Did Jesus Have a Belly Button? A Silly Question with a Seriously Encouraging Answer
The other day I received an email asking, what might feel like to some, a silly question. But the question came with sincerity. The question asked whether Jesus had a belly button.
I said yes. Here’s my longer answer.
Before I responded, I chuckled at the question because typically when people wonder whether someone from the Bible had a belly button, they usually wonder about Adam and Eve, since our first parents were not born by ordinary means; God created one from a pile of dust and the other from a rib. In one of my seminary classes, I remember a student asking the professor about Adam and Eve and whether they had belly buttons. The student asked C. John Collins, one of our Old Testament professors and an expert on the creation account in Genesis. I just wish I could remember the answer Dr. Collins gave. Knowing him he probably made a dismissive joke.
Coming back to the question at hand, I presume behind the question of whether Jesus had a belly button, lurks the suspicion that if Jesus experienced that intimate of a connection to his mother Mary, a relationship where they shared blood through her placenta and umbilical cord, then the blood of our Savior would have somehow been corrupted. This concern over the purity of Christ’s blood has led Catholic theologians to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is often assumed in popular culture to refer to the extraordinary, virgin birth of Christ. But the Immaculate Conception, in Catholic theology, refers to Mary’s birth, that she was born without the stain of original sin. In this way of thinking, if Mary had been born without original sin, then Jesus could have been in her womb with a belly button and an umbilical cord and could have shared her blood—and yet Christ would not have shared her original sin because she didn’t have original sin to share.
“While I affirm the impulse to see Christ as special as he really is, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary finds no basis in Scripture. ”
While I affirm the impulse to see Christ as special as he really is, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary finds no basis in Scripture. Perhaps there is a splinter of the Protestant church that, while rejecting the Immaculate Conception, has suggested that Christ did not have a belly button as a way to keep him from inheriting original sin through Mary. I have never heard any Protestants talk like this before, but there are many things I’ve never heard before. On the crowdsourcing website Quora, the question and answers about Jesus’s belly button seem to have more interest than I expected it would—although, to be fair, I hadn’t expected any interest.
As I start to answer this question, let’s acknowledge that when a baby lives in a mother’s womb, the line between blood and nutrients and cells becomes blurred. A child in a womb is dependent on the mother for all of these—the nutrients, the blood, and more. What a mother eats, in a way, her baby eats. Consider, for example, the tragic situation of fetal alcohol syndrome. So, yes, if Jesus was in his mother’s womb and had a belly button, then he would have shared Mary’s blood.
And certainly we should consider the blood of Christ special. The New Testament authors saw his blood this way. In the letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul writes of Jesus “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (3:25). That phrase—as a propitiation by his blood—means that the sacrifice of Jesus absorbed God’s wrath against sin. This is the meaning of the rather obscure word propitiation. Later in the same letter Paul writes of Christians being “justified by his blood” (5:9). In both of these passages, as is often the case, speaking of the blood of Christ is a shorthand for speaking of his death. One dies when one loses one’s blood (cf. Lev. 17:11). Still, this shorthand way of speaking does not nullify the specialness of Christ’s blood.
The New Testament has many similar examples of talking about Christ’s blood the way Paul does in Romans and elsewhere (Eph. 2:13; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 1:5; 5:9). The apostle Peter even speaks of the “precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:19). A key passage from the author of Hebrews is worth quoting at length:
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (2:14–15)
The author of Hebrews picks up this theme again later in his letter, including an extended section in Hebrews 9:11–28 where he describes the importance of blood in Old Testament sacrifices and how these Old Testament sacrifices were really a pointer to the final, better sacrifice that would come through the blood of Christ.
“The emphasis in the Bible on the purity of the blood of Jesus is not so much on chemical purity but moral purity.”
