Did Jesus Have A Nature Just Like All Men?

By

Lee

There are those who teach that Jesus Christ had a nature just like all of us and that in every way he was human, just like all of us.  This leads them to extend this idea to state that Jesus was also a potential sinner just like all of us but that he made right choices and never did sin.  While I believe  Jesus was not God, I see that certain overzealous people have gone too far in trying to prove this.  If these people will read this paper carefully and without prejudging, I believe I can prove to you that in the matter of temptation and the inability to sin Jesus was equal to his Father.

First, the fact that Jesus never sinned is a dead giveaway that he was unlike every human that has ever or will ever live and to account this to his simply making the right choices is no different than being under the law because the law was a matter of making right choices.  If you are just like Jesus in every way and Jesus made right choices and never sinned then why can’t you do this and never sin?  Jesus could not have been just like us in this matter.  If the saints are to become like Jesus, transformed into his image, then would this not mean that Jesus is different from us if we must change to become like him?  If Jesus was exactly like us in all ways then how could he have been the messiah?  If you or I tried to not sin for a year do you think we could be successful?  If you say yes, then you are deceiving yourself.  He who says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him.  Imagine an ordinary man just like you and I in every way trying to not sin for 33 and one half years.  That would be impossible.  You may say that Jesus had Gods help by the Holy Spirit but do not you as well and still you sin.  Perhaps Jesus had more of the Holy Spirit than any of us but then how much would Jesus need to never sin? 

Just the fact that Jesus never sinned is a proof that he was not exactly like us in every way.

The spiritual knowledge Jesus had was remarkable.  Solomon would be an idiot compared to Jesus and indeed Jesus did say, “One greater than Solomon is here”.  Many of the wisest scribes at the temple were amazed at the wisdom of Jesus and this was when he was only twelve years old.  Does this prove that Jesus was exactly like you and me?  In sinlessness and in wisdom Jesus was so far beyond us that we are all sinners and idiots by comparison. 

Other special abilities like reading men’s thoughts, controlling the forces of nature and all the miracles Jesus did are all signals to us that Jesus was not just like you and me.  I am aware that Jesus did not do these things himself but credited God with these works but when is the last time you did any of these things?  Are you and I so well connected to God that we can perform these acts by using Gods power?  When is the last time you heard a voice from heaven describing you as, “My beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  Do you have no human father?

Were you born by a virgin?  Were there more than 300 prophecies about you in scripture before you were even born? How many things about Jesus make him a person exactly like you and me?  There is only one thing that makes Jesus exactly like you and me and that is that Jesus was a soul.

There is none righteous, no not one and even the righteousness of the saints is imputed to the saints because of faith in Jesus Christ the righteous, a man exactly like you and me, I do not think so.  Was Jesus righteous?  Do you even know what righteousness is?  It is what God is, righteous, and Jesus is described in scripture as righteous.  Righteousness is the inability to sin, to be incorruptible.  The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, but Jesus inherited everything God made and was king of the kingdom of God while in the flesh. Jesus had no one die for him, he had no savior.  Jesus had to be righteous in order to go to heaven after his resurrection because the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom or anything else. Are you righteous enough, have you made the right choices so that you inherit all things and become king of the kingdom of God while being a man in the flesh?  Would your death provide for two resurrections of the dead? 

Jesus was in the tomb for three days and his body did not rot or decay but actually healed while being dead, how about your body when you die?  The body of Jesus was incorruptible so what would that say about his human spirit?  Jesus was a person just like all of us, exactly like us in every way.  If he was, we are in big trouble.

In the resurrection of the saints we put on incorruption, a resurrection provided for us by a man who was exactly like us in every way and a potential sinner who made the right choices.  Would you not think that if Jesus provides these things for us he would have to possess them himself? If Jesus was a potential sinner then you cannot say he was incorruptible but his body was.  So was his human spirit.

James 1:13 is used by some to say that since God cannot be tempted and Jesus was tempted not only is Jesus not God but Jesus is also able to sin.

