow the Jews in this matter. The God of both the Jews and the Moslems does not possess the human nature. He is merely God, having nothing to do with the human nature. However, as Christians, we need to realize that our God today does have the human nature. The Jews condemned the Lord Jesus to death because He claimed that He was the Son of God. Again and again Jesus declared before the Jews that He was the Son of God. In saying that He was the Son of God, the Jews understood the Lord to mean that He was equal with God (John 5:18). In John 10:33 they accused the Lord of blaspheming because He considered Himself the same as God. The Lord Jesus considered Himself God because He was God. Outside of Him we cannot find God. God is altogether embodied in Jesus (Col. 2:9).
Jesus is God, but the Jews arrested Him and condemned Him to be crucified because they thought He blasphemed by saying that He was God. In Matthew 26 when He was judged by the Sanhedrin, the highest council of the Jews, the high priest said to Him, “I adjure you by the living God that you tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (v. 63). The Lord Jesus did not deny that He was the Son of God. When He was asked about other things, He did not say anything, but when He was asked whether He was the Son of God, He said, “You said it! Moreover, I say to you, Henceforth you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64). The Jewish high priest asked the Lord Jesus whether He was the Son of God, but the Lord answered that He was not only the Son of God, but also the Son of Man. If He were not the Son of Man, but merely the Son of God, how could He be judged by them? Jesus could be judged by the Jews only because He was the Son of Man. Moreover, the Lord’s response indicated that not only was He the Son of Man on that day as He stood before them, but after they put Him to death, and after He rose from the dead, He would still be the Son of Man in the heavens. Furthermore, they would see Him as the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.
In Acts 7, while Stephen was being stoned to death, he saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing there in the heavens as the Son of Man (v. 56). Hallelujah, today there is One who is both the Son of God and the Son of Man! This is our Savior. This is our God. Today, our God and our Savior is the God-man. As such a God-man, He lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross and died there as a God-man. In the first stanza of a well-known hymn, Charles Wesley wrote, “Amazing love! how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). When I first read these words, I was perplexed and wondered how God could die for me. In another stanza of the same hymn, Wesley wrote, “’Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies!” As I read this line I wondered how God, the Immortal One, could die. However, today I must boldly and strongly declare that my God did die for me. He died for me in the humanity of Jesus. Without humanity, God could not die for me even if He wanted to do so. God in Himself could never die, but He died in the humanity of Jesus. He was the very Creator crucified for us by His creatures. The Jews and the Roman soldiers who crucified Him were all creatures. When they put Jesus on the cross, they crucified their Creator. The Creator was crucified on the cross by His creatures.
The death of Jesus was not a simple death; it was an all-inclusive death. Many who have been Christians for years may not realize that Jesus died on the cross with seven qualifications. In this chapter I am burdened to point out to you the seven qualifications with which Jesus died on the cross.