Who is Jesus?

What the Bible says

Jesus did not begin by explaining himself. He began with a question. At Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples about the talk going around.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He questioned His disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Matt 16:13

The disciples report the rumours: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Then the question changes. Jesus no longer asks what others say. He asks for their own answer.

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Matt 16:15-16

The Bible answers with several titles. Christ is the Greek form of Messiah, “the anointed one,” the king God had promised. Son of Man was Jesus’ favourite way of speaking of himself. It means a human being, and it also recalls the figure in Daniel who comes with the clouds of heaven. When the high priest asked, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?”, Jesus replied, “I am,” and said that the Son of Man would be seen at the right hand of Power (Mark 14:61-62). Son of God and Lord are the confessions the earliest church gave most readily.

In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself in a pattern: “I am …”

Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst.

John 6:35

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.

John 11:25

He is also the light of the world (John 8:12) and the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). Teachers usually say, ‘Learn the way from me.’ Jesus says, “I am the way.” The teaching and the teacher cannot be pulled apart.

So is he man or God? The New Testament says both. John writes:

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

This is the claim that the one who “was God” in John 1:1 became a human being. A passage that many scholars think is an early hymn, quoted by Paul, tells the same story.

Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness.

Phil 2:6-7

He was truly human. He was tempted and he knows weakness.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.

Heb 4:15

The church's witness

The church worked this out through long debate. The Nicene Creed confesses the Son as of one substance with the Father The Nicene Creed. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon went further. It defined Christ as one person who is truly God in his divinity and truly man in his humanity, the two natures neither mixed, nor changed, nor divided, nor separated The Definition of Chalcedon. These confessions rule out the ideas that Jesus only seemed to be human, or that he was a remarkable man but not God; Chalcedon also refused both to blend the two natures into one and to split Christ into two. Losing either one, the church held, loses the gospel. If he were not God he could not save us, and if he were not man he could not stand in our place.

The Fathers read this mystery in the opening of John. Basil asks why he is called the Word, and answers: “Because born impassibly, the Image of Him that begat, manifesting all the Father in Himself; abstracting from Him nothing, but existing perfect in Himself” Basil. Chrysostom notes that while the other Gospels begin with the Incarnation, John “speaks immediately of the Eternal Generation” Chrysostom.

Matthew Henry comments on Peter’s confession: “This showed that they believed Jesus to be more than man” Matthew Henry. On Philippians 2 he lists Christ’s two natures side by side and says of his humanity: “herein he became like us in all things except sin” Matthew Henry.

In the original languages

Christos (Χριστός) is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew “Messiah,” meaning “anointed.” In the Old Testament kings, priests and prophets were anointed for their work. The New Testament testifies that Jesus is the promised one who fulfils all three roles. At first “Christ” was a title. Soon it became attached to his name, and people said “Jesus Christ.”

Monogenes (μονογενής), rendered “only-begotten” in older translations and the creed and “one and only” in most modern ones, is taken by most scholars today to mean “unique,” the only one of its kind. When John speaks of “the glory of the one and only Son,” he does not mean one believer among many. He means someone whose relation to the Father is his alone. John elsewhere says that believers become “children of God,” which is a different thing.

Common objections

“Jesus was a great teacher, nothing more.” This is the position many people most respect, and the Sermon on the Mount and the parables are part of humanity’s moral inheritance. The difficulty comes from what Jesus said about himself. A good teacher says, ‘Follow the truth.’ Jesus says he is the bread of life and the resurrection, and that he existed before Abraham (John 8:58). C. S. Lewis pressed this point. Someone who said such things cannot be merely a teacher, he argued. He must be either a liar, or mad, or what he claimed to be C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 2.3. The argument has a weakness that should be admitted. Critics point to a fourth option: some sayings may have been shaped by later tradition. Yet accepting that does not make the problem disappear, because the earliest testimony, Paul’s letters and creed-like passages, already calls Jesus Lord, even applying to him words that Isaiah spoke of God: every knee will bow (Phil 2:10-11; Isa 45:23). Honouring Jesus as a great teacher is a good place to start. But it is worth asking whether he was content with that.

“Christ’s divinity is a later legend.” The claim is that the church gradually turned Jesus into a god. Scholars have discussed this seriously, and it is clear that the Gospels have different emphases. But the earliest writings we have, Paul’s letters, already sing of Christ as being in the form of God (Phil 2:6-7) and speak of the day when every tongue will confess him as Lord (Phil 2:11). Most scholars date Paul’s letters before the Gospels. Jews believed in one God, yet the first Christians came to worship Jesus. To explain that, it is easier to look for something that moved them early than for a legend that grew over generations. This too is interpretation, and the question is treated at greater length in Is Jesus God?.

Going further

Jesus does not stop at “Who do people say I am?” He asks, “Who do you say I am?” That question is not an exam. It is an invitation into a relationship. Peter’s answer did not come from complete understanding, and soon he was arguing with Jesus about the cross. The Lord still received his confession. The first followers did not understand all at once. They walked with him and learned. It is all right if you have no conclusion yet.

You might ask yourself some questions. Whose words have I heard about Jesus, and have I listened to his own? What does it mean to me that he is a man, and so understands me? If he is God, how should I treat what he says?

To read further, see Did Jesus really exist? and Did Jesus really rise from the dead?. Reading John’s Gospel slowly from the beginning is also a good start.