Ever wondered what the central beliefs of Christianity are? Have you been questioning whether you have it right? We continue a series on the basics of Christianity with a Trilogy on the Godhead. This is part 2.
The question of who Jesus is, is crucial to the validity of the Christian faith.
It was a question important to Jesus himself, so in Matthew 16, we find him asking his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’
The answers are interesting and if spoken of any other person would be flattering. People were thinking that Jesus could be either John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah, three of the greatest figures of biblical history.
People were so awed by him that they thought he must me on of these great servants of God come back from the dead.
Flattering though the answers were, they weren’t nearly adequate to describe who Jesus really is.
The Bible leaves us in no doubt about His uniqueness and greatness:
‘Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything…’ (Colossians 1:15-16)
‘For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.’ (Colossians 2:9)
‘The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God…’ (Hebrews 1:3)
Jesus is Special
Nothing like the above has been said of any other person is history.
Everyone else has their weakness, their faults and failings. If Jesus was only the greatest man who ever lived, he would have shared our sinful nature as well, and he would need a saviour as much as anyone else.
But Jesus is different. His birth was different to anyone else’s. His mother was a virgin, so Jesus wasn’t born ‘because of human lust or love’, but through an awesome miracle (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35).
In the birth of Jesus, God was doing something special, beyond our wildest dreams and imaginations!
There are 3 key aspects to who Jesus is:
1. Son of Man
Jesus has a lot of different titles, but the one he used for himself more than any other was ‘Son of Man’.
No one else addressed Jesus with this title, so it’s a unique name. He was a unique man, he was a sinless man. But he was still a man.
Accepting and believing in His humanity is vital for our salvation – as Hebrews 2 says,
14 Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.15 Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.
16 We also know that the Son did not come to help angels; he came to help the descendants of Abraham. 17 Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people.
Jesus had to become a man in order to make atonement (reparation) for humanities sins.
It was humanity who had broken God’s law and it was a human who would have to pay the price. So God became that human – Jesus Christ – and died to save us!
2. Son of God
But, Jesus was more than a man. Twenty five times in the gospels, he calls himself the Son of God.
Jesus is ‘Emmanuel’ which means ‘God with us.’
It’s true that God has always been with his people, the Old Testament shows us this. However, in Jesus, God was with us in an entirely different way.
In Jesus, God becomes a human being, and identifies himself with us in a way he never did in the Old Testament.
Jesus is ‘fully man and fully God’. He’s not part man and part God. In him there exists two natures so that he is divine and sinless, but also a man.
In the Old Testament, Isaiah was given this incredible revelation of the glory of God:
3 They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” (Is. 6:3-5)
But when the apostle John refers to this in the New Testament, he says, ‘Isaiah was referring to Jesus when he said this, because he saw the future and spoke of the Messiah’s glory.’ (John 12:41)
Jesus then, is the holy Lord of whom the angels spoke. Jesus is the King, the Lord Almighty, whom Isaiah saw. Jesus is God.
3. Jesus the Saviour
Salvation was planned in heaven but it could not be accomplished there. Atonement for sin must be made to God by humanity’s representative.
But, there was no one qualified to do this because we are all sinners.
The eternal God became man ‘so that by his death’ (Heb. 2:14) he might accomplish salvation for his people.
Paul puts it this way in Romans 5:17, ‘For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.’
If we were to ask, ‘What is God like?’, the answer we’ll find in the Bible is that he is like Jesus.
He loves sinners and stretches out his hand to them in love and grace.
Our only hope for salvation comes in taking a hold of that hand and thanking God for it!
The Choice
This all leads to a choice that everyone has to make, no matter who they are:
‘You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else he is a mad man or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool; you can spit at him and kill him for a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him ‘Lord and God’.
But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.’
– C. S. Lewis
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Part 1 – Bitesize Theology: God the Father
Inspired by Peter Jeffery, ’Bitesize Theology’, Evangelical Press, 2000