The verse says that God cannot be tempted with evil not just God cannot be tempted.  Jesus, by Satan, was tempted with evil.  Satan tried to tempt Jesus to do various types of acts or make statements that were evil but Jesus, never once wavered and triumphed over Satan and was, yet without sin. Satan could not tempt Jesus with evil.  This shows us why Jesus was like his Father and is our hope in a messiah who was the only righteous man who ever lived that gave his life for you and me.  Do you still think Jesus was exactly like you in every way?

You are a soul, dust and breath, so was Jesus.  Souls are living breathing creatures man and animal. There are many types of souls as there are creatures and add into that the differences of male and female, the color of skin, the physical and mental abilities and this shows that there are as many souls as there are varied creatures.  All are different but all are souls.  God made many types of souls.  The souls of converted and unconverted are different because the converted are new creations in Jesus just as Jesus was the first of a new creation, a new kind of man.  The saints are in a process to become like Jesus to put on Jesus, have the mind of Jesus who had the mind of God.  This mind of God was the righteousness of God manifested in Jesus to us so that through Jesus we can know the Father.  Jesus had to be righteous just like God to do this.  When is the last time you told someone that if they see you they see God the Father?  If you are a saint, they are supposed to see Jesus in you as the Father was seen in Jesus. 

All the prophets declared many years before Jesus was born that Jesus would be righteous when all the rest of humanity was unrighteous.  Jesus knew the prophets as this was Gods testimony about Jesus.  Jesus knew he could not sin otherwise all the prophecy concerning him would not be a sure word but in doubt.  Imagine Moses or David, knowing that Jesus could have sinned, what it would have done to their faith in all the prophets God inspired concerning the messiah.  People who teach Jesus could have sinned have the benefit of being born after Jesus and not before Jesus so they can rest easy but these saints before Jesus would have been sweating bullets hoping this messiah would not sin and condemn them to death everlasting.  These people do not think how cruel this would be.  Since Jesus cannot sin though these saints of old rest easy and in great faith assured of all the promises.  These men all had faith as Hebrews 11 says and that faith was in a successful messiah who was righteous and sinless, unable to sin; this was a sure hope and a sure word of prophecy.

Gods Love Proves Jesus Was Unable to Sin

God is love. The love of God is not like human love and is the nature of God and why God cannot sin and cannot even be enticed to sin. God by his very nature is love and this is what he desires the saints to become.  The living demonstration of that love to us was Jesus Christ.  Jesus had the same kind of love in him as was in his Father.

KJV Romans 8:39

 39.  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The same nature God has was in his Son. 

KJV Ephesians 3:17-19

 17.  That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

 18.  May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

 19. And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Jesus was the fullness of God in love)

This Godly love was in Jesus while he was in the flesh.

KJV Ephesians 5:2

 2.  And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

KJV Ephesians 5:25

 25.  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

KJV 1 John 2:5

 5.  But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.

KJV 1 John 3:16

 16.  Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his (The life of Jesus) life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

KJV 1 John 4:8-9

8.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

 9.  In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

KJV John 13:34

 34.  A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

KJV John 14:21

 21.  He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

KJV John 14:23

23.  Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

KJV John 15:9-12

 9.  As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

 10.  If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

 11.  These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

 12.  This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Jesus loved his Father and us with the same love that God loved him and us. Godly love is not able to sin and this love was in his son.  Godly love is why Jesus could not have sinned, the very nature of God in a man.  Godly love will not speak, think or do any evil, it cannot sin.  Jesus was our example of this love while a man.  This proves to us that what God has promised He can deliver and shows us the power of God.  Jesus had this Devine nature of Godly love from birth. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.  The potential to sin is the absence of Gods love.  Whatever is not of Gods love is sin.  Godly love was not all that Jesus had, he also had access to Gods wisdom and understanding of humanity.  Jesus knew about man and understood his weakness and could relate to all the temptations men experience even though he himself was not that way.  God knows all these things about man and is not that way either.  Devine love is to be what the saints are to become at the resurrection and is the guiding force in our human life until that day comes.  Jesus was born with Gods nature of love and was the first of many being the beginning of the true creation of God.  Jesus was one in love with God in perfection.  No human being has Godly love in them except as a gift from God by His spirit and that only in a portion but Jesus in full measure. 

