The Humanity of Jesus Christ

Colossians 1:21-23

COL-174

Our subject is "Reconciliation of the Colossians," number 19 in Colossians 1:21-23.

Recently, I was at a large store purchasing something, and when I went through the counter, the clerk that was checking me out said, "Hello, Dr. Danish, how are you doing?" It was one of those people that I hadn't seen for a while, so I had to look closely. I certainly recognized her. I asked her name, and she told me. She had a brother – a high school kid that was with us regularly in the Berean Youth Clubs, up through the older boys' club. I'm not sure whether he has graduated yet or not, but I think perhaps he just has. In any case, I asked her, "How's your brother doing?" She paused for a moment; looked down; and, said, "Not too good. He's not doing too good." I asked her, "What's the problem?" She said, "Well, right now he's moving in with his girlfriend."

This is very sad – the kid who ran around this auditorium, and heard the Word of God. What's the highest ambition he has? One that the devil has told him: "Find a girlfriend; and, shack up with her. Be sure you don't marry her. Just impregnate her, so that you can say, 'Hey, look at us. The devil has given us a great deal. And we love it.'"

It's like some pig rolling around in his mud. You wonder: why would anybody want to prostitute their life in that way? Why would they even want to treat a young woman like that? Why would a young woman not have the good sense to recoil with horror from such a piece of lowlife – something that is nothing more, let's face it, than the flotsam in a commode just before it's flushed. We have to stop pretending that these sophisticated people of the world are our role models to follow, and certainly not if we claim the name of Jesus Christ as the One to Whom we pledge allegiance, and whose love we accept, and to Whom we extend our love for what He has done for us.

The highest opportunities were extended to that boy. And I know him well. I talked with him many times. And the best he could come up with, with a great opportunity, is to shack up with somebody.

Dating

That's why I've been saying that it is not a good idea to get into the pattern of dating. And you're going to be hearing more about that. One of our high school boys, standing in the foyer recently, was overheard looking at my bulletin board display on Joshua Harris, the young man who came by wisdom in the Word of God saying that dating is a dangerous, dangerous practice, because it has one purpose. Everybody knows that dating is for mating. Therefore, it's not found in the Bible. And it is something that is alien to American culture until recent times. In fact, in cultures around the world, people don't date. That's something Americans do.

So, as they stood there, looking at both the book and the seven reasons why dating is a hazardous way to approach marriage, he said, "That guy is a loser." He's a loser? Well, of course, that makes me a loser, too. Isn't it wonderful to have such insight as a teenager to say, "Dr. Danish is a stupid loser?" This guy wrote this book, and speaks to thousands of young people week by week, challenging them to a better way – really a biblical way. And I could not help but think: how many did that kid, standing in the foyer, talk to each week? How many looked at him with esteem, and for inspirational instruction?

When I was in Baylor University, I may have learned my lesson on the limitations of dating by a painful, first-hand experience. Baylor, at that time (and maybe they still do this) had one day a year called Sadie Hawkins Day. How many of you know who Sadie Hawkins was? . . . Sadie Hawkins was one of the Lil' Abner people over in Skunk Hollow. And she was Lil' Abner's girlfriend. Well, once a year they had this Sadie Hawkins Day at Baylor, when the girls would ask a boy for a date. And a girl asked me. And I wasn't crazy about it. I wasn't crazy about her. I was only crazy that I went. But I wanted to be nice. I didn't want to just reject her. So, I went, and we went to this concert there at the Great Hall at Baylor University. And I can't remember what all, but it was a very pleasant evening when it was over. It was not one of the high points of my life. But I wouldn't have ever asked this girl out for a date, if I had been into dating, which I really wasn't. It just was not a happy situation because there was no friendship there. There was no ground of any kind of a personal relationship.

One of the nice things, if you approach marriage by courting a young lady, is that that means you do this within the context of your friends and your family. The mother invites you over to a meal. And I remember how Mrs. Danish's mother used to just exhaust me, with wanting to give me more for my plate. She thought I was a catch, I guess. But, be that as it may, it was a lot more fun sitting around with the family; talking to this gal; learning about her; and, getting to know what she's interested in, and what she's into. She worked at a bank. . . . But anyhow, there were there were all kinds of just fun things to do. It was under the freedom, non-tense, non-emotional involvement of an outrageous kind.

