Trinity and Humanity

What’s the definition of a peanut butter sandwich? It’s peanut butter and bread.

If you have peanut butter, but no bread, then you don’t have a sandwich, do you? You have peanut butter. Likewise, if you have bread and no peanut butter then you also don’t have a sandwich – you just have bread. Both elements must be present, joined together, in order for a peanut butter sandwich to exist.

What’s the biblical definition of Jesus? Jesus is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, in the flesh (John 1:14). He is fully God and fully human.

So, if God the Son ever stops being fully human then there is no more Jesus. Likewise, if Jesus ever stopped being fully God he wouldn’t be Jesus anymore. To say the name “Jesus” (from a biblical perspective) is to say “the Son of God in the flesh”.

When the Bible says “Jesus lives forever” (Heb. 7:24) what is it saying? It’s telling us that Jesus will never cease to exist. That means that God the Son will never stop living in the flesh as the man Jesus. He will forever be fully God and fully human.

Jesus’ eternal existence as Son of God and Son of Man has profound implications for our lives:

1. It means that, in Jesus, God and humanity are permanently united. This “humanity of God” (as Karl Barth called it) means that there is now no Trinity without humanity and there is no humanity without the Trinity.

2. Jesus has given you a relationship with God! Even when you don’t know it, realize it, or believe it, you are still included in the life and love of God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

3. Jesus changes the very definition of what it means to be human. Paul tells us “as in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Human beings are not creatures destined for destruction. The Son of God has permanently united human nature to the Trinity by living forever in the flesh as Jesus and therefore we have been raised up in his resurrection (Eph. 2:6). Jesus has changed us from creatures who would have died into sons and daughters of the Father who will live forever.

This is why it is of paramount importance that we believe in Jesus and his resurrection.

To believe in Jesus is to stop believing the lie that we are isolated, separated, and not acceptable to God. To believe in Jesus is to believe that he has included us in his relationship with the Father, making us children of the Father with himself. And to believe in his resurrection is to believe the truth that we will also be resurrected and live forever in Christ.

~ Jonathan Stepp