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The Lord Jesus was fully human physically but not spiritually, that is, He had the nature of our body but not the nature of our soul (the soul being the reasoning entity of our spirit). The nature of a human soul is sinful, but the nature of Christ’s soul was sinless! Thus only Christians have two natures in their soul (old and new man)! This “new man” or new nature in those reborn is something “created in righteousness and true holiness,” and “after the image of Him that created him (it)” (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). Man was created in God’s “likeness,” but the Son of God was incarnated after the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3 – “He sent His own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have” -NLT).
The word “likeness” here is in the sense of similarity, in appearance only, but not as identically the same. One (Jesus) taking on a body has the appearance of having the sinful nature, but it is common knowledge of course that the Lord Jesus did not partake of the sinful nature (“old man”) of a human. He partook of the nature of a human body (if its “infirmities” - Heb 4:15 - can be considered a nature) but not the nature of a human soul, which is sinful. After all, does not all spirit beings have their own soul, as Jesus has His own Soul.
There may be some who may think that human sin coexisted in Christ with His deity, but this is incorrect! During the crucifixion at His death, the guilt of all believers sin was “laid on Him” (Isa 53:6), but never in Him, i.e. He was made out to be sin, not actually be sin but imputatively; “to be the offering for our sin” (2Co 5:21 NLT). Not to stray too far from the subject matter, there are some (e.g. J MacArthur, R C Sproul, etc.) who believe that Christ was peccable and was capable of sinning, but this conflicts with the fact that “God cannot be tempted with evil” (Jam 1:13). Also, to sin you must have a sin nature!
The best I can say is that He did not need to partake of the nature of man’s soul to “be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”; nor could He, because the sin sacrifice required being “spotless.” Jesus was “tempted of the devil,” but He was not enticed within Himself to do evil, as a man would, He being without a sin nature.
Here (Rom 8:3) the word “flesh” is in relation to the nature of man’s spirit, which is sinful, and not in the sense of the physical body because a thing or object cannot be considered sinful, it being without spirit and soul. Things can be used sinfully but never become sinful! Therefore, the proper interpretation here for “flesh” is in reference to the nature of man’s spirit and not the body of man’s spirit. ‘Sarx’; Strong’s definition IV: “the flesh, denotes mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God.”
