We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” Read it in the light of the second chapter of the book of Genesis, for it is evident that there is a distinct allusion to the creation of Eve. The very words of Adam are quoted, and we are mentally conducted to that scene in the Garden of Eden when the first man gazed upon the first woman, created to be his dear companion and helpmeet. What did Adam mean when he used these words? For the great husband of our souls must mean the same, only in a more spiritual and emphatic sense. And first, there was meant here similarity of nature. Adam looked at Eve, and he did not regard her as a stranger, as some creature of a different genus and nature, but he said, “She is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” He meant that she was of the same race, a participant in the same nature. He recognized her as a being of the same order as himself. Now, that is a low meaning of the text, but it is one meaning. Brethren, beloved, think of this truth for a moment. Jesus, the Son of God, counted it not robbery to be equal with God. “Without him was not anything made that was made.” He is “very God of very God.” Yet He deigned for love of us to take upon Himself our nature, and He did it completely, so that He assumed the whole of human nature, apart from its sin. And in that respect we may say of ourselves—that we are “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.” The very nature which we wear on earth Christ Jesus once carried about among us, and at last carried aloft to heaven. You believe in His Godhead, take heed never to commingle His Godhead and His humanity. Remember, Christ was not a deified man, neither was He a humanized God. He was perfectly God, and at the same time perfectly man, made like unto His brethren in all things. Dwell for a moment upon this truth, for the text sets it forth. Born of a human mother, and swaddled like another child, He was from His birth as perfectly human even as you are. In nothing did He differ from you except in this, that He never wandered from God and broke His commands, and He was not defiled with that hereditary taint of original sin which dwells in you by nature. The like depressions to those which sadden your spirit He knew. The temptations of our nature assailed Him. Men and devils both sought to influence Him. He was amenable to all the external physical arrangements of the globe. On Him the shower pelted down, and wet His garments, and on Him the burning sun poured forth its undiminished heat. Upon His sacred person on the lone mountainside, the dews descended till His head was wet with them, and His locks with the drops of the night. For Him there were poverty, and hunger, and thirst, reproach, slander, and treachery. For Him the sea tossed the boat as it will for you, and for Him the land yielded thorn and thistle, as it does to you. He suffered, He ate, He toiled, He rested, He wept, and He rejoiced, even as you do, sin alone excepted. A real kinsman was He, not in fiction, but in substantial reality. Are you man? Jesus was a man. Do not doubt it. Do not look at your Lord as standing up there on a pinnacle of superior nature, where you cannot come near Him, but view Him as your own flesh and blood, “a brother born for adversity.” For so he is. He comes to you and says, “Handle me and see. A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me have.” He invites your faith to look at the prints of the nails, and the scar of the spear. Did He not, after He had risen from the dead, prove His true humanity by eating a piece of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb? And that same humanity has gone to heaven. The clouds received it out of our sight, but it is there. “A man there was, a real man, Who once on Calvary died; And streams of blood and water ran Down from His wounded side.” That same blest man exalted sits high on His Father’s throne. Believe this, and you will see how He is bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. Remember that, as His nature is as yours, so, in another sense, He has made your nature as His, for you are born again and gifted with a higher life. You were carnal, He has now made you spiritual. You could not drink of His cup, or be baptized with His baptism, till His Spirit had come upon you. But now you are made “partakers of the divine nature”— Strong words, but Scriptural: “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust,” “For as you have borne the image of the earthy Adam, you shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Now you, as spiritual men, cry out to God in prayer, and so did He when He was here. Now you are in an agony as you strive with God, and so was He, but the bloody sweat is a part of His substitutionary work, in which He trod the winepress alone. His meat and drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, and it is yours, I trust, at any rate, it should be if you are your Lord’s.
