Is Jesus REALLY fully human except for not being capable of sinning?

  • Thread starter Thread starter meltzerboy2
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

meltzerboy2

Guest
This question arose from another thread regarding the broken heart of G-d the Father? According to scripture, does Jesus, who is fully human as well as fully divine, have ALL of our human emotions including the NEGATIVE ones such as shame, guilt, despair, regret, disgust, bitterness, revenge, envy, and jealousy? If not, how can we say He is fully human?
 
Last edited:
Jesus was like us in all ways except sin. He was tempted and never once sinned, not even a tiny white lie.

When one does not sin, the would not feel shame or guilt or regret.

Despair, bitterness, revenge, envy and jealousy are sinful actions or the fruit of sin, not emotions.

Disgust, well, He expressed this emotion on more than one occasion (calling out the Pharisees, cleansing the Temple, speaking of those who claim to be Christian but hate others and many other places.)

He felt fear, read the account of the Agony in the Garden. He felt sadness, he wept when he stood before the tomb of Lazarus. He felt joy and sorrow.
 
One point somewhat off topic but mentioned in the link (thank you for sending) is the miracles of Jesus. I see this often as proof of His divinity. However, this is NOT in keeping with the tenets of Judaism or with why Jews believe in G-d. The reason why Jews believe in G-d is NOT because of miracles (indeed, Deuteronomy warns the Jewish people to beware of miracles) but rather because of G-d’s revelation to the Jewish people en masse at Mount Sinai. This is an important difference. There are no miracles at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah, but there is the presence of G-d revealed to the whole nation.
 
Last edited:
You could say that; it’s similar to the orthodox statement: God died on the cross. What is heretical is to profess that God felt fear from His Divine Nature. No, “God felt fear from His Human Nature” is the Christian belief.
 
What lsearch said. Anything true of Jesus can rightly be predicated of God (was born, died, had a mom, was sad) … but anything inappropriate to the divine nature, God experienced by virtue of having assumed a human nature. The divine nature itself remains unchanging and unaffected by outside influences.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
This question arose from another thread regarding the broken heart of G-d the Father? According to scripture, does Jesus, who is fully human as well as fully divine, have ALL of our human emotions including the NEGATIVE ones such as shame, guilt, despair, regret, disgust, bitterness, revenge, envy, and jealousy? If not, how can we say He is fully human?
Click to expand...
Sinful qualities are not a necessary part of humanity. In a state of original innocence before the Fall, a person does not have the tendency to sin the way we do.

Sin isnt what makes us human, so a person can not have sin and still be human. A person is human through a creative act of God.

Jesus did suffer, but not because of committed sins or sinful attitudes the way that pride or impatience can cause a person a lot of unnecessary pain to oneself.
 
Last edited:
The potential is there - BUT - His human will is so perfect and perfectly united with that of the Father that He could not and did not experience negative, i.e. sinful, emotions. He dreaded suffering in His humanity, but “set his Face like flint” to go to Jerusalem for the purpose of suffering. He got angry, but anger is a passion, not an emotion. It is intended, ultimately, to oppose evil. It is what motivates us to intervene when someone is being victimized.
 
Isearch said:
“God felt fear from His Human Nature” is the Christian belief.
Click to expand...
So you would say that God can feel fear? I knew that God did get angry, but I did not know that God can feel fear?
Isaiah 30: 27, 28
Exodus 32: 9, 10.
 
Last edited:
God experienced the same pain in human flesh that we do, since He assumed that flesh.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
According to scripture, does Jesus, who is fully human as well as fully divine, have ALL of our human emotions including the NEGATIVE ones such as shame, guilt, despair, regret, disgust, bitterness, revenge, envy, and jealousy? If not, how can we say He is fully human?
Click to expand...
Like others I’ll say yes. Perhaps in a subdued way. For example bitterness. It’s perfectly possible that Jesus experienced ongoing hurts from other people. He would’ve been able to more forgive them again and again than we are. In a certain way we’re spectators of our own emotions and it’s up to us to funnel them into the correct channel.

Second and more important. Why does Jesus need to feel all scopes of human emotion to be fully human? I imagine plenty of people live their whole lives without experiencing the depths of rage, depression, worry, happiness that others have felt. Are they also not fully man?
 
