Becoming Truly Human

I want to share a concept today that I was first exposed to by Alex McManus over three years ago. This concept also recently surfaced in the book 'The Shack' that I just read. I thought it was important enough and intriguing enough to blog about and allow for you to chew on it.

Here is the idea of what it means to follow Jesus: to become a Christian or to follow Jesus is a quest to once again become truly human. What does that mean? You see, Jesus was the purest example of what it meant to be human. We often just write off his miracles, teachings, and ability to make the right choices as his divinity. Jesus did not exploit his divinity to change the rules, instead, he even suggested that we would do greater things than him -- last time I checked we were not divine. No, Jesus was able to do the things he did, because he was living what it truly looks like to be fully human. We were created to do so much more than what we realize. It is sin that has corrupted our ability to live as we were created. Through Jesus, we can recapture our true purpose for being created: to be human. The problem in our mind with this is that we blame our humanity for our problems. This is not how it was to be.

This is why Jesus came: to give us the picture of what it means to live in the relationship with God we were created for. The first Adam blew it, but the last Adam (which is Christ), lived up to the calling of what it meant to be human (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). He is the full expression of what it means to live dependent on and connected to the God of this universe. When we give our life to follow Jesus and surrender our lives to him, we too can become truly human - the full expressions of what we were created to be. This is all made possible by the fact that Jesus lived it out perfectly, and yet, was crucified for all the areas where we have blown it.

I hope I'm coming across clearly. It probably requires a book and not a blog post. If nothing else, it will give you something to reflect on today. Tomorrow, I will attempt to explain the simplicity of why Jesus' death and resurrection rescued us. I will piggy-back off of today's post to make my point.