Why Did Jesus Become A Man?

My last post was about the fall of Lucifer. He came to Earth after being thrown out of heaven. He tempted Eve to distrust God and she did; she ate the forbidden fruit and gave it to her husband and he ate.

Satan wanted to be a ruler and a god. When Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God then Satan thought he had a planet to rule. They had chosen Satan by listening to him and agreeing with him that he was right and God was wrong. Their allegiance was now his.

But... But God came down to the garden and told Adam and Eve he had a way out for them. Because the penalty of sin was death, He would give his life in place of theirs. He would come to earth as a baby and pay their penalty for them.

I once read of a priest who was in a concentration camp in Germany during WWII. Someone had escaped and the penalty was that ten men were to be starved to death. One of the men who was chosen begged to live because he had children at home. A priest came forward and said he would die in that man's place. The Nazis allowed it. This is similar to what Jesus has done for all of us.

Satan told God human beings could never be sinless; they could never keep God's laws. To prove to the universe that a human could keep the law, Jesus became a man; if one man could live a sinless life and die for everyone else then justice would be satisfied.

It had to be a man equal to Adam before his sin. A man who would be tempted to do wrong but would not do it. That man was to be Jesus, the Son of God.

Jesus called himself, "The Son of Man," more than any other title. The term occurs 84 times in the New Testament. Here is a commentary on this subject:

Expositions of Holy Scripture — Alexander Maclaren

In substance He is claiming the same thing for Himself that Paul claimed for Him when he called Him 'the second Adam.' 

 'The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for the many'; 'Ye shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.' 1 Corinthians 15:47

And the name is employed habitually on occasions when He desires to emphasize His manhood as having truly taken upon itself the whole weight and weariness of man's sin, and the whole burden of man's guilt, and the whole tragedy of the penalties thereof, as in the familiar passages, so numerous that I need only refer to them and need not attempt to quote them, in which we read of the Son of Man being 'betrayed into the hands of sinners'; or in those words, for instance, which so marvelously blend the lowliness of the Man and the lofty consciousness of the mysterious relation which He bears to the whole world; 'The Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for the many.'

All our human joys were His. He knew all human sorrow. The ordinary wants of human nature belonged to Him; He hungered, He thirsted, and was weary; He ate and drank and slept. The ordinary wants of the human heart He knew; He was hurt by hatred, stung by ingratitude, yearned for love; His spirit expanded among friends, and was pained when they fell away. He fought and toiled, and sorrowed and enjoyed. He had to pray, to trust, and to weep. He was a Son of Man, a true man among men.

 When He says 'the Son of Man' He seems to declare that in Himself there are gathered up all the qualities that constitute humanity; that He is, to use modern language, the realized Ideal of manhood, the typical Man, in whom is everything that belongs to manhood, and who stands forth as complete and perfect.

Jesus will always be a man:

 'Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the glories of heaven'; or as when He says, 'He hath given Him authority to execute judgment also because He is the Son of Man'; or as when the Stephen, with his last words, declared in sudden burst of surprise and thrill of gladness, 'I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.'

What Jesus gave up to become a man we may never know, or we might be told when we are  in heaven. What I do know is I am thankful he did it for me and for you.