Kissing

So, these ways of the world are always upon us. And I'm trying to tell you (youngsters and adults) – don't be impressed with the world. The people of this world belong to the devil. Most of them are unsaved. They're going to spend eternity in the lake of fire. Now what on earth can you get as significance from then? What on earth kinds of relationships do you want that are significant with them? These people are losers. And I repeat to what I said this morning: David was right. He who is the enemy of my lord is my enemy. But, of course, that's what the Word of God says too. If you're friendly with this gang of the world's system of Satan, you're the enemy of God. And it is amazing how young people can demonstrate. They play the fool; tear their lives up; and, then they sit there, whimpering in their pain and their agony. And it's a tragedy if they never had been cautioned and shown a better way. But it's even a greater tragedy when they knew better, and they blew it, because they believed that the world was better than the mind of God, and the consensus of the Christian community.

Here in the city of Colossae were this group of Christians. They had the terrible pagan past, with all the vileness, such as we've been describing now, that was characteristic of their society. And they were all engaged in it. And it was a grim picture of enslavement to Satan, and a victimization by following his evil ways. However, a dramatic change came into their lives when, at salvation, God reconciled them to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to Himself, to the standard of absolute righteousness as a way of living. For all of us who are believers here tonight, that's our standard. That's why the world is not our pattern. That's why the world does not feel comfortable with us. That's why the world does not want to relate itself to us, because we operate on the standard of God's absolute righteousness. They operate on the standard of Satan's evil. It's a great difference between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint.

So, why would anybody, after experiencing the dramatic difference between Colossians 1:21 and Colossians 1:22, want to return to some relationship – this tremendous experience of transformation from slavery to self-destructive evil to freedom in God's ennobling goodness, want to go back to live in that old life? That is a puzzlement. But we have young people all the time, even from Christian backgrounds, who just are itching to go back to the pigpen.

There are certain things that the apostle Paul has observed here about these Colossians Christians. One: they were once alienated from God, and they were hostile in their minds toward Him and His moral laws, and they loved evil.

Secondly, the Colossians Christians, however now, are reconciled. They have been adjusted to God's standard of absolute righteousness. They are able to live up to that standard because of the Word of God, and because of the temporal fellowship power of the Holy Spirit, Who can make them (like Joseph), say "No" to the proposition, and Who can make them (like Moses), without a second thought, choose the people of God rather than the pleasures of sin for a season. These people now are righteous. They're qualified for heaven.

Thirdly, the apostle points out that the Colossians are no longer at enmity with God, but they are now His children (family members) who are now in love with Him.

Fourth, this awesome reconciliation could only have been brought about by the intervention of God Himself.

Fifth, the Colossians' reconciliation with God was made possible, Paul says, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, bearing their sins to satisfy the demands of God's justice. Peter says that He bore this in His own body.

Docetism

Sixth, without a real human body to offer in death for man's moral guilt, Paul stresses that Jesus Christ could not have provided the basis for the Colossians' reconciliation. Early on in the Christian church, there came this heresy. It was called "docetism" by the theologians who studied it, and some terrific early church fathers jumped right on this thing with both feet and both fists as it came on. It comes from the Greek word "dokeo," which means "to seem." This heresy taught that the body of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not actually exist – that Christ never actually took on a human body, but He only seemed to be human, but He was a Spirit Being. This is not entirely irrational and crazy, because, after all, we have several incidents in the Bible where angels, whom we know are spirit beings (they are not human flesh-and-blood beings), appear, as to Abraham, for example, and appear to be men. They appear in the form of human beings. And until you know, you can't tell that they are spirit beings. They have capacity to take on the appearance that human form.

So, this naturally fits into that Greek philosophical idea that matter is inherently evil. Therefore, Jesus Christ could never have a human body, because He would take upon Himself something that was evil. This heresy was part of what was called Gnosticism, early on in the Christian church, before the last of the apostles had even died – the supposed greater knowledge in addition to Scripture.

