At a Bible conference I attended last month in Tennessee, a preacher from Wisconsin made the point that Jesus Christ had to be reared like any other child. For example, Mary would have had to change His stinky diapers until He could be potty-trained.

Last week inside a locally owned coffeehouse in Wicker Park I perused their bookshelf full of old copies of National Geographic and came across one from 1967 that was published just after Israel’s Six-Day War and featured a lengthy piece about Israel in general.

A caption for a photograph of kids playing outside read: “Carefree age of innocence leads children to a sunlit meadow outside Nazareth, where Jesus spent His childhood—the ‘hidden years’ unchronicled by the Gospels. Jesus probably devoted much of His day to studying the Law of Moses, like most Jewish boys, or helping His foster father, Joseph, in the carpenter shop. But there must have been time to play and dream in the nearby fields, where He came to know the birds and flowers, the fig tree and the mustard seed.—the wonders of nature that He used to illustrate His teachings in later years.”

How endlessly fascinating it is to reflect on the fact God took upon Himself real, actual humanity. He had to brush His teeth, tie His shoes, cut His toenails, blow His nose, etc., etc., like everybody else. Every kid in Sunday School, for instance, knows the shortest verse in the Bible: “He wept.”

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Jordan says, “God Himself entered into human history in a way you can’t even imagine and would have never thought to ask Him. He stepped out of heaven into the events of human history by taking upon Himself your humanity and enfleshing Himself in your limitations, laying aside all of the riches He had as God.

“He didn’t live in His identity as the one with all the creative attributes of the universe, but He demonstrated what it is to live as God incarnate in human flesh so don’t give me this business about how, ‘I need God to do something for me today. I need Him to fix the flat tire on my car; I need Him to do this or that in order to prove He loves me.’

“When the ‘Word was made flesh’ He was made real humanity. It was not an illusion, not a metaphysical thing, not an anthropomorphic-viewpoint kind of a thing. It was not a temporary kind of visitation or transient vision. It was as real a human as you are. And it was our humanity in the sense that it’s our common shared humanity He took upon Himself.”

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Talking about when Jesus was 12 years old and had just returned with His parents to Nazareth following His visit to the temple, Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

Jordan observes, “If He increased in wisdom there must have been some wisdom He didn’t have before then. That’s kind of shocking. The answer is in Hebrews 5:8-9: ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.’

“How was He perfected? Well, He learned in His experience what obedience was. You see that contrast? ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience.’ He’s God but He’s also man and it’s His humanity that had to be educated, not His deity.”

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In Philippians 2, Paul tells us that while Christ “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”

Jordan says, “There’s no question about the deity of Christ, but there’s something in this passage that allows you and me to come in contact with deity in a way we couldn’t otherwise do.

“It says, ‘But he made himself of no reputation.’ I love that. The first way you think like God thinks is you don’t make yourself of any reputation.

“Jesus was right; He was never wrong. He never did anything to offend anyone but when people were offensive to Him He could have stood and said, ‘You got no right!’ but He never did that. He never defended Himself against evil accusations. It says, ‘As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’

“He didn’t take His reputation and say, ‘I’ve got to be proven right.’ He said, ‘I didn’t come for that.’ He made himself of no reputation but took upon Him the form of a servant.

“Notice the verbs. He MADE himself and TOOK upon Him. Nobody forced Him to do this. Jesus Christ—now get this terminology in your mind—voluntarily of His own free will laid aside the free and independent exercise of all of His attributes as God.

“He purposely chose to live as ‘the man Christ Jesus’ in absolutely complete total dependence on what His Father told Him.

“He doesn’t know everything. Here’s God the Son, who has all the infinite knowledge of God—knows everything God the Father knows, everything God the Holy Spirit knows, everything they planned—but in order to be your Savior, in order for that Word . . . that expression of God to become flesh, He made a choice. He made himself of no reputation. He said, ‘I’ll not use my personal attributes.’

“He willingly chose to be a servant and one of the characteristics of a servant is He does not know everything there is know about the master’s plan. He’s going to live in total dependence on what the master tells Him.”