Paul said Gods love is the fulfillment of the law and that Gods love will do no harm.  Jesus had the same love that God is and was unable to sin because Jesus was the glory of Gods love in the flesh.

In this way if you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father. Godly love is righteousness, it is always doing good and never doing evil, it is being incapable of sin. 

Jesus was Gods love manifested to us and Jesus was righteous, as righteous as God his Father.  Jesus was not God but he was in righteousness and holiness and love equal to his Father, Jesus in this sense has the mind of God and the saints are to become of the same mind.

The temptation of Jesus by Satan was not a farce but proof that God was able to make a righteous man to bear the sins of the world who would reveal the nature of God to us as an example for us to follow.

There are those who say that if Jesus could be tempted he had the potential to sin and that the temptation of Jesus by Satan would be a farce if there was no chance that Jesus could not have sinned.  The temptation of Jesus by Satan was to show us that we had a savior who was unable to sin as God is unable to sin and in this is our hope at the return of Jesus to also be made unable to sin.  God can be tempted but not with evil, Satan tempted Jesus with evil but Jesus remained sinless because Jesus cannot be tempted with evil either.

Godly love is incapable, unable to sin and this love was in Jesus the man messiah therefore Jesus was unable to sin.  Jesus was born of God, the only begotten son of God, conceived by Gods Holy Spirit but was in the flesh for you and I to see and in this sense God was manifested in the flesh through Jesus Christ. 

The Spiritual Evolution of the Soul

KJV 1 Corinthians 15:

 38. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

 39.  All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

The definition of a soul is a spirit in a body. All forms of life that God created that live, move, and have their being are souls. There are many different kinds of souls among animals and each spirit was designed by God to be with a certain body.  The spirit is the nature of the animal matched to the body of an animal.  The animal man has a higher type of spirit than all other animals that gives man sentience and intelligence above them.  This is how Adam was “like God” but a shadow image of Him.  The spirit in the body is what contains the nature of the soul.  As there are many bodies, there are many spirits.  Bodies and spirits are also flexible or interchangeable as demonstrated by Balaam’s talking donkey and Nebuchadnezzar’s transformation.  All of this proves that God has many options available to Him with souls and can have any type of soul He wishes to create. 

In the resurrection, the saints will still be souls, a spirit in a spirit body, but of the highest level we can attain, a transformed human spirit unable to sin in a glorified immortal spirit body.  We will still fit the definition of a soul, as do the angels.  Adam and Eve were souls created with the ability of language from the first day of their existence and could communicate with each other, the serpent and the angel in the garden.  This shows that knowledge, thoughts and language were created in their human spirit before they became souls or before their human spirit was placed into the body.  God can do this before or after the spirit is in the body as shown by the confounding of the languages at the tower of Babel and in the inspiration of the prophets and Apostles and all saints.  Therefore, before or after the spirit is in the body God can manipulate what that spirit knows and understands. 

Souls differ from one another inside and out as exampled by male and female being different bodily and spiritually because men and women have ways about them that are different unless perversion enters the picture.  Other bodily differences are the giants or dwarfs, the strength of Sampson and the color of our skin.  All these beings are very different but all of them are souls. Even carnal man is different from spiritual man and souls do not need to be composed of flesh to be a soul.  One thing is true of all Earthly souls, they die.  The union of body and spirit is a living soul but the destruction of this union is called death and neither body or spirit can operate while separated from each other. 

A soul is far more than what most people have understood and the options God has for creating them are many.  With all this understanding, can we now look at the soul that was called Jesus Christ and ask just what kind of soul was he. 

