Becoming Human

Becoming Human

Ordinarily, we think of ourselves biologically as being humans from first the moment we come into existence. We are human simply because we exist as a living person.

However, if we are looking at our existence in a theological or spiritual way, we could say we are only like the first Adam, the one in the garden story, when we come into existence. But we have yet to grow to be like the true Adam, Christ.

Paul thinks of Jesus as the real Adam. The Christ is the image of God in whose image all of us are formed. The Adam formed in the garden was made “in the image of God”, but Christ “is the image of the invisible God.” Therefore, Jesus is what it means to be human. He is the first human. Our “lives” are a journey toward becoming human, from starting like the first Adam to be like the true Adam, Jesus Christ.

In other words, our life’s trajectory is to move from breath to Spirit, ideally. We may be alive and yet not participating in Life. As Paul describes it, we need to go from living according to the flesh to walking by the Spirit. John calls it being born again to eternal life.

To have breath, to be alive in a fleshly way, is to be animated as opposed to simply being an inanimate object. To be alive through Christ by his Spirit is to have grown into what we were meant to be. Those who live by the Spirit have become human beings and resemble Jesus in the fullness of his humanity.

By nature, that is, in the way God created us, our “humanness” is to be in harmonious union with God, just as we believe the divine and human was united in Jesus himself. To look at Jesus is to understand the flourishing and true meaning of human life. This is what God wills for us: to participate in the divine life that is found in Christ.

For the glory of God is a living human being; and the life of the human consists in beholding God. Irenaeus of Lyons, 200

Notice this summary declaration by Irenaeus. When he says “the life of the human consists in beholding God,” he is pointing out that God is glorified when we are alive, but that only occurs when we truly see God. Irenaeus knew people were alive physically before seeing God, but for him the human life is knowing God. Human life is not simply being animated with breath, but having a vision of God by being filled with his Spirit.

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10

How often we read these words of Jesus and think we already have life. We hear Jesus saying that he wants to enhance our life, to make it better. to make our lives abundant.

But what if that is not what he is saying? What if he comes to give us life which we do not have even though we are living? We are breathing, but that is not life. He is life, and Jesus does not gives us a superlative version of what we have already, but a life we do not have. Perhaps we can say he came to make us human.