the nature of Christ

The following passage is something I read yesterday in one of my VLI textbooks. This passage is fantastic. It is in a section dealing with the person of Christ, and specifically the fact that he is both divine and human:

"None of us is humanity as God intended it to be, or as it came from His hand. Humanity was spoiled and corrupted by the sin of Adam and Eve...The question is not whether Jesus was fully human, but whether we are. He was not merely human as we are; he was more human than we are. He was, spiritually, the type of humanity that we will possess when we are glorified. Jesus most fully reveals the true nature of humanity...As the image of God, humans are already the creatures that are most like him" (p. 239, Introducing Christian Doctrine, by Millard Erickson).

Putting this passage with some other things I've been learning, reading and thinking, here are some thoughts:

• There have only been 3 'real' people in the history of the world - Adam, Eve, and Jesus
• They alone were what humanity was meant by God to be
  
• Our sin nature is not humanity's original nature
• Adam and Eve traded some part of the image of God, their humanity, for something less than what they were meant to be
  
• Jesus in his perfection is left then as the one True Man, the sinless one
  

Why does all this matter? Jesus is changing us and making us into what we should be, bearers of God's image. He is what we will become. Or as the Eastern Orthodox tradition states: 'He became what we are so we can become what he is.' This all matters because God's desire is to restore what was lost by changing us so we can be like Jesus. He is making all things new, including us!