In one of his letters, C. S. Lewis reflects on when God became man in the person of Jesus. Why did He not come as a type of superhero, impervious to physical harm and devoid of emotion? It’s because He sought to be like us and to reveal the heart of the Father:
God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane.
Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all-important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin.
As the apostle Paul put it, Jesus emptied Himself of all the privileges of Godhood and chose to live as a man. The writer of the Hebrews tells us that He suffered everything we suffer, even all the temptations that the world has to offer, yet did so without succumbing to sin. That’s why He became the perfect sacrifice, to set us free from sin and death. That truth should serve to humble us before Him and spur us to love Him without condition or measure.