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Bible Questions and Spiritual Discussion
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The Human One
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Last week, Brian read from the Contemp...uh...Common English Bible,
and I was struck by the fact that it renders "the Son of Man,"
sometimes seen as a title with eschatological overtones,
as "the Human One."
I LOVE that, for whatever the translators may have had in mind,
it captures for ME the essence of what Jesus was all about.
Jesus was truly the human One, demonstrating what it means to be human.
You don't have to read the creation story in Genesis literally to agree that we were all created in the image of God,
that the Spirit of God dwells within us, that as the Quakers say we all have a spark of the divine.
Paul at Athens quoted the Roman poets who said that "in God we live and move and have our being."
Indeed, God can be seen in every person and in every thing -
as Yogi Bhajan rightly said, "If you can't see God in, you can't see God at all."
God is the Ground of Being, the Source and Sustainer of everything and everyone.
But we all tend to forget that, we tend to forget who we really are,
and we fall short of all we were created to be and could be if we lived as fully human,
as creatures meant to live in unity with the Creator.
But Jesus lived as "the Human One."
I believe Jesus came in part
to show us what it means to be fully human, and what WE are meant to be, and can become.
Jesus was, we say, the new Adam, the new man.
He came to remind us of who we essentially are.
He came to draw us to himself and to the One who sent him,
that we might truly be called, and truly be,
the sons and daughters of God we were ALL created to be.
Jesus was truly "The Son of man," "the Human One."
And because he lived as Son of Man,
we also call him the Son of God,
the One who fully expressed the divinity that was within him
but is also within you and me.
That to me is awesome -
we can't say, as we sometimes do,
"well of course he could live that kind of life.
He was God, but I'm not."
But Jesus doesn't allow us to make that excuse.
He came to awaken us to the divinity, the presence of God,
within you and within me and to call us to live at One with His Creator, and ours!!
Praise be to God!
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Lanny Carlson 01/15/2012 17:29 |
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Lanny Carlson
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01/15/2012 17:40 |
Oooops! The Yogi Bhajan quote should have said,
"If you can't see God in all,
you can't see God at all."
Sorry I left out an important word!
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Calico
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01/16/2012 09:19 |
Agreeing with you here, Lanny; I caught that too, "the Human One."
On my more creative days, I often imagine the life of Jesus, him as a young child... I consider things I've done in my life as a youngster and pondered "in what way would Jesus have lived-out the thing that I did? What would his thinking-on/dwelling-on have been like PRECEDING do that thing?" Whenever my imagination most lucid, I am always led back to one word: perfection.
In considering who The Human One was, the Scandal Of Particularity makes sense to me, then; the understanding that God is at work is certain very specific times and places and ways to accomplish His will. Carrying forward from that particular person, The Human One, I have to consider that ALL of what he is and what he did and is doing are things intended to reshape (things that HAVE reshaped) ALL of what I am, and what I've done, and what I am doing.
Praying with you,
Tom
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John T
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01/16/2012 17:29 |
The Human one, it reminds me of the wonderful readings John Eldredge has been doing from his recent book, Beautiful Outlaw - it put a really human face onto Christ, I liked how he describes the scenes!
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howard
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01/16/2012 21:48 |
Jesus was son of man "fully man"
son of God "fully God"
He was Born into a sinful world but thought no sin, did no sin and did not live in sin.
I have to read what Lanny wrote again because I want nothing to do with this human condition.
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John T
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01/17/2012 11:36 |
You're right, it's very important to include that he was fully God! He did not sin, he took our sins on his shoulders. I like the quote, "Why do bad things happen to good people, that only happened once, and he volunteered." Christ was the only truly good person, the rest of us are sinful in nature, all the way back to Adam. I believe when they say fully man, they mean that he went through the experiences that we have, the emotions, the fear, etc - I mean he sweat blood at one point so he must have been worried! But in and through all this he did not sin, that is pretty amazing!
John
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Tom B
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01/17/2012 11:39 |
Great points here! Thanks for this good discussion.
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Lanny Carlson
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01/17/2012 19:42 |
I appreciate the comments on this thread,
and the freedom we have here to express our own views,
even when we disagree.
And without pretending for a moment that
"I'm right, and everyone else is wrong,"
I do have some points of disagreement.
First, John T said,
"Christ was the only truly good person."
But Jesus himself refused that description of himself.
When he was asked, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherent eternal life?'
he responded, ""Why do you call me good?...No one is good--except God alone."
(Luke 18:19, Mark 10:18). Yes, some have tried to say that this was a back-handed way of saying that he was in fact God, but that really twists the plain meaning of his words. He was making a simple point about his humanity.
There is only One God, and it's not us!
It's also important to recognize that while one writer, in the book of Hebrews, said that Jesus was without sin, Jesus never made the claim to be sinless.
That doesn't mean, of course, that he was necessarily guilty of sin.
But if we say that he was without sin and that the reason he was sinless
because he was God,
that only complicates the problem,
because if he was God he had a Resource available to him
that is not available to us,
and that would make him less than "fully human."
(It would also make a mockery of such things as his saying to the woman caught in adultery, "Go, and sin no more," if she was in fact incapable of not sinning.)
But my whole point in this thread is that Jesus was fully human,
and calls and inspires us to be fully human in the way he was.
Jesus never claimed to be God.
Yes, he said things like, "I and the Father are one,"
and "He who has seen me has seen the Father."
But when we are fully human as he was fully human,
those are things we should be able to say as well.
People should be able to see God in us,
we are all called to live at one with God,
for we were created in the image of God,
God dwells within each one of us,
and it's by the power of the same Spirit that was in Christ
that we are empowered to be like Christ,
to be the fully human person that he was
and that we were created to be.
Jesus was fully human, and he never claimed to be God. He said things like, "I and the Father are one," and "He who has seen me has seen the Father." But isn't that what we are all called to say and be?
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