Who Is Jesus?

It is hard to measure the implications of your answer to this question. Whether he was just a good person who lived a life worthy of imitation, or he was a good teacher of morals, or he was a prophet of God, or he was the Creator God himself veiled in human flesh, is the most important thing to figure out in all of life. The Bible demonstrates Jesus is indeed God, the Creator, and no less.

Here are three important things to know about Jesus: 1) Jesus claimed to be God. 2) Jesus was killed for claiming to be God. 3) Jesus resurrected from the grave.

If these three statements are true, then it is the most important and urgent thing in the entire world to believe in Jesus Christ. If they are not true, then Jesus is just as unimportant as every other religious leader who spoke lofty words only to die like everybody else.

Jesus claimed to be God.

The fact of the matter is, Jesus made some amazing claims about himself. He made claims that no other "religious leader" has made. Other leaders claimed to know God, they claimed to know the way to God, they claimed to have a lot of insight and ideas about God, but none of them claimed to be God. Jesus was either the most arrogant person who ever lived, or he was Almighty God in human flesh.

Jesus told to a group of Jewish leaders, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." (John 8:58) Abraham lived a little more than 2,000 years before Jesus, yet Jesus claimed to already exist before him. In addition, he is alluding here to a famous title God used for himself in Exodus 3:14, "I AM WHO I AM". When Moses asked God for his name, God said to call him, "I AM". Jesus is claiming to be eternal and to be the same as the God of Israel, Yahweh, Jehovah, the Creator. After Jesus said this, the Jews picked up stones to kill Jesus for blasphemy. They understood his point.

Jesus also says very directly in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one," for which again the Jews tried to stone him for "claiming to be God" (10:33), something which Jesus does not deny but instead affirms that he has a unique relationship to the Father (10:36)—equality (10:38).

You cannot do justice to what Jesus said about himself without believing that he claimed to be the one true God. This isn't something his disciples made up afterward; it is what Jesus said about himself. So, when his disciple John later wrote the following, he was not making things up:

In the beginning was the Word [i.e. Jesus before he was born, God the Son], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3, NAS)

Jesus was killed for claiming to be God.

It was not just his followers that understood Jesus' claims about himself, his enemies did too. They often picked up stones to stone him for "blasphemy"—for claiming to be God. (John 5:18, 8:59, 10:31) They didn't believe he was God, but they understood that he believed he was God.

When Jesus was "on trial" before the Jewish leaders, as they searched for grounds to put him to death and found him innocent, they finally just asked him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God." (Matthew 26:63) When he answered yes they accused him of blasphemy, because "of course he is not God…" They knew who he claimed to be, they knew he exposed them as false teachers, and this is why they wanted to get rid of him.

Even Jesus' enemies understood Jesus' claim to be God. You patronize Jesus if you say he is merely a good teacher.

Jesus resurrected from the grave.

Jesus' tomb is empty. He died and was buried but rose from the dead on the third day. This was not just some spiritual rising; his actual body was no longer in the tomb. His disciples found his tomb empty, with the huge stone rolled away and nobody inside.

It is one thing to claim to be God. It is quite another thing to rise from the dead after your enemies kill you to prove that you are God. Everything he said, then, was true. We, therefore, are guilty before God and need to believe in him to be saved from his judgment. This is proved by his resurrection! But not only that, his resurrection also proves we will be saved if we place our trust in him!

Christianity is not philosophy. It is based in history because God is real and he actually came to our world by becoming a man, Jesus Christ. You can philosophize all day long, but who is Jesus? What are you going to do with Jesus? How are you going to explain Jesus?

Who is Jesus?

He is God the Son. God is three in Person, yet one in substance / essence. Jesus has existed for all of eternity but entered our world and became a man 2,000 years ago. He died for our sins—the very reason he came!—and then he rose bodily from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the Father's right hand, waiting for the time when he will return and judge the world.

Therefore, "God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent." (Acts 17:30)

I hope you would come to believe in Jesus Christ and bow the knee to him, confess your sins against God, and trust in him as your only hope, and a sure hope indeed, and find forgiveness and joy everlasting.