S.D. Gordon wasn't a preacher. He only had a high school education, but he wrote more than 25 devotional books that were popular. He lived from 1859 to 1936. I am reading one called, "Quiet Talks About Jesus," and I'm enjoying it very much. Here are a few quotes from the book about Jesus being human and our brother.
"Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand."
"God and man used to talk together freely. But one day man went away from God. And then he went farther away. He left home. He left his native land, Eden, where he lived with God. He emigrated from God, and through going away he lost his mother-tongue."
"Jesus is God becoming man's fellow. He comes down by his side and says, 'Let's pull up together.' Jesus was a man. He was as truly human as though only human. We are apt to go at a thing from the outside. God always reaches within and fastens his hook there. He finds the solution of every problem within itself. When he would lead man back the Eden road to the old trysting place under the tree of life, he sent a man. Jesus takes his place as a man and refuses to be budged from the human level with his brothers."
In his humanity, Jesus was in the image of God, even as we are. Adam was an unfallen man. Jesus was that and more; a tested and now matured unfallen man, and by the law of growth ever growing more. Adam was an innocent, unfallen man up to the temptation. Jesus was a virtuous unfallen man. The test with Him changed innocence to virtue.
"In his experiences, his works, his temptations, his struggles, his victories, Jesus was clearly human. In his ability to read men's thoughts and know their lives without finding out by ordinary means, his knowledge ahead of coming events, his knowledge of and control over nature, he was clearly more than the type of human we know.
Yet until we know more than we seem to now of the proper powers of an unfallen man matured and growing in the use and control of those powers we cannot draw here any line between human and divine. The whole presumption is in favor of believing that in all of this Jesus was simply exercising the proper human powers which with him were not hurt by sin but ever increasing in use.
Jesus insisted on living a simple, true human life, dependent on God and upon others..."
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