Jesus the human face of God

Jesus the human face of God

Introduction: In every religion there are some strange concepts of belief, which we call mystery. We cannot understand them fully and cannot make others understand. They remain mystery forever. For us, Catholics God became man is a mystery, which no one can fathom totally. It seems to be more mysterious when we say that Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity is the human form of God the Father, the first person of the Holy Trinity. He became fully man without losing his full divinity. He is the man-God and God-man. For many it may be an inscrutable or incomprehensible truth. In this particular article I wanted to show that Jesus’ becoming man was in the original plan of God after the fall of first human being. God’s sharing the full humanity in Jesus Christ shows His perfect love for human being.

Identity of Jesus: “Once when Jesus was praying alone with only disciples with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They answered, John the Baptist; but others, Elijah and still others, that of the ancient prophet have risen. He said to them, “ But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, the Messiah of God.” He strongly ordered and commanded them not to tell any one (Luke. 9: 18-21). The faith filled and very simple confession of Peter about the real identity of Jesus lays a fundamental truth, which was to be revealed and manifested in the life of Jesus.

As we go through the life history of Jesus beginning from his birth till now, so we see different understanding of Jesus in different periods of history. The contemporary Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time would define him as a rebellious and blasphemer. For some he was healer, still for others, teacher, exorcist, miracle performer. Only a few knew about his Godly nature. From the very life and work of Jesus we see two realities or natures in him, which we call human reality and divine reality. Divine reality is more traditional; and human reality is more contemporary.

Nature of Jesus: In the history of the Church there were powerful heresies regarding the nature of Jesus. Nestorius, then archbishop of Constantinople said, “ There were two persons in Jesus, the Divine Person and the Human Person.” But the Church teaches that in Jesus there was only One Person, the Divine Person and that he had two natures, the divine nature and the human nature.  St Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, defined this doctrine. In the course of time Eutyches came up with another heresy. He taught that in Christ there is only one Nature, the Divine nature. Since Jesus is not a human person, so he has no soul as we all have. Church very strongly charged this heresy and taught that our Lord Jesus Christ; the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity; the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body.

Divinity or Divine Nature of Jesus: There are two solemn moments in the Gospel, the Baptism and Transfiguration where Father designates Jesus as His beloved Son. Jesus also calls himself the “only son of God” (Jn.16: 36). By this title Jesus affirms his divine pre-existence. Before the crucified Jesus, the centurion truly confessed that “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mt. 27.54).

Jesus’ divinity was fully revealed in his resurrection. His disciples, with whom they lived so long and experienced his kingdom, could not identify him after the resurrection. It seems to be a mystery, the mystery of the divinity of Jesus. Resurrection is the perfect revelation of his divine nature. In resurrection God made His presence known through Jesus. So, Jesus is the human presence of God, the true human face of God.

Humanity of Jesus: “ If Jesus is to be our man, he must be one of us, completely part of our world, a man in every sense of the word.” Indeed Jesus was a fully man, born of a woman under the law of nature. He went through all the rituals of the society starting from his infancy. He lived in a family at Nazareth with his parents and other relatives. As boy he might have done all the things as other boys or girls did. He was disobedient to his parents and was lost in the temple. His mother might have scolded him for disobedience. He grew up in wisdom and love of man and God. He was taught the religious practices and reading of the scriptures, because we see him going to the synagogue and reading the scripture. This little account is a perfect example of a perfect boy or a man.

If we want to see in a deeper sense the humanity and human nature of Jesus we can have a look on Synoptic gospels where Jesus is presented as fully human with all the human qualities and behaviour except sin. “ The orthodox fathers and councils always insisted upon the full humanity in principle. They maintained that if Jesus did not assume our humanity, then we are not saved.”

Jesus the human face of God: The examination of Jesus as the human face of God involves questions of anthropology as well as of history. Was Jesus in the historical moment, the fullness of what it means to be human, the definitive and eschatological man, the new man, and the primordial image for all the humanity? Do we learn what it means to be human by observing the life and death of this historical person? We all must have positive answers to these questions. These questions presuppose another faith statement: humankind is created in the image of God.

The principle that underlines this approach locates the unique universality in Jesus precisely in his being human. This Christology is not from above and deductive, but from below and inductive. Theologians do not discuss something that is above or below or beside, but a reality that is within; the human expresses the divine. God chose as revelation the human form, the man Jesus. The mystery of Jesus lies in his humanity. The human becomes the localization of the divine.

Why Jesus is the human face if God: It is our belief that we all are created in the image of God. If it is so and if all have the potential to manifest the divine, then why is Jesus singled out to be the human face of God in an extraordinary way? What is it in Jesus that differentiates him from millions of people? We do not need to try to appraise Jesus against some abstract concept of humanity to reason out why Jesus is the exemplary image of God. Rather we need to deal with the human Jesus and relate his experiences to all human experiences. We need to study his life to discover how, in his living, others experienced the divinity. Now I want to bring another aspect of his life that is the self-awareness of Jesus. It is difficult to enter into the personality of Jesus, seeking to unravel the fundamental way in, which Jesus is presented to himself. It is much more difficult to deal with the self–awareness of others. Yet, the words, actions and attitudes of Jesus as recorded in the gospels can teach us about his self-understanding. Still for all it will be incomplete because of its mysterious nature.

