Who Is Jesus?

There are few, if any, questions more important than 'who is Jesus?'  The world has a range of views of this important question, but they cannot all be true.  The answer to the question will determine how we live our lives.

Some people claim Jesus to be a myth and not a historical character.  Others believe him to be a great teacher or prophet, one of many who have walked the earth. Still others believe him to be a man and nothing else, in contrast to those who believe he is the Son of God.  Even among those who claim him to be the Son of God there is disagreement about what that actually means.

There is little point in dealing with all of these positions as this article would be ridiculously long: rather, we will look at what the Bible has to say.

John 14:28
"You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I."

In some sense God, the Father is greater than Jesus, but we need to be careful before we jump to conclusions about what this means. Some argue that Jesus is not deity because of this verse.

We need, however, to look at other verses to get a balanced view.  John 5:17-18 tells us,
"But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” 18 Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God."

An important, but basic understanding is that Jesus was equal to God in some sense and in another sense God, his Father, was greater.  If we think about this a little bit, it is not so hard to see how this can be true.  In a human family a father has greater authority than his son, yet they are both human beings.  The father is greater in position or rank, but equal in nature to his son.  A son is not sub-human just because he is not the father. So it is with Jesus and his Father. The Father is deity and so is the son.

Some people might object, "but doesn't the Bible refer to God's followers as  'children'?"  In response, yes it is true: and this brings up an interesting piece of information not clear in the English translations of the New Testament, but clear in the original Greek.  The Greek word idios is used in the passage, where we read "God was his father".  The word  idios means 'one's own' - in a unique sense. Nobody else could claim to have God as his or her Father in the same sense that Jesus could.  Something else that might be overlooked is the fact that in verse 17 of the passage Jesus says "My Father" not "our Father".  It is clear from the Jews' response that they understood the ramifications of Jesus' claim to being God's son as they tried to stone him. They knew Jesus' claims amounted to him claiming equality with God.  Logically, anyone equal with God is God.

Anyone else who can claim to be a child of God, can only do so because they have been 'adopted' by God because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:3-5).

A number of verses show Jesus to be deity.

Colossians 2:9
"For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;"

The word 'Godhead' is also translated 'deity' in other versions of the Bible.  The Greek word is theotēs  which means "the state of being God".  Thus, in Jesus, the state of being God exists in bodily form.  This agrees with what we read in other passages:

Hebrews 1:1-3
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,"

The words 'express image' are the Greek word charactēr, which means "the exact expression (the image) of any person or thing, marked likeness, precise reproduction in every respect..." (Thayer's Lexicon). Jesus is the exact representation or likeness of God. Unless he is also God, this could not be said to be true, for an exact representation requires that Jesus have no aspect in which he is inferior to God.

We are also told that Jesus made the worlds: he is the creator.  He was not just someone used by God to create the universe but the creator and the one for whom everything was made as shown by Colossians 1:15-17,

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist."

Some might be tempted to say that Jesus never really was a human and that he was God and God solely and he just appeared to be a man.  The New Testament clearly refutes this,

2 John 7
For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

John 1:1, 14
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

These three verses show us that Jesus (called 'the Word') is God who became flesh (human).

1 Timothy 2:5 also shows the humanity of Jesus as well as our need for him,
"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus"

Conclusion

It is always important to look at a number of scriptures when considering what the Bible says on a subject and while there are many more passages we could look at, we have seen clearly that Jesus is both man and God. Since he is man and God, we should obey his words and try to imitate him.