Who is Jesus - Day 1 - Jesus the Perfect Man

The Lord Jesus Christ was the only perfect man that ever trod this earth. He was all perfect — perfect in thought, perfect in word, perfect in action. In Him every moral quality met in divine and, therefore, perfect proportion. No one feature preponderated. In Him were exquisitely blended a majesty which overawed, and a gentleness which gave perfect ease in His presence. The Scribes and the Pharisees met His withering rebuke; while the poor Samaritan, and "the woman that was a sinner," found themselves unaccountably, yet irresistibly, attracted to Him. No one feature displaced another, for all was in fair and comely proportion. This may be traced in every scene of His perfect life. He could say, in reference to five thousand hungry people, "Give ye them to eat;" and, when they were filled, He could say, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." The benevolence and the economy are both perfect and neither interferes with the other. Each shines in its own proper sphere. He could not send unsatisfied hungry away; neither could He suffer a single fragment of God's creatures to be wasted. He would meet, with a full and liberal hand, the need of the human family, and, when that was done, He would carefully treasure up every atom. The self-same hand that was widely open to every form of human need was firmly closed against all prodigality. There was nothing niggardly nor yet extravagant in the character of the perfect, the heavenly Man.

In Him, then, at last, God found the Man who was, without exception, after His own heart — the One who embodied the perfection of His own thoughts, and answered to the ideal of His own mind — THE PERFECT MAN. In every circumstance, therefore — what He was toward God, and what He was toward man; what He was in the presence of friend, or enemy, whether in sorrows, persecutions, or temptations; in all possible scenes, whether in retirement, or in public — in all things, in every manifestation of His life down here, He was our example; for all His manifold experiences were but occasions for the unfolding of what He was as the obedient and dependent man; and hence the revelation of God's standard for all that are His. If, therefore, I would know what God desires that I should be, I must look at Christ, and trace out His steps in His pathway through this world.

The meat, or cake-offering, sets forth Christ as a living man here below, and this as offered up to God. "His offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon." "This meat-offering, taken from the fruit of the earth, was of the finest wheat. That which was pure, separate, and lovely in human nature was in Jesus under all its sorrows, but in all its excellence, and excellent in its sorrows. There was no unevenness in Jesus; no predominant quality to produce the effect of giving Him a distinctive character. He was, though despised and rejected of men, the perfection of human nature. The sensibilities, firmness, decision, (though that attached itself also to the principle of obedience), elevation, and calm meekness, which belong to human nature, all found their perfect place in Him. In a Paul I find energy and zeal; in a Peter ardent affection; in a John tender sensibilities and abstraction of thought, united to a desire to vindicate what he loved, which scarce knew limit. But this predominates in a Peter. In a Paul, blessed servant though he was, he does not repent, though he had repented. He had no rest in his spirit when he found not Titus, his brother. He goes off to Macedonia, though a door was opened in Troas. He wist not that it was the high priest. He is compelled to glory of himself. In him, in whom God was mighty towards the circumcision, we find the fear of man break through the faithfulness of his zeal. He who would have vindicated Jesus in his zeal, knew not what manner of spirit he was of, and would have forbidden the glory of God, if man walked not with them. Such were Paul, and Peter, and John. But in Jesus, even in man, there was none of this unevenness; there was nothing salient in His character, because all was in perfect subjection to God in His humanity, and had its place, and did exactly its service, and then disappeared. God was glorified in it, and all was in harmony. When meekness became Him, He was meek; when indignation, who could stand before His overwhelming and withering rebuke! Tender to the chief of sinners in the time of grace — unmoved by the heartless superiority of a cold Pharisee, curious to judge who He was — when the time of judgment is come, no tears of those who wept for Him moved Him to other words than 'weep for yourselves and your children,' — words of deep compassion, but of deep subjection to the due judgment of God. The dry tree prepared itself to be burned. On the cross, tender to his mother, and trusting her in human care to one who, so to speak, had been His friend, and leant on His bosom, when His service was finished — no ear to recognize her word or claim, when His service occupied Him for God — putting both blessedly in their place, when He would show that before His public mission He was still the Son of the Father, and though such, in human blessedness, subject to the mother that bare Him, and Joseph His father as under the law; a calmness which disconcerted His adversaries; and in the moral power which dismayed them, by times a meekness which drew out the hearts of all not steeled by wilful opposition … In a word, then, His humanity was perfect, — all subject to God — all in immediate answer to His will, and so necessarily in harmony. The hand that struck the chord found all in tune — all answered to the mind of Him whose thoughts, of grace and holiness, of goodness, yet of judgment of evil, whose fulness of blessing in goodness were of sweetness to every weary ear, and found in Christ their only expression. Every element, every faculty, in His humanity, responded to the impulse which the divine will gave to it, and then ceased in a tranquillity in which self had no place. Such was Christ in human nature. While firm, where need demanded, meekness was what essentially characterized Him, because he was in the presence of God, His God, and all that in the midst of evil … for joy can break forth in louder strains, when all shall echo, 'Praise his name, his glory.'"

