Why Did Jesus Have to Be Truly God and Truly Man to Redeem Us?

August 11, 2025/BCL/
Photo Credit: sedmak / iStock.com; Banska Stiavnica - The Annunciation fresco on the ceiling of parish church from end of 19. cent. by P. J. Kern.

Photo Credit: sedmak / iStock.com; Banska Stiavnica – The Annunciation fresco on the ceiling of parish church from end of 19. cent. by P. J. Kern.

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For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. — Hebrews 4:15

Why did Jesus need to have two natures—one truly human and one truly divine—in order to accomplish his redemptive work?

We need a perfect redeemer to save us from God’s just wrath.

According to theologian Louis Berkhof,

But if Christ is not both man and God, He cannot be our Mediator. He had to be one of the human race, in order to be able to represent sinners in His redemptive work. (Berkhof, Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 183)

Our redeemer needed to be truly man.

Many people wrongly think Jesus was a great man but not God in the flesh. The Bible tells us that Jesus, the Son of God, had to be truly human by being born in the flesh in order to be our High Priest:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:8)

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim. 2:5)

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Heb. 2:17)

Our redeemer also needed to be truly God.

Jesus also had to be a sinless human—one who fulfilled God’s law in every way, the spotless Lamb of God who offered himself to be the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. Only God could be this perfect sacrifice:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor. 5:21)

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Heb. 10:11-14)

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. (1 Pet. 3:18)

God found a way to be both “just and the justifier.”

Unless God the Father sent his only begotten Son, Christ Jesus (John 3:16), none of us would have any hope of avoiding God’s righteous wrath over our guilt and sin. Thankfully, our loving, good, and holy God found a way to be both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).

Just as the first Adam represented humanity in the garden of Eden, so Jesus Christ, the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), represented all of God’s people in his perfectly righteous life and perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for sin (Rom. 5:12-21). Rejoice that Jesus is both truly God and truly man, the only person who could—and did—redeem all who trust in him and grant them eternal life and everlasting joy.

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Manual of Christian Doctrine by Louis Berkhof