He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. (Heb. 5:2)
Expanded Passage: Hebrews 5:1-3
Immanuel was not only the name Mary was told to give her son, it was a blessed assurance of God’s presence. Not only a promise, “God with us” was becoming an embodied person (Matt. 1:23). “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). He became one of us, identifying with our every vulnerability.
Early Christians would say, “What he has not assumed, he has not redeemed,” meaning that Christ’s willingness to experience weakness was the very way in which he healed humanity. There is comfort in knowing God was willing to walk with his people in their shoes. His divinity was not diminished by the humility that it took him to become human. Rather, it paved the way for humanity’s relationship with God to be restored.
“He made himself nothing . . . being made in human likeness” rather than considering “equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (Phil. 2:6–7). Jesus cared about us enough to be inconvenienced by our condition, so that we could be close to him.
This closeness with the human condition is what moves Jesus to compassion when he sees the crowds in Matthew 9:36. Jesus knows firsthand their weaknesses and is familiar with their frailties. He’s not distant, he’s intimate. And this proximity is precisely what enables him to deal tenderly with the lost.
Consider who Christ is calling you to draw close to.
Amy Boyle lives in Indianapolis, where she’s a disciple, friend, and neighbor, an Indiana Wesleyan alum and twenty-something, passionate about knowing Jesus and making him known.
© 2026 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
