"Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he destroy him who holds the power of death – that is the devil … It was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God" (Heb 2:14-18). "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8). "In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Col 2:9).

I have been thinking a lot recently about the humanity and the deity of Jesus. The above verses make it abundantly clear that Jesus was 100% human and 100% God. We needed saving, but our Saviour had to be both. It was Jesus the man who defeated the devil. To do it as God wouldn't have helped us at all. He had to do it without using any powers that are not available to us. He had to do it in human weakness. He had to do it by trusting his Father and by depending on the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit. He had to be able to set us a credible and wholly possible example to follow so that we would be able to do greater things than he had done (). He had to "be made in every respect like us".

"Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted … We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin [in thought, word or deed]" (Heb. 2:18; 4:15).

Jesus "suffered" when he was tempted. He had never been tempted before; never come within a million miles of sin. Imagine that. The pure, spotless, holy and righteous One exposed himself to the temptation of sinning; came right up close to the horror and the filth of sinfulness, yet became the Friend of Sinners! It has been asked: "Could he have succumbed?" My own answer would be: "Yes and no". "Yes" because otherwise he wouldn't have qualified as our Substitute. "No" because God's purposes can never be thwarted. For me it's another example of parallel truth and it fills my heart with greater love, worship and awe-struck wonder at His truly amazing grace; his unconditional love; his willingness to suffer in every way imaginable in order to save us.

I once heard a preacher say that when Jesus walked this earth he could speak every human language that existed in the world. I thought: Personally, I don't believe that. As God he could, but as the man Jesus he had chosen not to make use of his divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence in the defeat of sin and Satan. I heard another preacher say that when Jesus saw his disciples straining at the oars as the wind was against them, although he was a great distance from them, he could see every detail of their anxious facial expressions. I find that hard to accept. The words "When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee" (Mt. 4:14) do not convey the idea of omniscience.

My point is that we will soon be celebrating Christmas and the breath-taking miracle of the Father entrusting his One and only Son to Mary and Joseph. He would come in the form of a human baby with all his vulnerability and total dependence on them. We must lose nothing of the incarnation's awesome wonder.