What Did Jesus Learn from Becoming Human?

Likely the most quoted verse in the Bible is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” In that one verse, we learn why Jesus took on human flesh. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, humans became alienated and separated from God. God instituted the law of sin and death: disobeying God led to spiritual, and later, physical death. Humans could not commune with God because of sin, but because of His great love, He allowed for animal blood sacrifice, supervised by a “high priest” to cover the sins of His chosen people. God gave them more laws to obey to maintain a covenant relationship with them, but they were never able to keep them because of the lure of sin.

So when God decided that the time was right, He sent Jesus to become a human for the most important mission of all. Little did anyone know (except Mary and Joseph) that He would end up being the Savior of Jewish people (and the rest of the world). But until He began His ministry at age 30, no one knew that being the Savior meant a once-for-all blood sacrifice for the sins of humanity. No longer would people use animal sacrifice to atone for their sins; Jesus’ body and blood would pay the price for the sins of those who trusted in Him for salvation.

Jesus also fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies in becoming human. David wrote about a coming King who would be his descendant, but also his Lord, sitting at the right hand of God (Psalm 100:1). In the fourth verse of that psalm, David also talked about one who would be “a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The prophet Isaiah wrote of a son, born of a virgin, who would be given to us and called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”  (Isaiah 9:6). And who else but Jesus could have fulfilled Isaiah 9:7:

“Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.” (emphasis mine)

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According to the will of His Father, Jesus needed to learn as a human, which is why He sent the Son to earth to live and die as one of us. Setting aside His omniscience, or knowledge of absolutely everything, He grew and matured like any other child in that time and place. But unlike others, He would grow into “high priesthood.” During Jesus' time on earth, the high priest was the one who would supervise and perform the animal sacrifices. In the Gospel Coalition article, “Not Born Ready: Why Jesus Went to High-Priest Training School," Justin Dillehay writes, “True, the incarnation was absolutely necessary for us to be saved, since our high priest needed to be human to represent us. But sinners like us don’t just need saving; we also need sympathy. Jesus was trained on earth for the job he’s now doing in heaven.” 

But there was more to his coming to earth as a human. God used to commune with Adam and Eve, with no dividing sin between them. God’s will and desire was to be with the humans He created and with all who would come after. Jesus's coming to earth was a sign that God was with His people, and even after Jesus ascended back to heaven, part of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, would remain to live with us until God takes us to heaven.

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Jesus had all of the wisdom that He needed in heaven, but the wisdom He learned on earth was quite different. From the time He was born, He began experiencing what it was like to be human. Luke 2:40 states, "And the Child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." Did this wisdom entail knowledge about who He was and what He came to do? We don’t know exactly when Jesus had the intellectual capacity to know who He was. Was He filled with the Holy Spirit from birth? Or is the Bible quiet about His childhood because at that time He wasn’t aware of His divinity? Did God only reveal it to Him when He went to the temple in Jerusalem when He was 12 years old and began sharing the truth with temple elders?

We do know that Jesus learned things beyond spiritual wisdom as he “walked a mile in our shoes.”

• suffering
• humility
• obedience
• submission
• temptation
• limitation
• sacrifice
• how people related to God
• how to love those that don’t love you
• how to be an example of living a sinless life
• the full range of human emotion: joy, anger, fear, grief, disappointment, etc.

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Not only did Jesus set aside His omniscience, He also set aside a measure of His omnipotence (the quality of being all powerful). And at times though He could have called a legion of angels to come and save Him from harm, He chose not to do so. His Father wanted Him to live the full human experience.

To be human is to be weak. Like the rest of us, Jesus would have lived in a body that had the ability to get sick or injured at any time. He would be tired (John 4:6), hungry (Matthew 4:2), and thirsty (John 19:28). He would learn that there are many ways to experience physical suffering, and He would experience what it was like for people to impose suffering on others.

He experienced a variety of suffering before He went to the cross. He had to endure people who didn’t love God, encounter people cheating and hurting others, had to struggle with those who didn’t understand His message or didn’t trust Him, even those He had healed. He had close relationships, but had to grieve at the loss of those relationships. Jesus had to watch what it was like for people to experience death–and grieve at their loss (or feel angry that death existed because of the Fall).

Then He went beyond human suffering to bear all of the world’s sins on the cross. Besides the physical abuse He endured before His crucifixion, He endured the most painful death imaginable, made all the more excruciating because His Father had to turn His back on His one and only Son because “He became sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He suffered on Earth unlike anyone else ever has or ever will.

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Hebrews 5:8 tells us that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered.” That would include more than what he experienced at the end of His life. All of His time on Earth meant encountering temptation from the enemy, limitations, and humility. It wasn’t until He left heaven to live within the constraints of being human that He truly understood what obedience and submission felt like. 

One of the greatest lessons He learned was that obedience to God is not forced–it is an act of the will. According to the late Tim Keller, Jesus agonized over the prospect of His death in the Garden of Gethsemane because Keller believed the Father began to show the Son what He would have to suffer to appease God’s wrath against humanity. Jesus asked God if there was another way to fulfill the Father’s will and reject “the cup.” Keller believed that Jesus had a choice to reject the cup, though that would have meant sinning against His Father. “When Jesus Christ was in the garden of Gethsemane and the ultimate darkness was coming down on him and he knew it was coming, he didn’t abandon you; he died for you. If Jesus Christ didn’t abandon you in his darkness, the ultimate darkness, why would he abandon you now, in yours?” (Keller as quoted by Gospel Coalition)

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Jesus’ humanity helped him relate to all of us because He experienced everything that we do and more. It’s often said that you can’t really empathize with someone unless you’ve had the same experiences that they have. Jesus can relate to all of our good days and bad days because He has been where we are. 

What that means for us is that we will never have to endure anything that He doesn’t understand or is too much for Him to get us through. In His full omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and perfect love, He is always praying for us before the Father, and always willing to carry us. Sometimes we just need someone who “gets” us because no one on earth can truly love and provide like He can. There is tremendous comfort in the fact that because He knows us completely, made all the more complete because of His time on earth, He will never fail or forsake us. When we are tempted to despair, we can remember, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” And He can impart that strength to His brothers and sisters in faith as well.

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