But to say that the blood of Christ was pure could be misunderstood. It was pure, but in what sense? We misunderstand the purity of the blood of Christ when we understand it merely as chemical or biological purity, as though Christ’s blood must be his blood and his blood alone. The emphasis in the Bible on the purity of Jesus and his blood is not so much an emphasis on chemical purity but moral purity. Jesus was morally pure and without blemish, and therefore the true and greater spotless lamb who could take away the sins of the world. We see this, albeit in a different context, when Jesus touches lepers and remains clean.
While I waited for my kids to finish riding a roller coaster at an amusement park, I texted with my friend John Biegel about this question. (Yes, this really happened.) John is a super-smart theologian and pastor. John said—and I quote—“there’s nothing inherently sinful about a belly button, I think.” The “I think” made me laugh. But I agree. John also pointed out that the “be fruitful and multiply” command is a pre-fall mandate, which is repeated after Noah and his family get off the ark (Gen. 9:1), and “unless God changed the means of procreation post-fall, we should expect belly buttons to be a part of God’s very good design for humanity.”
Additionally, think how weird it would have been if, in the Father’s plan of redemption, the first witnesses to Jesus were supposed to recognize how special Jesus was by noticing that he did not have a belly button. Instead, it seems to me that the Father intends the witnesses to the Son to esteem his character, his majesty, his power, his love. They were not supposed to conclude that Jesus was the God-man, as theologians call him, after sneaking a peek behind his robe. As Jesus hung naked on the cross, people were not supposed to notice a missing a belly button. That’s just weird.
This is all a way to explain my answer that Jesus did have a belly button. The doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness requires that his blood was morally pure, a purity that emanates from his character and essence. As my friend John also texted me, “I don’t think the idea of human corruption is one that is considered in simply biological terms as if there were a sin gene that got passed through blood or tissue.”
If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. From time to time, I write blog posts that I suspect no one will ever read but were helpful and edifying for me to write nonetheless. But maybe to a few of you this conversation about belly buttons still feels goofy, even bringing to mind the Veggie Tales silly song about belly buttons done as a Backstreet Boys parody (YouTube). It did for me.
However, encouragement flows to Christians willing to contemplate the full humanity of Jesus because faith should always seek understanding as far as faith can go. Christians should not retreat to “mystery” or “miracle” sooner than we must, even though the doctrine of the virgin birth and the nature of Christ, as with all theology, will inevitably lead us to both mystery and miracle.
And as we ponder the Christ anew, we see that in his incarnation the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, really did become flesh: he was born, increased in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), ate (Matt. 9:10–11), slept (Mark 4:38), got tired (John 4:6), felt sadness and wept (John 11:35), and experienced great pain and died (Mark 15:37). Which is to say Jesus really was like me. And like you. That is encouraging.
“Jesus really was like me. And like you. That is encouraging.”
We might rightly assume that this means when Jesus ate spicy Jewish food, sometimes he got indigestion and gas, even diarrhea. If the Coronavirus had swept through ancient Israel, as surely other viruses did, Christ was just as susceptible to sickness and, perhaps, being out of work without pay for an extended period of time. Now, in the sovereignty of God, Jesus couldn’t have died until, as we read about in John’s gospel, that his “hour had come” (John 7:30; 8:20; 13:1; 17:1). But still, Jesus was made like us in every way, as the author of Hebrews says (2:14). The Son of Man who saved the world from our sins had no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20), and as he grew in favor and wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), during puberty likely his voice cracked and his face had pimples. He was like me. And like you. He got lint in his belly button. That is encouraging.
Of course, he was also more than us. He was, as the Bible teaches, also fully God. So, not like us, which is encouraging too.
And it’s this dual nature—fully God and fully man—that allows him to be our Savior: in his humanity he identifies with us, and in his divinity he is a worthy sacrifice in a way no human could be.
Therefore, when we, with the eyes of faith, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we behold someone more special and more wonderful and more real than our imaginations could have ever created—a Savior who lives and loves with purity and power that is both heavenly and earthly at once.
* Painting: “The Lamentation” by Ludovico Carracci, ca. 1582