Jesus was 100% fully human and had all the emotions that we humans have. But HE never gave into the NEGATIVE ones.
When you state that the emotions are NEGATIVE it is a qualifier that has to be seen in context.
If we experience something that moves us to rage but we control it then we do not give in to it. A good example would be when Jesus demonstrated extreme disgust when entering the Temple in Jerusalem and finding the money changers and took action as well. But did not allow the passion to run to rage. Rage is when we loose our self control and act by instinct alone.
Guilt can only come from having done something untoward like sinning. Despair can only set in if we loose faith and hope.
Regret can only happen if we do not act when the occasion is proper.
Envy can only come when we allow ourselves to start coveting what someone else has, looks, wealth, position, etc.
Revenge can only be experienced if we do not forgive others. Jesus forgave all humanity and gave HIS life for us.
So as you see we can overcome all those NEGATIVE emotions IF we follow HIS example.
Indeed if HE wasn’t truly human how could HE call us Brothers and allow GOD to become our Father. But HE does and HE is truly our Brother with love that cannot be measured.
God bless!
 
Whatever can be said of Christ can be said of God. This is what the church decided when she decided the question of the Theotokos. That is, we can call Mary the Mother of God because Jesus is God. If we say that Mary isn’t the mother of God then Jesus wasn’t God. But we aren’t saying that Mary preexisted God or created God. It’s understood in it’s context to refer to Jesus’ life.

I think we have the same thing here. If God CANNOT feel fear, then Jesus can’t have been God. So God must be able to feel fear since Jesus is God. God in His divinity has nothing to fear, but God also experienced humanity. And in his humanity fear. So it’s the same as the above. It’s a matter of understanding context.

Even when it comes to anger, which is your example of God feeling emotion, that’s often seen as a way of God to relate to us, make his actions more accessable to us. God in his divinity doesn’t act out of rage. Divine love isn’t human love, divine peace isn’t human peace. And yet, God experienced human love and human peace. That’s the miracle of Christ.
 
This is the infallible dogmatic definition of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon:

So, following the saintly fathers , we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us.
 
Though he was also fully human all his emotions were under control that he could claim the following with confidence:
“Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?” (John 8:46)

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33b)
 
Last edited:
meltzerboy2 said:
Jesus, who is fully human as well as fully divine, have ALL of our human emotions including the NEGATIVE ones such as shame, guilt, despair, regret, disgust, bitterness, revenge, envy, and jealousy?
Click to expand...
He has no shame or guilt of his own because they are associated with sin or wrongdoing.
He has no regret because he always did the will of his Father so nothing to regret.
He had no wish for revenge as he loves everyone and his Father did not want him to seek revenge.
Why in heck would he have envy or jealousy? Unless you want to refer back to the OT saying in the English translation that God is “a jealous God”. He may however have been tempted by these sorts of emotions, such as by Satan on the mountain. At that time he rejected acting on them.

Jesus has disgust pretty often in Scripture, especially with the Pharisees. He certainly had despair in the Garden of Gethsemane but did not give into it. He had some bitterness at the human race who were going to reject him anyway no matter what wonderful things he did for them. He also most certainly has the emotion we would describe as “love”.

There are MANY private revelations of Jesus to saints and other holy people in which Jesus expressed all kinds of emotions. Happy ones, sad ones, etc. He did not express anything I’d call un-Jesus-like, such as wanting to kill all his enemies or hatred of any kind, but certainly lots of sadness at people’s behavior.

I left and muted the thread you were talking about because it seemed to be written by a whole lot of people who took a theology course and it said Blablabla, but they never bothered getting to actually know and have an emotional relationship with Jesus. If you read a few of the books by visionaries (Some of them are Doctors of the Church too), you will certainly see an emotional Jesus. The idea of God not having emotions basically means his emotions aren’t like man’s emotions and that he isn’t like the pagan gods who were constantly ruled by emotion, like humans with superpowers. It does not mean that Jesus didn’t have feelings or that he somehow became an emotionless robot after the Resurrection or Ascension. Common sense would just tell me that in the absence of any reference works.
 
Last edited:
JerryZ said:
Jesus was 100% fully human and had all the emotions that we humans have. But HE never gave into the NEGATIVE ones.
When you state that the emotions are NEGATIVE it is a qualifier that has to be seen in context.
If we experience something that moves us to rage but we control it then we do not give in to it.
Click to expand...
Excellent post JerryZ. I couldn’t have said it better.

Having an “emotion” is often driven by our human instinct and our physical makeup. Brain chemicals get released.
It’s what we DO when we have the “emotion” that counts.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top