Lesson 2 of the 4 Chair Discipling course

The Full Humanity of Jesus

Lesson 1 gave you Jesus's method. But there is a quiet assumption that can gut the whole thing the moment you try to preach it: "Surely Jesus did what He did because He was God. Obviously, I am not." This lesson dismantles that assumption and installs the conviction that makes the four chairs preachable: you can do what Jesus did, because Jesus did what He did as a man.

The problem this lesson solves

Spader opens the chapter with a confession most mature believers will recognize: "For many years of my Christian walk, I knew I was supposed to imitate Jesus, but deep inside I believed that Jesus did what He did because He was God. Obviously, I am not! So I worked hard with very little confidence that I would ever succeed." His conclusion, hard-won: "my mistaken view of Jesus was crippling my disciple-making."

If you carry that same quiet assumption into the pulpit, the four-chair pathway collapses. "Follow Me" (Chair 2) and "I will make you fishers of men" (Chair 3) become nice ideals rather than a real invitation, because the man at the center is unreachable. So this lesson exists to do one thing: put the humanity of Jesus back where the New Testament puts it, so that "do what Jesus did" becomes faithful rather than foolish.

1 · The promise that makes us squirm

Before the cross, Jesus made a claim that should startle every teacher in the church:

"Greater works." Most of us nod at this verse and quietly file it under "the apostolic age" or "heroic missionaries." Spader refuses. He insists the verse is addressed to "whoever believes," and that the reason we re-read it so harmlessly is the assumption we just named: we have decided in advance that Jesus's life is a display of deity, and therefore out of reach. This lesson is the argument that it is not.

2 · Fully God and fully man: the tension you must feel

The chapter is careful on both rails, and so should you be in the pulpit. You undercut the gospel if you preach the humanity at the cost of the deity, and you gut disciple-making if you preach the deity at the cost of the humanity.

Scripture is unambiguous on the first rail. Jesus claimed equality with the Father (John 10:30), claimed pre-existence (John 8:58), was crucified for that claim (John 5:17–18), and is confessed as "in very nature God" (Phil 2:6) in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Col 2:9). Hold that line.

But the same Scripture is equally unambiguous on the second. And here is where the tension becomes useful for teaching. Spader presses it with three examples that are easy to preach because they are concrete:

Do not resolve this tension by erasing either side. Preach it. The church needs to feel it: Jesus was genuinely God and genuinely limited, genuinely sovereign and genuinely surprised by delay. The resolution is not to soften one nature; it is to see what He chose in the incarnation.

3 · The kenosis: deity veiled so humanity could be expressed

The resolution lives in Philippians 2:5–8, and it is the load-bearing text of the whole chapter. Read it slowly.

Paul uses the Greek word morphe ("nature" or "form") twice: Jesus shares the morphe of God and the morphe of a servant. He is fully both. The pivotal verb is "emptied himself" (Greek ekenōsen, giving us the theological word kenosis). The book's gloss, drawn from Bruce Ware, is the line to carry into a sermon: "His deity was unexpressed, so that His humanity could find full expression."

Picture the chapter's parable of the king. He never stops being king; he retains every right, every soldier, every coin of his treasury. But to enter the life of beggars, he takes off the royal robes, puts on rags, and refuses, for the whole while, to call the army. He never ceases to be king. He simply refuses to live as king, so that he can truly live as one of them. That is the incarnation. "Never less than God, He chose to live His life never more than man."

4 · "He never used the God card"

Here is the chapter's sharpest claim, and the one your listeners will push back on. Spader's image: imagine Jesus carrying the ultimate credit card. The number is 777-7777-7777, the expiry is eternity, the limit is infinity. He had it, because He was God. He never once swiped it. To live as truly human, He refused.

Two objections come immediately, and the chapter answers both from Scripture:

Objection A: "But the miracles!" Surely the miracles prove He reached for divine power. Not so, says Spader, and here is a teaching point worth slowing on: miracles prove Messiahship, not deity. The apostles in Acts "duplicated most of the miracles Jesus performed" (Acts 3:12); Moses and Elijah worked wonders. Signs mark out the one the Father has sent (John 10:25), and they flow through a yielded instrument, not an independently divine one. Jesus Himself said where the power came from:

Objection B: "But He knew people's thoughts!" Eleven times the Gospels record Jesus knowing what others did not. But knowledge can come by the Spirit's revelation (Amos 3:7), by Spirit-given discernment, or by a profound grasp of Scripture and human nature. It does not require a dipped God card. The point is not to flatten the mystery; it is to refuse the easy out that says "He did it because He was God, so I'm off the hook."

This is what makes Jesus the second Adam. The first Adam had every advantage and fell. The second Adam, in reverent submission to the Father, "accomplished what Adam failed to do" (Rom 5:12–20), all the way to "obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). He did it as a man. Which means a man did it. Which means the pattern is open to men and women indwelt by the same Spirit.

5 · The four resources you share with Him

If Jesus never used the God card, then how did He live as He did? Here is the chapter's transferable center, and the model a preacher can hand to a congregation in a single table. Jesus drew, moment by moment, on four resources. Every one of them is available to any believer today.

Now reread John 5:19 alongside John 15:5 and the symmetry is unmistakable. Jesus said of Himself, "the Son can do nothing of his own accord." Then He turned to the disciples and said, "apart from Me you can do nothing." Same word. Same dependence. The channel is different (He depended on the Father; we depend on the Son), but the posture is identical: full, glad, continuous reliance. That is the bridge from "Jesus did it" to "you can do it," and it is built entirely of Scripture.

6 · Why this matters for your teaching

Three pastoral payoffs land from this chapter, and each is a sermon in itself.

First, Jesus is not a model to admire but a model to follow. The chapter quotes Ian Thomas: "Jesus was man as God intended man to be." And it inverts the bracelet: before you ask WWJD, study WDJD, what did Jesus do. He modeled total dependence on the Father through Word, prayer, and Spirit. That is reproducible. Admiration is not.

Second, we chronically underestimate what God wants to do through us. Seven times Jesus rebuked the disciples for "little faith" (Matt 17:20); twice He asked, "Are you still so dull?" Spader's conviction: "the greatest grief we bring to the heart of Jesus is our lack of faith in what He wants to do in and then through us." On the night before the cross, six times He pressed one command on them: ask (John 14:13–16; 15:16; 16:23–24).

Third, this is the engine room of the four chairs. Every move you will ask a disciple to make, from Chair 1 to Chair 4, runs on these four resources. The seeker is drawn by the Spirit at work through you; the new believer is nurtured in the Word and community; the worker is empowered for witness by the same Spirit who anointed Jesus; the disciple-maker abides (menō) in the same dependence Jesus modeled. You can teach the pathway only because the resources are shared.

Make it stick

1. Recite. Before you move on, say aloud from memory the four challenges and their references in order. (You are aiming for: John 1:39 · John 1:43 · Matt 4:19 · John 15:16.) Then add the one sentence this lesson gave you: "Jesus did what He did as a man, dependent on resources I also have." Two retrievals are better than one.

2. Read the source. Open Chapter 2, "The Full Humanity of Jesus". This lesson is its skeleton; the chapter has the full argumentation, the council quotation, and the discussion questions at the end. Read it with a sermon in view.

3. Keep the reference open. Skim the master map again and notice how every "what each chair needs" card in the lower half runs on the four resources you just learned. The map will read differently now.