Jesus was Perfect God and Perfect Human

So far I have focused on Christ’s humanity in my advent reflections, but we cannot forget that Jesus Christ was fully God. While he is depicted in the gospels as having a human will that is tempted (Matthew 4:1-11) where God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), a human body that is hungry (Mark 11:12), human emotions such as sadness (John 11:35), and a human mind that does not know some things (Matt. 24:36), he is also repeatedly described as divine through the New Testament. The early church sought to explain these two patterns of speech by affirming that Jesus has a fully divine nature, and a fully human nature, being both perfect God and perfect man. This week, I will be reflecting on the fact that when the eternal divine Son assumed a human nature and life in the incarnation, that the particular life he chose to assume was the life of a victim, a poor man, and a frequently marginalized man. In short, it is a tremendously significant dimension of our faith that God not only became man, but a particular kind of man.

Jesus Christ was perfect God and perfect human. He was also a victim, a poor man, and marginalized.