So, from earliest New Testament times, we are not surprised to find that John, the one who lived the longest, and the last one to die, actually touched upon refuting this heresy that Jesus Christ did not have a real bonafide human body.

1 John 4:2-3: "By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And there we have that same word: "His fleshly body" – the body of His flesh. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. The antichrist is the great opponent of God. He is the great opponent of Jesus Christ. He is not only against Christ, but he wants to be in place of Christ. And one of the ways he does this, through Satan, is to say that Jesus Christ never did have a human body.

We also have 2 John 7. It's amazing how much is in this little book that is so little that you can't even give it a chapter: "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh." That is the same word again: the "sarx." This is the deceiver, and the antichrist. The apostle John was well aware of this heresy, challenging the reality of the body of Christ. That is because if the devil could get rid of this, then Jesus Christ could not be a qualified Savior, because it took the Lamb of God to be sacrificed in death. You cannot kill a spirit being. You cannot execute a spirit being. It had to be a human being that would be able to die.

So, the heresy of docetism was based on this pagan, philosophical concept that all matter is inherently evil. So, Jesus Christ could not have taken on a human body and be the Savior of the world. One form challenging the union of the human and the divine in one person in Jesus Christ taught that Jesus was simply an ordinary man born of ordinary parents, and that He was, in fact, different from other men only in that He was wiser and better than they. This one form indicates that He had a human body, but He had all that goes with it – a sin nature, etc.

Upon this super man, who was better than other men, this segment of Gnosticism taught that the Holy Spirit descended upon the man Jesus at His baptism, and then left Him when He hung upon the cross. This was terribly convoluted. Thus, the point was that there was no supernatural incarnation, as taught in the Bible, that the Son of God came from heaven, the Second Member of the Trinity, and took on a human body. He did not have genuine humanity in terms of one person containing both a human and a divine nature. The divine spirit of God simply used the human body of Jesus of Nazareth as a vehicle of expression. But there was no real union of a divine and a human nature in one person.

Remember the theological term the "hypostatic union," where He is 100% human, and 100% divine, and the two never mix. They always operate separately. So, He could know something in his deity that He could not know in His humanity. In His humanity, He said, "I don't know when the Father is going to send Me back here." But in His deity, He knows it exactly. And always when you read about Jesus, you have to deal with these two distinctions.

Another variation denying the humanity of Jesus Christ was that his body was simply a ghostlike creation. It was lacking substance, and it just suddenly appeared here on earth. This was in the reign of Emperor Tiberius. And He took up no room wherever He was. He was just a spirit. He didn't even take up room in Mary. Mary showed no signs, as this Spirit Creature came through her, of any evidence of a pregnancy.

The basic point of Docetism was simply this: that Jesus Christ was not a true human being, and that He did not have a genuine human body.

Cerinthus

Well, there were proponents and opponents early on to this idea. The first known teacher docetism was a man named Cerinthus. This was about 85 A.D. John died about 95 A.D. So, even 10 years, at least, before the last apostle died, this is being taught.

Philo

Well, the challenge was, interestingly enough, that it was Philo whose allegorical, symbolic method of interpreting Scripture is what the Catholics picked up, and thus destroyed all meaning of prophecy, including a non-literal kingdom and the whole bit. It wasn't until the time of Martin Luther and the other reformers that they said, "Wait a minute. Philo was wrong. And the Roman Catholic has taken his false method of interpretation, and they are wrong. They have totally misinterpreted the Scriptures." And they went back to literal interpretation, which is the way the Bible must be read. Unfortunately, by the time they got through recovering the doctrines of salvation, and other things that Roman Catholicism had perverted, they didn't live long enough to really get things straightened out in the prophetic area. So, the churches which have descended from these reformers is still all bummed up about the prophetic Scripture. They're still playing on the amillennial idea that Augustine gave them.

Marcion

There was another heretic called Marcion. This man is really very prominent. He did a lot of writing. He lived during the latter part of the second century. And he conceded that Christ did suffer, but He had to suffer as a spirit being. He had no genuine humanity.

