An Ordinary Man

Jesus of Nazareth was no less a man of his times than anyone else of his day. To be sure, in many ways, he was ahead of his time; and yet, he was, at the same time, very much a product of his day and age. While he may have been progressive in terms of his view of women, Samaritans, Gentiles, God, faith, and the like, he was so un-extraordinary to those around him that even his own family members and hometown associates didn’t recognize him as the God he was. Of course, his progressive views did end up getting him crucified, which is no small matter to overlook.

However, for some thirty-odd years, prior to his year or so of public ministry, he remained as ordinary and unimpressive as any one of us ordinary people of today might be. He was as much a part of his community as the air, so commonplace and normal. The fact that there is so little, if anything, written about the three decades prior to his public ministry, death, and resurrection indicates that those years were so ordinary as to not be even worth mentioning in the annals of history. We are, of course, left with some records of his public ministry, from which we might glean an understanding of how ordinary Jesus was and appeared to those around him.

Beginning in the Beginning

While John begins his Gospel proclaiming Jesus as the Word (John 1:1, 14-18), which is the divine logos or reason that governs the universe, both physical and spiritual, no one was particularly privy to such a perspective prior to the 90s or 100s, about when the apostle penned his Gospel. We do have record of Jesus’s birth, though, which comes to us from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke from around the mid-to-late 80s or 90s. These tell us that Jesus was born so ordinarily that it was extraordinary.

As there was no room in the upper room (Luke 2:7; cf. Luke 22:11 re the Greek word for “inn” or “upper room,” viz. kataluma), Jesus had to be lain in a feeding trough, which indicates that the family into which he was born was so poor, they couldn’t afford even basic amenities, whether through payment or privilege. Not only that, Jesus was of such ordinary stock, that King Herod couldn’t seem to locate the newly born king, and so killed every child under the age of two in the vicinity of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16), where Jesus was born. Additionally, after his circumcision, it was with two small doves or pigeons that Jesus’s parents consecrated him to the LORD (Luke 2:24), which, according to the Levitical Law was the offering of a poor woman, who couldn’t afford the greater offering of a lamb (Leviticus 12:8).

Furthermore, when consecrating Jesus at the Temple, his parents “marvel” (Luke 2:33) at the words of Simeon, who prophesies that Jesus will be a “light” to the Gentiles and the “glory” of Israel (Luke 2:32). Now, the word for marvel in the NT Greek in this context and many others is “to wonder,” though a better translation might be “to be incredulous.” So, just as Jesus’s disciples will later “marvel” at the fact that nature obeys his command (Matthew 8:27), Jesus’s hometown associates will “marvel” at his preaching (Luke 4:22), and Jesus will “marvel” at the fact that his hometown associates don’t have faith (Mark 6:6), so his parents “marvel” at the words of Simeon. If they had known, why would they have marveled? It would have been more of a case of saying, “Duh! Of course!” Rather, it seems that they are astonished and incredulous, dubious of the person Simeon proclaimed that Jesus was to be.

Not only that, when Jesus is twelve-years-old, his parents take him to Jerusalem for the Passover, and when they leave, he is left behind (Luke 2:43). After three days of searching, they find him in the Temple courts. When they chastise him for causing them distress at his absence, he replies, saying, “Didn’t you know I needed to be in my Father’s house?” But they don’t understand what he’s saying (Luke 2:50). The fact that they do not understand what he’s saying indicates that Jesus was, in fact, very much an ordinary human being.

Once again, when he begins his public ministry, Jesus’s own family thinks he’s crazy out of his mind, so much so that they seek to apprehend him to lock him up (Mark 3:21, 31). If they had known that Jesus was divine or so special and amazing as to be unordinary, why would they have thought him out of his mind and sought to lock him up? If they knew he was God in the flesh, wouldn’t they have supported him and acknowledged his greatness? In fact, if everyone knew that Jesus was God in the flesh, wouldn’t everyone have acknowledged him as such and bowed down and worshipped him and given him the honor and prestige due him, instead of hanging him up on a Roman cross to be crucified and to die?

The “Secret” of Divine Messiahship

It seems that Jesus himself wanted it this way: to be unrecognized as the God he was (Mark 1:24-25; Luke 4:34-35). It seems that Jesus himself also wanted to be unrecognized as the Messiah he was (John 6:15; Mark 8:30; Matthew 16:20; Luke 9:21). Once referred to as the “Markan Secret,” Jesus kept his identity as divine Messiah a secret. It is called the “Markan Secret” because it appears that the Gospel of Mark over and against the other Gospels is particularly concerned with keeping Jesus’s Messianic identity a secret (cf. Mark 1:24-25, 34, 40-45; 3:11-12; 7:36; 8:22-26, 27-30; 9:2-9). While this view came to scholarly popularity in the 1920s and has since largely fallen out of favor, it still is of note that Jesus was not primarily concerned with the public proclamation and express declaration of his Messianic identity and divine relationship with God as Father in the Synoptic Gospels, since the Gospel of John does expressly declare that Jesus’s Father is God, to which we shall return later.

What we see in the Gospels is a Jesus misunderstood. (Indeed, even today, he is misunderstood, though we have the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.) We see Jesus in the Gospels trying to balance the revelation of his Messianic identity to a certain few, namely, the Twelve disciples, who misunderstood him (Mark 8:32-33; Matthew 16:22-23); with the revelation of his Messianic identity to the masses, who also misunderstood him (John 12:34); with the revelation of his identity to the leaders of Israel and Rome, who also, along with the rest, misunderstood him (John 8:12-59; 18:33-19:16). As even his own brothers indicate (John 7:4), Jesus was so ordinary and so un-amazing in his ordinariness that he was effectively working in “secret,” not seeking to be established as Messiah, the King of Israel. Furthermore, on at least one occasion, Jesus intentionally hides himself, lest he forcibly be made king (John 6:15).

