AP: The Humanity of Jesus

AP writes:

In my textbook for the course I am taking, Allen Hood quotes Von Balthasar from his book Prayer. It was such an inspiring quote I decided to share it with you:

Standing in awe of God is one thing. Loving Him is quite another thing. You can go through life obedient and struck by His awesomeness, but it's quite another thing to be struck by His tenderness, to be tender towards God. When you know His humanity and tender acquaintance with your frame, your heart feels safe to move towards Him and ask questions you normally would not ask. It is sheer joy to engage with your older Brother in dialogue and in worship, free to love Him with your particular personality. This is joy, to enjoy yourself in enjoying Him.

This where contemplation sets to work. On the one hand, what the Son is and does is human, and is thus comprehensible...Even the quality of Christ's humanity is so different from all other humanity and from everything that is possible in the world. All the same, the humanity of the Son of Man is human. It is not interfered with, there is no grotesque distortion; it bears the mark of its divine quality just as white hot iron shows its heat; indeed, the divine reveals its incomparable power in the very fact that what is human is not destroyed. If two magnitudes were of the same order, the greater would of necessity be a threat to the lesser. A tree planted in a flower pot will burst it. Only God can appear in a creature without destroying it. Faith is rendered able to contemplate the divine in creaturely form.

The contemplative's gaze continually returns with great attention to the humanity of Jesus. It is the inexhaustible treasure entrusted to us by the heavenly Father. In a true sense he has "despoiled

himself" (John 3:16) of him to whom he is always pointing: ipsum audite! (Matthew 17:5) The Son is no floating interstellar body; he is the fruit of the earth and its history; he comes from Mary (who is the exponent of the Old Covenant and of all humanity) just as he comes from the Father. He is grace ascending just as much as grace descending; he is just as much creation's highest response to the Father as he is the Father's Word to creation. He is no God in disguise, acting "as if", simply to give us an example...No. He is the apex of the world in its striving towards God, and he cuts a path for all of us, gathering up all man's efforts into Himself the pioneer, the spearhead. He can do this only by being "in every respect tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (Heb 4:15), by bearing our burdens as the scapegoat (Heb 13:11), the Lamb brought to the slaughter, slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). Thus, he stands at the summit of heaven and earth.

That quote is so inspiring to me to really think about why Jesus wants to reveal Himself to us. It makes me want to go and sit for hours reading my Bible. Hopefully it has inspired you to do the same. Have a great day!!