Tertullian

Ignatius and Irenaeus

Muhammad

Mormons

The Doctrine of the Humanity of Jesus Christ

So, tonight we will take up the summary of the doctrine of the humanity of Jesus Christ. What does the Bible really teach? This is a critical issue. If He is not 100% human, then none of us is going to heaven. That's why the devil went right for this before the last of the apostles had even died.

Purposed in Eternity Past

We have this in Ephesians 1:4: "Just as He chose us in Him." God the Father chose us in Christ: "Before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love." God said, "Out of the mass of humanity, I will pick certain ones that will go to heaven." And He did: you; you; and, you. The rest: you have no claim upon Me. You are on your way to the lake of fire because of the condemnation which is upon you from the original sin of Adam and from your own sin, and I'm leaving you where you are. I am not obliged to take you out of it. But those that I choose (those that I elect), I will take you out." And this was decided way back there at that conference of the Godhead. Every one of our names were discussed, and the decision made. And we would be a holy and blameless before Him; that is, with no moral guilt, and that we should conduct ourselves, therefore, in love.

Ephesians 1:5: "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ Himself, according to the kind intention of His will." God predestined us to come into His family. "The adoption of sons" means His full grown-up sons. When your children are small, there are certain privileges they do not have that belong to adulthood. But when God brings you into salvation, He doesn't bring in as a kid. He brings you in with the full privileges appertaining to your position in Christ. And He did this by the intention of His will. That's all. It was not because you pled with Him. It was not because you made deals with Him. You weren't even interested in God until He reached down and brought you in: "He did this to the praise of the glory of His grace (trophies of His grace), which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ." He put us in Christ – the Beloved One. In Him we have redemption through His blood." How can you have redemption through His blood if you don't have a real human body – if it's just a ghost figure that you're seeing: "The forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace?"

So, right here, at the beginning of the book of Ephesians, it is clear that, in eternity past, it was decided that Jesus Christ would have a genuine human body.

Ephesians 3:11: "This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord." Again, this is speaking of salvation and what God is going to do. This was part of the eternal purpose. And that salvation depended upon somebody dying in a physical body, and the life being poured out in death.

Ephesians 3:12: "In whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in him."

Then Revelation 13:8 also points out the necessity of this human body: "And all who dwell on the earth will worship him (the antichrist). Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain." You can't slay a lamb who is a ghost. You can't slay a spirit lamb. You can slay a lamb because he is flesh and blood. They could not have decided, in eternity past, that there would be the Lamb's book of life unless there was a Lamb who had been slain, and unless that Lamb (Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God) had a real physical body.

So, right off the bat, it is obvious that the Bible is pretty clear that when the plan was made for salvation, it included a genuine humanity. The fact of the humanity of Christ is also seen in His annunciation at His birth as a baby. Go back to the great gospel of Luke 1:31-35: "'And behold (speaking to Mary, the angel says) you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.' Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a virgin.'"

Now, Mary knew exactly, without any question, what the angel was saying – that she was going to have a normal pregnancy, with a human body being formed, and a human nature with it. She says, "How can this?" Now, the angel didn't say, "Don't worry about it. It's just going to be a pretend body. Is this going to be a spirit body? You won't even know that you're pregnant. You're going to bear a spirit baby."

"The angel answered and said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the part of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the Holy Offspring shall be called the Son of God.'" The Holy Spirit will cause a pregnancy. That way we will have a human being who is just like Adam again. He will have no sin nature. He will be absolutely sinless, because there won't be any father to pass on the sin nature: "Therefore, the Offspring (the Baby) that you have will be called the Son of God." He will have the term Son (a term of humanity) applied to Him.

Then, in Luke 2:12, we may add this: to the shepherds, the angel said, "And this will be a sign for you. You'll find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Now, why do you wrap a baby in diapers? Does anybody know? Because human bodies do certain things. And, as babies, they just take off. Therefore, you put diapers on them. Now, would a spirit baby need diapers? I don't think so. The reality is that this baby needed to have these cloths. The King James Version calls it "swaddling cloth" (diapers), because this was a human baby performing human functions.

