Comfortable in His Own Skin

“Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast prepared me.” (Hebrews 10:5)

        

Jesus Christ was “comfortable in His own skin,” as they say, because He knew His Father had prepared it for Him. He never once questioned its limitations (Lk. 4:2) or its weaknesses (2 Cor. 3:14a). This is especially astounding when you stop to consider it would be something like trying to stuff the oceans of the earth into a teacup. Humanly speaking, it’s an impossibility. And to place God within the confines of flesh would be to stuff eternity into time, which is exactly what happened.

He, who was the “brightness of [God’s] glory, and the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3), was incarnated within a body “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3). If anyone should have been uncomfortable in His skin, it should have been Jesus. Yet He wasn’t. First, as I mentioned, because He knew that particular body was uniquely made for Him. We don’t know what it looked like, but we do know it worked just like ours does, which is what makes Him infinitely capable of sympathizing with you and I, while at the same time capable of representing us before God (Heb. 2:18; 4:14-16). As it turns out, the body prepared for Jesus, was prepared for you and I, as well; for it was “the body of his flesh” that reconciled us to God (Col. 1:21-22).

Not only was Jesus comfortable in His own body because He knew it was custom made for Him by His Father, but also because He knew it was only part of who He was. He was always conscious that He was God. He knew it when He was raising the dead and when He was washing dirty feet (Jno. 13:3-5). He knew it when He was praised by those who worshipped Him and when He was tortured by those who despised Him. He was always God, and He always knew it. With Jesus Christ, it was never, “What you see is what you get.” He was always much more than what they saw.

Finally, He was comfortable in His skin, because He knew it could never keep Him from returning to His Father. When He rose from the dead, He rose bodily. It was a glorified body, to be sure, but recognizable to those who loved Him. The Apostle John, on Patmos, was privileged to see Him as He is now, and has described Him vividly from head to toe (Rev. 1:12-15). When John fell at his feet as a dead man, Jesus laid His hand on him and said, “Fear not.” Oh, we can be sure He’s still comfortable in His own skin!

It comes to me now that there is something in these words for you and I to take for ourselves. Put these texts into the context our own lives, as it were. If God could prepare a body in which He could be comfortable, don’t you think He could make one you and I could be comfortable in? Maybe the reason why people are so discontent with who they are is because they never see themselves as God’s creation, and as believers, not God, nor even a god, but indwelt by God. The body, the flesh, the skin that you and I have, was prepared personally for us by God and chosen by Him for a holy habitation (1 Cor. 6:19). And we can say with Job, “…in my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:26).

Jesus Christ was comfortable in His own skin. Are you?