Former NFL Player Leonce Crump discusses modern Christianity's view of Jesus and the fine line between humanizing and dehumanizing his character.

Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection

  1. Why might it be difficult to remember that Jesus experienced human emotions just as we do?
  2. What does it mean to you that Jesus was both fully man and fully God?

I actually think there, there are many and multifaceted misconceptions about Jesus. Frankly, many Christians, uh, get Jesus wrong. We have so mystified Jesus that we forget that he was a man. We have, uh, dehumanized him in some sense, forgetting that, uh, that he wept, that he got tired, that he got stressed out by the large crowds and needed a break from people, that he was hurt when his friend was murdered, and so I think a lot of times, uh, Christians get Jesus wrong and so we can't live like him and we can't accurately portray him. On the other side, I, I think that, um, Jesus is sometimes over-humanized, that he was considered just a prophet, just a guru, just a, just a good man. But Jesus didn't give us any of those things. Jesus was very clear, very explicit in multiple places that, though he was man, he was still God. And I think that's an incredible misconception, and so I think there are so many different pictures of who Jesus is, um, that we lose sight of, uh, the man, uh, and at the same time lose sight of the fact that he was God. If we dehumanize him, we miss his relatability, we miss his intimacy, we miss his closeness. But if we don't see him as deity, see him as transcendent, see him as, as the very presence and power and person of God here on the planet, uh, then we lose all the promises of rescue because he was pretty clear why he was here. It was to share the good news that God had not forgotten about the world, and he was so utterly and thoroughly concerned with it, that he was willing to sacrifice himself to save it.