So, it is seen that this was a true body, with true humanity, from His annunciation. Christ was conceived in His mother's womb by a supernatural act of God. Thus, there was born to this woman, who was a virgin woman, a normal birth process. And the virginity of Mary is connected with the fact that normally this could not be expected. To have a normal physical birth, this could not happen to a virgin woman. But it did to Mary, because this pregnancy was supernaturally conceived.

However, Isaiah 7:14 makes it clear that it was without a human father, but yet a pregnancy that had to form in the womb. And this baby had to go through nine months of development. Why, if it wasn't a real human body? Isaiah 7:14: "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call Him Emmanuel." This is the declaration in the Old Testament that there is coming a Savior, and he would be a normal child through a normal birth.

Matthew 1:18: "Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother, Mary, had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with Child by the Holy Spirit." It was a Child that she was found to be with. By the way, that, of course, is a mistake in the Bible. It should have said, "She was found to be with fetus" – not a Child, as we all know. It's not a child until it's born. How crazy can you be?

Luke 1:26: "Now, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin, engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the descendants of David. And the virgin name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her: 'Hail, favored one. The Lord is with thee.' And she was greatly troubled at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of sanitation this might be. And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you found favor with God. And, behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a Son, and you shall call Him Jesus.'" The language is very clearly human. She's going to conceive, and she will bear a Son: "He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom, there shall be no end.

"And Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be since I am a virgin?' And the angel answered and said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. For that reason, the Holy Offspring shall be called the Son of God." This is entirely a normal human process which is being described here. What Mary gave birth to was the God-Child, and, therefore, He was called the Son of God. Mary, however, is not the mother of God. That's Roman Catholic nonsense. She is not the mother of God. She is the mother of the humanity of Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God.

The genealogy of Jesus Christ is very important to us in deciding whether this man was really human or not. The genealogy stresses the fact of the humanity, and the reality of the humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had two lines coming down from King David: two genealogical lines. That's why you have a genealogy in Luke, and you have one in Matthew. He came legally to His position as King of the Jews through His foster father, Joseph, but He came physically to His royal status through His mother, Mary. Both parents were in the line of David.

Notices this difference: In Matthew 1, we have the genealogy of Joseph. Matthew 1:6-7: "And to Jesse was born King David. And from David was born Solomon, by her who had been the wife of Uriah." Solomon was born from King David. Drop down through the genealogy to verse 16: "And to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon are 14 generations; and, from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ, 14 generations." So, in this line, you have Joseph, the legal father (the foster, but the legal line of Jesus) to the claim to be the king of Jews coming down from David to Solomon to Jesus.

But now notice Luke 3. Because of Solomon's persistent pursuit of evil; his fall into sin; and, his marrying of the multiple pagan heathen wives until he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, God rejected Solomon from being in the line of Christ the Messiah – the actual physical line. He permitted him to be in the line that had to come through the male, of the legal claim of Christ to be the king of the Jews. But the physical line to be the king of the Jews came through Mary. Luke 3:23: "And while He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about 30 years of age, being supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Eli." Then it keeps running all the way down through the genealogy. This is the genealogy now of Mary.

Notice verse 31: "The son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David." David had another son. He had Solomon, which had been born through Bathsheba, but he also had another son, Nathan. Nathan was a straight arrow. Nathan was the really godly son. And God said to Solomon, "You will not be in the physical line of the Messiah." Great honor was taken from him. But he turned to Nathan and said, "Nathan, because of your integrity, you will be in the physical line of the mother of the Savior which is to come." So, Mary came through Nathan, and Mary gave the physical claim to Jesus to the royal line.

God has his way. Solomon could have had this great honor. Instead, he blew it with his sin. He thought the world and the devil had a better way. He lost it. And it was given to Nathan, the simple young man who said, "I like it God's way. I'm going to play it God's way. So, he was honored to be the one through whom the physical line of the Savior of all mankind was given.

Jesus Christ grew physically to maturity in the normal human pattern. In Luke 2:6-7, we read, "And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give her to give birth. And she (Mary) gave birth to her firstborn Son. She wrapped him in cloths and laid Him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn."