Likely due in large part to the misunderstanding of what and who the Messiah actually was, Jesus kept his divine Messianic identity a secret. It would have been so great an ordeal to explain the truth of the matter. This is especially true when the understanding of who and what the Messiah would be was so ingrained in the Jewish imagination for centuries as a mighty warrior-king who would oust the enemies of Israel and establish her as a great and mighty nation of the world, central to all.

When Jesus does try in the Synoptic Gospels to explain his Messianic identity, Peter rebukes him (Mark 8:32; Matthew 16:22). When he tries in the Gospel of John to explain his divine Messianic identity, many of the people do not believe him and stop following him (John 6:66). Finally, when he tries to explain to the Jewish religious leadership who he is, they seek to kill him (John 7:25-44; 8:52-59; 10:22-39; Mark 3:6; 14:1; Matthew 12:14; 26:4; Luke 6:11).

Jesus Direct

The Gospel of John is starkly different than the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, particularly striking for its highly theological language about Jesus as the ego eimi, the I AM, which is the name of God, given to Moses in the Pentateuch (Exodus 3:14). I AM is a special name of God, particularly transliterated as YHWH and pronounced as Yahweh. More than a statement of existence, it carries with it the connotation of being the Being of all beings, who is utterly self-sufficient and only self-existent.

When Jesus in the Gospel of John clearly declares himself as the I AM (John 8:58), he is expressly identifying himself as the I AM of the Pentateuch. There are other “I am” statements of Jesus, but these are just requisite constructs within a sentence with a predicate object (cf. John 6:35, 41, 48, 51; 8:12; 10:7, 9, 11, 14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1). Additionally, there are statements Jesus makes, using the term “I am,” but these imply a predicate object, as “he” (John 6:19; 8:18, 28; 13:19; 18:5-8). Unlike the one clear I AM statement of Jesus in John 8:58, these other “I am” statements bear little, if any, significant meaning in terms of his identity as divine, though they do flush out what he is like as divine.

In the one clear instance where Jesus declares himself as God, the I AM (John 8:58), he is faced with an imminent stoning by the Jewish religious leaders. When Jesus declares himself as “I am [he]” (John 4:26; 6:19-20; 18:6-8), he is met with, in the first instance, an amazed Samaritan woman, who believes he must be who he says he is: Messiah, or, at least, a prophet, if not, the Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:18). In the second instance, when the Twelve are faced with a Jesus walking on water amidst a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples are terrified. In the third instance, Jesus is met with a mob, ready to arrest him and hand him over to death, that is driven back onto its knees by some invisible, unseen force at his statement, “I am [he, the one you’re looking for].”

In any case, whether surveying the Gospel of John or the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; whether Jesus is direct or secretive in the proclamation of his divine Messianic identity, the result is the same for Jesus: he is rejected and hung up to die on a Roman cross. His identity as divine Messiah is not only not accepted by many or most, but is actively and vehemently rejected by those. Though the centurion remarks at the foot of the cross, “Surely this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39), it is a declaration of affirmation that comes too late in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Body of Jesus

The whole point of this article is to remind us of the physicality, the humanity, the simple ordinariness of Jesus of Nazareth. Too often, I fear, we might succumb to Gnostic ideas about Jesus, which were opposed by early Church leaders, likely because of what the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 4:2-3 and 2 John 1:7, that to deny the physicality, the embodiment of Jesus is to deny his true identity. The Gnostics of the late first century contrasted Jesus of Nazareth with the divine Messiah, or Christ, positing that Jesus of Nazareth became the divine Messiah about when he was baptized and the divine Messianic spirit left him when he was crucified. The biblical account of the New Testament, however, is that Jesus was the divine Messiah from even before his inception and even during and after his death, that his divine Messianic identity was one of divine embodiment, taking on human flesh and keeping it on.

As the Apostle Paul writes, Jesus was manifest or revealed in a body (1 Timothy 3:16). Additionally, Paul writes that Jesus, though being divine in nature, “emptied” himself of all his privilege, power, and position as God, and took on the status of a slave, “being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-8). The term “human likeness” connotes the “likeness” in which God creates humanity in Genesis 1:26-27, the same term being used in both the Greek NT and the LXX: homoióma. Thus, in emptying himself and becoming subject to humanity, Jesus the Christ re-elevates humanity as divine. (But that is a story for another time.)

All divinity aside, the express reality, as testified by the dearth of records regarding the days of Jesus before his ministry as well as the wealth of records regarding the days of Jesus during his ministry as well as afterward, is that Jesus was of so little account of greatness, he was so ordinary, that no one–not even his closest companions, the Twelve disciples, let alone the inner three (Peter, James, and John)–recognized him as the God he was. He was so ordinary, he might have been passed over in the annals of history, had he not (1) so boldly proclaimed the message of the Kingdom of God as he did, (2) been so outrageously and boldly generous and accepting as he was, and (3) done such amazing and miraculous deeds as he did.

The fact that he was crucified only testifies to the fact that he was seen as ordinary. That is to say that his death on the cross was not only an atoning sacrifice for some religious rite, but was a testament to the fact that he was not seen or perceived as the God he was. For if he had been recognized as God, he would have been worshipped, rather than despised, rejected, and killed.

Where those of Jesus’ day had too low a view of Jesus, those of us today who worship him as Lord and God might have too high a view of Jesus, such that we forget his humanity, which is complete, full, and authentic. Though Jesus is God, he is also human, a man, a person of the human race, one of us.

Perhaps the real magic or miracle of the life and work of Jesus is not that he healed many people or spoke such kind and gracious words, but that he demonstrated the divine in humanity by living out the divine in humanity.