Jesus’ Concept of God:  Many major religions present an image of God as a loving Father. Judaism also recognized the parenthood of God, and it was the atmosphere where Jesus grew up. But Jesus was not content to affirm God as his Father in the same way every other Jew would address God. For Jesus, God was Abba. God was like a loving parent who responds to a small child. There was am intimate relationship between God and Jesus different from that of other people. He spoke of my God and your God, my Father and your Father, and never our Father. He can reveal God as Father, as Abba, because Jesus is God’s Son. The union of willing and even of being makes Jesus present where God the Father is present and vice versa.

His Incarnation: One of the most fundamental doctrines in the Christianity is the Incarnation. There must have been a purpose, some reasons that would have motivated the coming of God in the human history. The primary area of distinction here is between the Incarnation as prompted by the fall of human race and the need for its generation, and the Incarnation as prompted by the utter desire of God to share the human condition.

According to New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, “Incarnation affirms the twofold mystery of the history of God’s self-communication, and the history of humanity’s self-transcendence. In the person of Jesus the Christ, God’s gracious self-communication achieves an absolute and irrevocable, concrete historical manifestation. The hope and self- abandonment in love that constitutes the history of human freedom made possible by the humanity of Jesus the Christ.” Therefore, because of the Incarnation, God is in humankind and remains so for all eternity, and humankind is for all eternity the expression of the mystery of God. The humanity of Jesus Christ is not simply the form of God’s appearance on earth, but God’s existence in Christ.

Revelation of God: Revelation is a process in which God disclose Himself as self-giving and invites every human being to enter into the process of self-giving. In other words, every human being is invited to realize his potentiality to become fully human by giving oneself totally to the other. God became one with the human history guiding and leading the humankind to himself. Christian revelation is centred on the person of Jesus and the Christ event; because Jesus is the fullness of revelation and in him, revelation reaches its definitive point. 

In the synoptic tradition Christ is the one who reveals insofar as he proclaim the Good News of the kingdom of God and teaches the Word of God with authority (Mk.1: 14-15; Mt. 23:10). His authority to reveal is based on sonship. As son he knows the secret of Father. “No one knows the Son, but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him” (Mt. 11:27). For John, revelation is the Word of God made flesh (Jn. 1:14). The whole of his Gospel resounds with this idea. So, no doubt should remain in us that Jesus reveals his Father and he is the fullness of revelation.

Old Testament: “ Then God said, let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:25). “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen.1: 27). Man occupies a unique place in creation,(I) he is “in the image of God”, (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material world, (III) he is created male and female (VI) God established him in his friendship. Man is the only creation on earth that God created in his likeness. So, if man resembles God and Jesus being God becomes man, then Jesus being man can resemble God. In other word, Jesus can reveal God in his face, or he is the human face of God.

New Testament: The Scriptures begin very gently, and lead us to Christ as to a man, and then to one who is Lord over all creations, and after that to the one who is God.

“In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (1-3). “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him” (V.10). And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory as of a father’s only Son, full of grace and truth (V.14). These are the testimony of Evangelist John about Jesus, the Son of God. It is a very unique text in the New Testament, which resembles the creation story. John has carefully presented humanity and divinity of Jesus.

The whole life of Jesus gives the testimony of the Father and this testimony is perfect in its content and in its expression. Whatever he has seen and heard of the Father has communicated to us. Father gives testimony regarding him, and is acknowledged as the son sent by the Father. Whoever sees Jesus, therefore sees the Father, because he is the human face of God the Father.

I want to quote two more texts from St Paul, which will enlighten our understanding. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation”(Col.1: 15). “ Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, coming in the human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the mane that is above every mane, and that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2: 6-11).

Contemporary Understanding: We believe that in his humanity Jesus intimately lives with the Father and by the virtues of his intimacy he is the Son. The centre of his being as a man reposes not in himself, but in God the Father. The contemporary theologians “Rahnar, Schoonenberg, Hulsbosch, Schillebeekx Küng and others attempt to deal with this question on a philosophical ground. The agreement that they seem to have reached accepts as fundamental the model of Jesus as the human face of God, or the sacrament of God, or the human manifestation of the divine, or God in man. They tried to break out more traditional approaches to Christology and present other model based on scriptures and human experience.

Conclusion: At the end of a long study from various points of view now it is much more clear to me that why Jesus became man and represented God the Father. God became man that we might become God. Had God come with His full divinity, we would be frightened to approach Him. We would hide ourselves from Him as Adam did after eating the forbidden fruit. God did not want to lose us anymore. He has given us His own power (Spirit) to every one of us that we may be united with Him. Jesus showed us the way to the Father, because he is the way, truth and life; no one can go to Father except through him.

Bibliography

&    BLOOM, Anthony: God and Man; Newman Press, New York, 1971.

&   CONGAR, Yves OP: Jesus Christ; Herder and Herder, New York. 1966.

&   THOMAS, P.C.: General Councils of the Church; St. Pauls, Mumbai. 2001.

&   ROBINSON, John AT: The Human Face of God; SMS Press ltd, London. 1977.

&   O’GRADY, John F: Models of Jesus; Image Book, Garden City. 1982.

&   McMRIEN, Richard P.: Catholicism; Winston Press, Minneapolis. 1981.

&   Catechism of the Catholic Church; Theological Publication in India, Bangalor, 1994

&    Hand out on Christology, by Fr. Shyamol Gomes csc.