Author: Jennifer Cornwell, Attorney at Law

Jesus is family with His believers, and He is not ashamed to say we are His family. “Both the One who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.  So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” Hebrews 2:11 (NIV). 

When we humans were unable to get to His level of righteousness, He came down to us and made Himself flesh and blood like us.  By living in flesh and blood, He developed empathy for us and what we are going through.  He knows how difficult it is to live in this state, and He is patient and understanding with us.  “Because He himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” Hebrews 2:18 (NIV). 

However, He made ways for us to escape, and we must choose the escape routes that He made for us. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”  1 Corinthians 10:13 (KJV).

I have decided to define myself: to give myself my own adjectives and my own acronym. My acronym is HELLO. H is for Healthy; E is for Educated; L is for Levelheaded; the next L is for Lifted; and the O is for Overcomer. So, from myself to the world, HELLO!

Jesus is the Son of the Most High God, our Creator.  How did this happen?  Well, the Creator knows how to create.  After all, He created all of us.  He created Adam from nothing but the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7).  He created Eve from nothing but Adam’s rib (Genesis 2:22). Certainly, He could create a baby in Mary’s stomach. The Most High God did not need two humans to get together to make Adam or Eve or Jesus.

Jesus is a limited edition though.  Jesus is the Creator’s only BEGOTTEN Son. Jesus is the only one who received “divine DNA” to go with Mary’s DNA.  Neither Adam nor Eve was Deity, but Jesus is Deity.

The Creator sired Jesus and Jesus only. The rest of us are adopted, if we believe.   “For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He[even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 AMP).

Jesus’ mother was 100% human, and Jesus’ Father is 100% God.  Many times in the Bible, Jesus chose to refer to Himself as Son of Man.  He was, indeed, the firstborn child of Mary, who was a virgin at the time of Jesus’ conception.  Mary remained a virgin until after she gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:25).

In His humanity, Jesus experienced all of the same temptations that we experience: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15 KJV).

As Hebrews shows us, Jesus did not ever succumb to temptation.  Jesus is the only human who can make that claim.  The rest of us have sinned at least once (Rom 3:23).  Although Jesus did not sin, He can and does empathize with us. He knows how we feel.

When we sin, a blood sacrifice is required (Hebrews 9:22).  For this reason, Jewish people/Israelites would take animals to the priests, and the priests would kill the animals and use the blood to atone for the sins of the people. This system is described in Leviticus. The system did work temporarily, but the Jewish people had to continue these sacrifices year after year (Hebrews 10: 1-4).

Lambs were often used as blood sacrifices.  It was no coincidence that John the Baptist said these words when Jesus approached him: “…Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 KJV).  This is because Jesus came to replace the sacrifices that the Jewish people made continually.

Hebrews 10:10 settles the matter: “ But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (KJV). Jesus’ death did the job for us once and for all AND for everyone, Jewish people and Gentiles alike.