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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman More
Than Human "I'm only
human," or so we say. Proclaiming
our humanity is often meant to deflect the attention away from our
failures, mistakes, and sins. It's
an excuse not to change our behaviour.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17 the Apostle Paul spoke to this issue when he
said that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.
Those "in Christ" are those whom God views through the lens of Jesus. When God the Father looks at Jesus, He sees the Christian inside Jesus because Jesus represents him to God. In this sense of the word we are in Jesus, or, in Christ.
Paul said that we
who are in Jesus have become new creations.
The Greek word translated as "new creations" incorporates
the process of being built into someone we have never been.
This building process began when the Spirit of God came to dwell
within the core of who we are. If
God Almighty lives in us, I think that makes us a bit more than human.
This reality distinguishes the Christian from everyone else on this
planet.
To be clear, we are not little gods as new age apostles and some prosperity preachers say we are. We are not duplicates of Jesus' exact nature. In Jesus alone all the fullness of God now lives in a bodily form (Colossians 2:9). We are not fully God and fully human as Jesus is. We are, however, newly created humans who will some day be as Jesus now is. The full extent of what we will be has not yet been revealed, but when Christ appears, we will be like Him (1 John 3:2) for He is the first born among the dead, the template of this new creation (Colossians 1:18). That being said, I do think that there will always be a distinction between Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, and us. I conclude that
when we say we are only human, we deny what the Bible says we are.
We inhibit the life of Jesus from being formed in our humanness as
1 Corinthians 15:49 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 states should be a daily
process. Paul was right.
Those of us who are in Christ are new creations.
We are more than human.
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