When Jesus became man, He had to set aside some of His God-ness. He was no less God, but some of God’s qualities like omnipresence and never getting tired, those He left behind. His indestructible-ness, His immortality (after a fashion), these He set aside, stuffed them in His locker to pick up later. And He came, small and vulnerable, to live like me.
Being entirely God and yet entirely man, He could take the invisible, impossible-to-understand God and put Him into visible, possible-to-understand terms. Being entirely man and yet entirely God, He can take our confusion and pain, our heartache and shames and carry them perfectly before the throne of God. He can take God’s words to us, and ours to Him. God looks at Him and sees us. We look at Him and see God.
Jesus did not spend thirty-three years as a human being. Jesus has spent the last 2,033 years as a human being (or however many years that currently works out to be). After He died, went back to heaven, picked up everything He left behind out of His locker, and put back on His God-ness, He came back to earth for a quick chat with John, the last living apostle. When John saw Him, he saw God, blazing and impossible to describe. But he also saw the scars, the human scars still on Jesus’ body (Revelation 1:13-15). And Jesus went back up into heaven to do a job.
“Therefore He is able also to save forever those who drawn near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Only as a human being could Jesus still carry the scars my sins nailed into His hands. And now, when God looks at Christ, He sees Exhibit A, proof positive that my sins are gone. Those scars are the proof.
Excerpt from “Peace and How to Keep It.”