Questions 21-23 are particularly bound together. In Question 21, we confessed the truth that Christ’s hypostatic union, His true humanity and divinity, makes Him uniquely capable of being our Redeemer. He alone is able to mediate between the Holy One and sinful men because He is both God and man. Questions 22-23 now address the necessity of Christ’s humanity and divinity more particularly. We begin here with Jesus’ humanity. Why must the Redeemer be truly human?

The answer contains two parts. First, that in human nature he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin. Through His incarnation, Jesus has united Himself to humanity, lowering Himself below the angels for a little while in order to deliver us from the curse of our sin. From the moment of Christ’s conception through the Holy Spirit, He began His work of humiliation, of becoming a part of the very creation that He created. That humiliation continued all throughout His sinless life until His undeserved death. This great reality is what Paul describes in the great Christ hymn of Philippians 2:5-11:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Of course, the greatest affliction upon Christ was the divine wrath that was poured out upon Him in our place. In becoming a curse for us, Jesus received the fullness of our deserved punishment for sin, even though He is only human to ever perfectly obey the whole law. Even still, upon the cross, He endured damnation in our place, taking the full weight of our sin upon His sinless shoulders and bearing it away.

Of course, the wonder of all wonders is that Jesus’ suffering was actually obedience to the Father. Since God is all-knowing, humanity’s fall into sin did not catch Him by surprise, nor did He simply know that it was one possible course of events. Instead, our redemption through Christ was God’s “eternal purpose” for displaying “through the church the manifold wisdom of God” (Ephesians 3:10-11).

Second, and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses. Christ’s unwavering and unmatched obedience to the Father made Jesus perfectly fit to be our Redeemer and our great and sympathetic High Priest, as Hebrews repeatedly notes. An unsympathetic high priest would be of no comfort to us, but Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, with our fallen and sinful nature.

As necessary as sympathy is, sympathy alone is not sufficient to save. While walking side by side with a peer has plenty of benefits, there are times when a superior is needed. The companionship of two men quicksand is of little comfort if they cannot help one another out of mire. The beauty of Christ’s priesthood is that He understands and sympathizes with our plight, yet He did not fall into our corruption. For more than three decades, He dwelt among us, as one of us, and never joined in our depravity.

Indeed, the depth of Christ’s sympathy with our weakness is noted in Hebrews 2:11, where we were told that He is not ashamed to call us brothers. He does not disavow or disown us; rather, in spite of our sin, He numbered Himself as one of us. The question that Christ’s ongoing sympathy for us ought to be: if He is not ashamed to call us His brothers, will we then be ashamed to confess Him as Lord?