Jesus is our brother — Why is that so crazily special, and what does that mean? (5 things)
If you had been asked, before reading the title of this post, to come up with some descriptions of Jesus, what would you have said? In my case, I probably would have said Savior, Healer, Lord, even friend. But I would never have thought of “brother.”
That’s a very bold, audacious thing to say — to call God in the flesh a brother. “Brother” implies a sense of equality, camaraderie, a common understanding. Brothers grow up together and learn together and share a common experience in the same family. Yes, I suppose you could say that, because Jesus did, of course, become human like us, but, I mean, his human experience was 2,000 years ago, on the other side of the world, and he never sinned. It seems like a stretch to be so audacious as to call him “brother.” I would never have thought of it if the Bible didn’t say so itself:
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers – Hebrews 2:10-11
The idea that Jesus would call himself my brother, without the slightest blush or hesitation, is crazy to me. So what exactly does that mean? As we approach the day where we celebrate the moment Jesus stepped into our world, in flesh, to live as our brother, here are five things I think we can take from these verses, and what they mean for our relationship with Jesus:
He understands the full human experience. Jesus didn’t live in the modern age, but he lived in the same kind of body we did, and went through many of the same experiences. Even though he didn’t have video games, he knew the temptation to be lazy. He didn’t have a smartphone, but he knew the temptation to over-isolate himself (or to overexert himself). He was, indeed, tempted “in every way, just as we are,” yet was without sin. He knows happiness, grief, joy, excitement, boredom, anger, restlessness, fatigue, pain, and all the rest of the things we feel, from experience. He knows what we go through and how we feel when we go through it.
Did you ever, as a kid or teenager, find it easier to share your troubles with peers instead of authority figures? I know I usually did. It doesn’t always make sense, because we know adults are usually wiser than teens in how to deal with problems. Yet we feel comfortable with peers because they share our experience. We feel we can be real with our peers. In that same way, because Jesus has shared our experience, we can be real with him. He knows what it’s like.
He endured the full spectrum of suffering. There is one exception to the above statement: the one thing Jesus did not experience was what it’s like to sin. Sometimes this has made me wonder, Does Jesus really know what it’s like to screw up? Does he know what it’s like to feel guilty or ashamed for doing something wrong? If so, how could he share the full human experience?How can he empathize with me in that? The answer, I think, is that although Jesus never experienced what it’s like to sin, he experienced the full extent of suffering. Just as verse 10 says, that’s how he was made perfect (Greek teleioō, which could also be translated “complete”). A lot more was happening on that cross than the nails and whips. He was suffering the punishment for sin. So although Jesus didn’t sin, he suffered as if he had, and that’s what the guilt and shame we experience over our sin is: a form of suffering. Jesus ran the full gamut of human suffering. So he can fully empathize with us in any kind of suffering, whether it’s physical or emotional, whether it’s self-inflicted or caused by another. We can be real with him with our pain.
Jesus is glad to be one of us. Verse 11 says that (even though he is God) he is not ashamed to call us brothers (that is, siblings of either gender). Many of us have had moments of disgust, however brief, when we’re put in a position that we believe is beneath our dignity. Jesus’ condescension to our level is far greater than any humbling act we’ve ever had to do — amazing, even scandalous. It’s bigger than if LeBron James became a minimum-wage retail worker, or if Donald Trump became a fast-food cook. How could someone in such a high position not have some disgust or disdain at what they were reduced to? How could they not be ashamed? The level from which Jesus rose to condescend to ours is infinitely bigger than any other, but he never had any disdain or shame at entering a human body, with all its limitations and flaws.
But Jesus is glad to identify with us. He is glad to be one of us, and he is one of us without sacrificing an iota of his glory as God. He came down to meet us where we are at. He condescended down to us, so he could bring us up and welcome us into the family of God.
When we pray, we pray to a person with human experience. Today I was feeling very discouraged about, well, a variety of things. One of them was, for someone who is a minister for a living, I sometimes have a hard time connecting with people and find myself too often preferring to spend time alone reading than with people. When I prayed about this, I didn’t have to pray, “God, what should I do?” I could pray, “Jesus, what did you do?” I imagine Jesus felt like that on occasion. And I even felt (though I don’t want to declare definitively) that he answered that I need to learn how to love people more, like he did.
Jesus is the truest human. Sometimes when we screw up and do something wrong, we say, “I’m only human.” We say that to mean that humans aren’t perfect and inevitably will do bad things sometimes. As such, since Jesus was not a sinner, we tend to think he was sort of “less human” than us in that way. But being a sinner is not an inherent part of being human. God did not create humans to be sinners. Humans became sinners by their own volition. Being a sinner is something we all inherit from our original parents, but it is not an innate characteristic of what it is to be human. Sinfulness is a mutation, a distortion, of what humanness is supposed to be. To be human is to be made in God’s image and to have a relationship with God. The person who best fits those characteristics is Jesus himself. It could be better said that Jesus is more human than any of us. And rather than us thinking he doesn’t understand what it’s like to be human, we can learn from him what it really means to be human.
