The Divine and Human Nature of Jesus

Sisters and brothers. As we’ve been exploring the catechism, we've talked about Faith. We’ve encountered the Trinity. We’ve encountered the story of revelation. Then sin, and restoration through Christ. Today we’re going to focus on the person of Jesus Christ. Who is this Christ who comes to us? When we begin to ask that question, our starting point or the place we go to is to sacred Scripture itself, where we start and we see the gospel portraits of Jesus, wonderful language, because the Gospels do present to us a picture of Jesus as teacher, as healer, as a Son in his silent years in the home, working with Mary and Joseph. And then, Jesus suffering death and resurrection. 

His return and the resurrection appearances to be with the apostles, from Mary Magdalene to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, these wonderful stories that give us a picture of Christ, a picture of Christ who teaches us about love, who teaches us of mercy, who shows us that God's will is life and salvation for all.

What we come to do, then, is take the gospel portrait of Jesus and say, “Who is this Christ?” We know he's the second person of the Blessed Trinity. The Word of God, the Son of God, expressing the fullness of God's love.

If you think about the story of the revelation, we’ve had this long salvation history of sin and failure, and God gave us the Ten Commandments. God gave us the words of the prophets. He gave us freedom and told us how to live in His love and to share in His glory. And we failed. And so God decided in His great wisdom to send us His Son to save us from sin and death as the perfect revelation of His love. That is who Christ is, true God and true man.

The Fathers of the Church, those great early writers in the first six centuries, those great theologians of the Church, expressed for us a very important teaching that if God wasn’t present in Christ, true God and true man, if Jesus died on the cross as just a man, He couldn’t save us.

Jesus had to die on the cross as true God and true man. For only a God can save humanity.

Very important teaching. 

When we come to our understanding of Christ as true God and true man. There are three, heresies that have been long traditions of the Church. And one of the things about heresies are they don't necessarily go away. They appear in our lives as people reflect on them today.

The first one I want to talk about is Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a teaching that denied the humanity of Christ. So if Jesus were only God, how do we relate to Him? Jesus’ ability to relate and live in solidarity with us was His experience of the fullness of human life. He knew our life from the inside out and therefore was able to teach us what it was and what it is to live human life divinely.

The next teaching was Arianism. Arianism said, yes, indeed you’re the Son of the Father, but you’re a creature just like human beings. Therefore you’re not divine. Stripped of His divinity. Christ is just a nice moral teacher. And so we don’t have the call to the change of our lives from, a life of sin to a life of grace by the example of Christ suffering, death and resurrection, as true God and true man. So against Arianism, we teach Christ is not only fully human but fully God.

And the third one is called Nestorianism. They believed that Christ was certainly God. Christ was certainly man and split the two apart. And so the full teaching of that came to bear on the question of Mary. Was Mary the Mother of God, or only the mother of Jesus the man? And the Church’s teaching is that Mary indeed is the Mother of God. Two natures in one person, in the person of Christ. When we come to that two persons in the nature of Christ, we come to something that's very important for us. Christ, because He was human, is indeed able to teach us how to live divinely. In other words, as often is said, we are being taught how to live as Alter Christus, other Christ, little Christ. Because we’re not only sharing in Christ humanity, His humanity is shared with us, but we share in His divinity by grace. We partake in the divine nature.

I just read a little quote from the Catechism that also takes in second Peter one four, “God became man, that we may partake in the divine nature He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature.”

Sisters and brothers, that’s the wonder of the Christian life that we are invited to share in the divine nature and to be able to reflect what Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, said to us in the early days of the Church that the glory of God is the human person, fully alive, and we only become fully alive when we’re alive in Christ and in the love of God. And with that, sisters and brothers, we can be renewed.

Reflection Questions:

1. How does the understanding of Jesus as true God and true man influence your Faith journey?

2. What does it mean to you to partake in the divine nature as described in the Catechism?

3. How can the example of Christ’s life guide you in living a fully human and divine life?