The Human Nature of Jesus

Jesus had a normal body with all of the normal parts: two eyes, ears, a nose, brain, stomach, etc. Since he had a body, he also had the five senses and was quite capable of feeling physical pain and pleasure. He possessed a human's intellect (a mind) and had a human will (a heart) and experienced human emotions, like joy and sorrow. For example, John wrote that Jesus wept when he heard his friend Lazarus had died.

Jesus was not born with the ability to speak. He had to learn how to walk and talk, which are human characteristics, and how to act and think.

One major difference for Jesus, however, was that he did not share sin with us. Being human doesn't mean that it's impossible not to sin, and that you must have sin. Being human means having a free will and rational intellect joined to a physical body. Humans have the choice to do evil or good.

Catholics believe that people don't decide what's good and evil, because true good and evil occur independent of our opinion. Murder is evil. Someone may personally think it's okay, but if it's intrisically evil, they are only deluding themselves and will eventually regret it. Jesus, while human, only chose to do good works, but this did not make him any less human. Even though he never swore, told a dirty joke, or got drunk, he was still human.

The Catholic Church reminds its members of the humanity of Jesus by placing a crucifix in a conspicuous place in every church. A crucifix is a cross with the crucified Jesus attached to it. It serves as a reminder that Jesus didn't just pretend to be human - he felt every nail, thorn, and lance that he experienced during the Passion (what the Church calls his suffering) in a way any other human would. He felt true pain, and actually died. If he were only a divine being pretending to be human, his pain and death would have been faked. A crucifix represents the pain that Jesus experienced when he died. (By the way, the letters "INRI" usually seen on crucifixes are an abbreviation of the actual Latin words placed on the cross by Pontius Pilate: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews).

It's important to note that Catholicism does not exclusively rely on the Bible for what's known about Jesus. Sacred Tradition fills in some of the gaps where the Bible is silent or ambiguous. Two issues are whether or not Jesus was married, and whether he had any siblings.