Is it really possible that Jesus was made to be—through his incarnation—just as we are?

Thankfully, as we’ve seen with other truths about Jesus, the Athanasian Creed helps us here when it says: completely God, completely man, with a rational soul and human flesh;

Again, the creed makes clear that in the writers’ minds, Jesus is God and man. Specifically, they say that Jesus is completely God and completely man. Notice the word usage of “completely” instead of “fully” or even what the creed said early in that Jesus is God and man, “equally”. Historic Christian theology has regularly and consistently spoken of Jesus as being complete or even total in his humanity and in his divinity. That which makes him a real human being like you and me, is just as present in the one person of Jesus as that which makes him God. It’s who he was and, even in his resurrected state, who he is.

The creed goes further in its clarity by also saying that Jesus has a “rational” or (depending on the translation of the creed) a “reasonable” soul. What I think the creed is getting at here, with some difficult to understand language, is again that Jesus was a real person. Often in the Scriptures, the soul is used as way to describe life—or even just a living person. This is the point being driven at here.

You and I have a rational soul—or, if we’re using the language of C. S. Lewis, we might say that we are rational souls, because we’re living real people. Along with that, we have bodies. Our flesh is real. The same is said of Jesus because, again, that’s how the New Testament describes him. He was (and is) a real person with a body like ours.