“Consider again the life of Jesus. He, according to all reliable testimony, did not experience sexual relations. Yet despite this, faith attests him as the one complete human being....To be faithful to the revelation in Jesus, we must say that the experience of sexual union is not needed for a full and complete human life.” JesusHuman NatureCelibacySexual Relations Book:Friendship: The Heart of Being Human Source: Friendship: The Heart of Being Human
“Dear reader, here is a sad truth: you and I fall short of being humans. We own up to this when we admit to being sinners. Sin is not something we add to ourselves and need to get rid of (although it can feel like that; our sins constitute a 'burden' that 'is intolerable,' according to a traditional prayer, and the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of 'the sin that clings so closely' [12:1 NRSV]). Rather, sin actually is a defect, a falling short on our part of living up to our nature, a failure to be human in the full sense. We sinners, who live among sinners, never have seen in the flesh a totally real human being. The astonishing claim is that Jesus is the one, true, complete human being. So when we say that Jesus is like us in all things except sin, we are not saying that we have something, 'sin,' which Jesus fails to have. It's the opposite: Jesus has something we do not have--namely, full humanity from which nothing has been broken off and taken away. And yet, sinners that we be, we do have Jesus...” JesusSinHuman ImperfectionFalling Short Book:Friendship: The Heart of Being Human Source: Friendship: The Heart of Being Human