Jesus was a human man, a soul, a human spirit in a human body and in this way, he was made like us all but as shown while we are all souls there can be vast differences.  Human souls come in all shapes, sizes, colors and levels of intelligence and spiritual condition or relationship to God.  Jesus was a special one of a kind fleshly soul never to be repeated again.  Jesus was the only begotten son of God and in this role was created to fulfill a special purpose.  God would have to design the human spirit of Jesus to have contact with Him on a level unknown before or after.  God would make the human spirit of Jesus righteous just as God was righteous otherwise how could the saints be the righteousness of God through Jesus.  This righteousness of Jesus is proven because his human body saw no corruption at death as ours do. Even after the tremendous beating Jesus experienced his body actually while being dead healed for no one shrieked in horror at his appearance after his resurrection.  Jesus possessed his body in righteousness, his human spirit was undefiled therefore if the inside is clean so will be the outside and if the spirit is holy the flesh will be holy.  In comparison to all of us yes Jesus was a soul but unlike us a soul of a higher level as Jesus was the first born of many brethren and the first of a new creation God was making.  Jesus had to be different from us if we are to become like him.  This is why it is very important to discern the body of the Lord at Passover.  The lack of knowledge about souls has led many to not understand the truth about Jesus.  Now we will look at salvation and show the five levels of souls.

Soul level 1 is the heathen, a soul living in this world totally cut off from God having no knowledge at all of anything spiritual.

Soul level 2 is the one under the law and having the oracles of God but only shadow knowledge and performs ritual worship using physical things that God gave to symbolize His salvation, the shadow but not the substance. All this waiting to hear the message of the gospel and to come out of shadows into the light.

Soul level 3 is the converted man, a new creation, a new kind of soul with the Holy Spirit and access to spiritual knowledge, the law having led him to Christ is no longer needed because he has left the shadows to come to the light, he has heard and believed the gospel.  He looks with hope and faith to the resurrection to attain the highest level of soul for him.

Soul level 4 was Jesus a soul that was created by God in righteousness and true holiness, his human spirit at level 5 and a human body between level 3 & 4 because his body saw no corruption.  Jesus is the only fleshly soul ever at this level and there will be no other.  In order for Jesus to be successful in his mission God had to give him much more than any other soul but there would also be much more required of Jesus, he would have to die.  Jesus was a soul like us all but of a much higher level and would give his life so that we could reach our highest level.  Jesus loved us and gave himself for us.  This is only a part of many proofs that Jesus was messiah and it was in Gods power to make Jesus a special soul and certainly in accordance with His will.  One cannot deny that the soul of Jesus was vastly different from the rest of humanity because the soul of Jesus alone was accepted by God as the sacrifice for the sins of us all.  Jesus was not a soul just like us but he was a soul.  I am a soul and you are a soul but are you exactly like me?  As Goliath differed from David, as Martin Luther King differed from James Earl Ray, as Adolf Hitler differed from Albert Einstein we are all souls but we are not all the same. On the spiritual level Jesus was far above any of us and by reading his words in scripture should prove that.  This article about souls should help us to see that.

Soul level 5 is what Jesus is now and what the saints hope to become at the resurrection. The human spirit of Jesus was at this level while on Earth but his human body was not and could not enter the kingdom of God. Jesus prayed for this bodily glorification in John 17:5 and he did receive it and is now totally a glorified former human being, a soul that has reached its highest level and from that level works with his church to bring the saints along to follow him into the kingdom of God.

All of this is to the glory of God the Father who made it all possible.

God has taken the dust of the ground, clay in the potters hands, breathed into it the breath of life and made a shadow image of Himself He called Adam, a soul, a marred vessel and through the process of spiritual evolution produced so far only one glorified man, Jesus the second Adam a vessel as it seemed good for the potter to make.  We the saints are through Adam marred vessels of clay but Jesus did not come through Adam but through God.  Jesus did not need a messiah he was the messiah and did not come through any process to achieve salvation for he was salvation and this should speak volumes to us about what kind of soul Jesus was and still is.  With the exception of now having a spirit body Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.