This is an entry I posted on 8 April, 2007 (Easter):

I guess there's still a lot of growing and understanding I have to do. I'm no Bible scholar though I enjoy digging into it when I get the chance and I don't have a lifetime of training to draw experience from. Sometimes I feel a "duh" moment when I finally grasp a concept that others have tried to teach me for a long time.

The last few days I've spent a lot of time pondering the humanity of Christ. In my head I've always known that God came to earth as a human in the form of Jesus Christ, but that's been purely academic and I've been left feeling like I'm missing something.

See, what I've realized is that Christ was 100% human, if only for a few days... and it was His choice!  Bear with me...

Just before Christ began His ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness where Satan tempted Him. Satan wanted to see how human Jesus really was and did this by appealing to all that was human about Him. But Jesus was still fresh and able to thwart the attacks so Satan left him "until an opportune time."

Flash forward three years in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus contemplates what's ahead of Him and here comes Satan again - he's found an opportune time. Jesus knew that He was about to be tortured and killed and He knew that He had to do it as a man. That was the only way. See, the Son of God could have endured... He could have numbed the pain, He could have healed the cuts, He could have vanished - He did it before!

But the Son of Man... Jesus forsook his Godhood so that he could die a REAL human death. He didn't want to. He knew that pain and the lonliness that it would mean and He knew the disappointment it would instill in His followers... but in order for the Resurrection to be real - to be glorious - He had to die.

Satan's task over the next 24 hours would be to push Jesus to the brink and force Him to reclaim His Deity and save Himself at the cost of humanity.  Jesus didn't do that. He maintained a humanity He didn't have to and He died. As a man, He was able to withstand Satan... giving Him a perfect perspective of what our struggles must be like and demonstrating to us that there is nothing we can endure that Christ hasn't endured Himself.

And humanity was saved when He rose again. God loved humanity so much that He just stopped being God for a few days...

That's what doesn't make sense. There's got to be something I'm missing... it's too simple. Too generous.

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends - John 15:13

Jesus came. He became our friend. He died. There is no greater love.