One of our politicians recently discovered that Mary and Joseph were homeless people. And he was making a great deal of how homeless people should be cared for, because Mary and Joseph once were homeless. Have you ever come up to a motel on a long trip, and you're ready to knock off for the evening? And you see a sign up there, and you say, "Here's a nice motel. Let's check this out." But the sign up there says, "No vacancy." Did you have a feeling of being homeless then? The "No Vacancy" sign made you feel homeless?

Well, that's what the inn in Bethlehem had. They scooted up on their little donkey, and they said, "Here's where we'll spend the night. They got off, and they said, "Wait a minute. That sign is flashing. What does it say? 'No vacancy.' Oh, no, we're homeless." No, they just couldn't go where they needed to go. And they had the money to rent a room. So, instead they ended up in this cave, because the animals were there, and because they needed a manger, so that Christ could be born in those humble facilities. You can always count on liberals to be crazy while still breathing.

Luke 2:40 says, "And the child (Jesus) continued to grow (following his real birth as a human being). He became strong, increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." Jesus Christ continued to grow physically, and He became strong. That word "strong" means "muscles." He became physically muscular. He was never a girly with long hair. Jesus Christ never looked like Christina Dozier with her hair – only in the idiocy of pictures. Christina is a genuine young woman. Jesus was a genuine man. He wore His hair in the style of the day, as we find on the carvings, and in the early markings in the catacombs. The Romans set the pattern. And Roman men didn't wear girly hair. They wore close-cropped hair. They all looked like Glenn Wright in his better days. They were very manly-looking. And that's the appearance that Jesus had. Therefore, this is a significant word in the Greek. He became strong. He was a virile young man. He wasn't one of these girly-type, weak figures that you see portrayed so that you convey His holiness. And He increase in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

Luke 2:42: "And when he became 12, they went up there to the temple, according to the custom of the feasts," for this feast in Jerusalem. He grew up, and He began taking on more and more of the physical relationships of a young Jewish boy to His religious faith.

Then, Luke 3:23: "And when He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about 30 years of age, being supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Eli." He was about 30 years of age. He had grown up physically. He wasn't just a spirit body. He was a genuine human being. If He were to injure Himself while doing His carpentry work (cut himself), His body would bleed. That blood would have no magical qualities. The blood of Jesus Christ being shed came into significance when He was bearing the sins of the world. Otherwise, it was just ordinary human blood that was shed, such as if He had wounded himself in the course of His work. But when it was shed while bearing the sins of the world, then it carried the impact of the forgiveness of sins.

Consequently, this was a great and wonderful thing that happened that day in Bethlehem – that this Child was born, and then developed into a youngster with all the appeals; with all the attraction; and, with all the lovability. You know how junior age boys are. They're at that transition stage. They love to sit in their father's lap. They love to hang around their dads. They are not ashamed to have loving expressions. Then Jesus grew up to be a teenager, and undoubtedly had His friends, but He was always different. What a great example! His friends were sinful boys, and they did sinful things. But the Lord Jesus Christ never had any problem with that.

Why? In part, because He had one thing that is kind of rare among kids today. It's a gutsy thing to have. You don't care whether they like you or not. If you are a youngster who wants your peers to like you, and your peers to accept you, you're a twit. And sooner or later, you will act according to the world system to be able to have their approval. When you do that, just remember that you've gained the disapproval of the Lord Jesus Christ – the greatest Man who ever lived; and, the One Who has done more for you than any other human being ever can or ever will do. He was the finest role model that any young woman or any young boy (any youngster) would ever want to have. And if you don't have the internal fortitude to stand alone, then the world, sooner or later, will make you into its own sad, sorry, rotten image. And do you know what the worst thing about that is? You get into the habit of it in youth, and you grow up, and that's what you do. There are so many Christian adults who can't imagine that they can stand alone with Christ, whether the world; their friends; their associates; their business partners; and, the people they do business with – whether they like it or not. But you stand with the greatest man, the God-Man Jesus Christ, that ever lived. There's a lot more to say to demonstrate His humanity. And we shall continue with that next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

Back to the Colossians index