Having come among men He is all that man should be. All was perfectly in order; there was nothing to distinguish Him from other men, "Like as the children were partakers of flesh and blood He also took part in the same"; it was the simplicity and beauty of a man with all the sensibilities proper to humanity, in a condition unimpaired by sin. He is the "Son of Man," and as such passed through every stage of human life, from the manger to the cross. In Matthew He is the kingliest of all kings, in Mark the most faithful of all servants, in Luke the most gracious and tender of all men, and in John while these are present He is the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.

It is surpassing wonderful that the eternal Son of God should become Man, and that in Manhood He should enter into all that was proper to man. His human nature was real and perfect though sinless, and in the practical details of life He knew all the circumstances and conditions of men as a Man, having all the feelings, desires and aspirations belonging to the godly, and knowing what it was to be weary, hungry and thirsty. Jesus knew as no other man the depths of human sorrow, groaning in His spirit and weeping in the presence of death, as beholding its awful results for men, and in a special way for those He loved.

There has been one Person here, who entered His life of responsibility in dependence upon God, and in absolute obedience to Him. He never turned aside one hair's breadth from the will of God, and always, in every word He spoke, in every thought He thought, and in every act He did, He was delightful to the heart of God, His Father. Blessed for us, indeed, to contemplate Him, who was found in absolute and full concert with the Father's heart. Communion between Himself and His Father was continuous. He was fragrant in all His ways. He was always in harmony with heaven. As we consider Him, the path of light He trod, how blessed, how wonderful it is to us! We are conscious of failure and break-down, but what a comfort, what a joy, to turn back and contemplate Him and be able to say, The Father has found His fullest delight in a Man, here on earth! I know He was more than Man. That is not the side I am speaking of to-day. He was here as the full revelation of God, and He could not have been that if He had not been God. He came forth as the Son to make manifest in the darkness what God is. That was one side: It is the other side I would dwell upon. He was here as a Man before God, fulfilling the will of God in all His ways. In Him the Father's will was done on earth, and if we would know what man is according to the thought of God, if we would see what God's intention for man is, we must look at that blessed Man and study Him, and as we study Him we know what pleases God.

Man, true and perfect Man, is here , holy and righteous, not merely innocent; perfect in obedience in the scene of the first man's failure — not in a garden, but in a wilderness, which sin has made the world. To man at first, the trial had been made as light as possible: to the Second Man, everything that could make the trial full and searching to the utmost was ordained. With miraculous power freely used in behalf of others, He never uses it to minister to His own need, or to take Himself out of the condition of absolute dependence upon God, which is the necessity of the creature. "Tempted in all things like as we are, sin apart" (Heb. 4:11 5, Gr.), He not merely walks by faith, as the people of God in all ages have done, but is "the Leader and Perfecter of faith." (Heb. 12:2, Gr.) One who fills the whole possibility of such a life in His own person. Moreover, as He lives not in a scene like the first paradise, where all ministers to Him, so He does not walk as One who is served, but as One who serves. The law of His life is that of sacrifice. He closes it with laying down of Himself what none could take from Him. His one principle throughout is, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God."

One important question must therefore be asked: What marked the path of Jesus as Man here below? There is no shadow of doubt about the answer. Two things in absolute perfection marked His whole course - OBEDIENCE and DEPENDENCE. At every step He blessedly demonstrated this fact that the path of humble obedience is the way of holiness; dependence the true secret of strength. One verse of Scripture is enough to show us what His path was: "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me (John 5:30 ).

Every aspect of the life of the Lord Jesus brings before us His deep perfections, whether it be the moral perfections that are brought into relief against the dark background of the ruin of the human race, or the perfect revelation in Him of all that God is in His nature of love and in His disposition of goodness and compassion for fallen sinners. The perfect obedience of the Lord Jesus is wonderful to contemplate, especially when we consider who He is in the greatness and glory of His Person. Though never ceasing to be God, He was a real Man; and as Man He partook of human nature, being made in all things "like unto His brethren," yet without sin; and in the perfection of His obedience in Manhood, He was unlike every other man, for even man at his best is a sinner before God. This is seen strikingly in Moses, who though "faithful in all His house, as a servant," was yet refused entry into the land of promise for disobeying the word of God.

To be a merciful and faithful high priest, Christ must needs become Man, perfect Man, and enter practically into all the details of human life in this world, learning "obedience by the things which He suffered." As God He had ever commanded; as Man He learns what obedience is. He knew human suffering as no other ever did or could, because of His intrinsic holiness and perfect obedience to the will of God. He was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, bearing in his own spirit the sufferings that His power removed from men. Hunger, thirst and weariness were His, with no place for His head in this world: He wept over Jerusalem, and with the sorrowing sisters of Bethany. and groaned near the tomb of Lazarus as He felt the awful ravages of sin. Disowned, rejected and despised by Israel, and receiving hatred for His love, and only evil for the grace and goodness constantly manifested, the Son of God passed through this world as Man, perfect in all His feelings, entering into all the sorrows and sufferings that belonged to men, but with a character and intensity of feeling peculiar to Himself.