“"In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety” Hebrews 5:7.

One writer words it this way: “In realistic language (the writer of Hebrews) brings out the genuineness of Jesus’ humanity.” During Jesus’ mortal life on earth, He was well acquainted with the range of human emotions; especially extreme emotions such as crying and tears. This is in harmony with Isaiah’s prophecy that He would be “a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3).

The humanity of Jesus is appealing and comforting. He really does get us because He is one of us, as the writer earlier said: “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” Hebrews 4:15. He knows our human frailty and is well able to appropriate the needed resources to help us in our need.

A distorted theology that minimizes or eliminates the humanity of Jesus is both seriously erroneous as well as personally discouraging. How can Jesus relate to us if temptation was never real? How can He truly understand and help us when He cannot relate to our human condition? Such a Savior is aloof and impersonal.

There is something compelling about this picture of Jesus praying “with loud crying and tears.” You and I have been at the end of our proverbial ropes, lamenting and crying as well. Jesus does not view us from His lofty heavenly perch with astonishment and disbelief, but rather with sympathizing tear and heartfelt compassion. He fully understands, and is well able to aid and comfort.

Knowing that He knows, understands, and cares, let us come to Him today with all that weighs us down and breaks our heart. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” Matthew 11:28.

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