No matter what they believe, everybody has an opinion about Jesus. Many people will say that He was a great man, a prophet, a powerful teacher. And He is all of these things… But is that all He is? Let’s find out as we look at what the Bible says about the nature of Jesus.
Some of the earliest debates within the Christian faith were about the nature of Jesus. Is He God or is He a human being, because the Bible seems to show that He is both.
Because it does.
The Bible describes Jesus as being both fully God and fully human. Jesus is one person within whom simultaneously exist two natures—human and divine—without any mixture of the two.
All through the New Testament, Jesus is described in ways that make Him equal with God. For example, John’s gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” and identifies Jesus as the Word. Hebrews, Philippians, and Colossians all have similar descriptions.
Jesus is also shown to possess attributes that only belong to God, to perform works that only God can perform, and He Himself even claims to be God. This is something we see in Matthew 26:63-64 when He is being accused by the religious leaders, and multiple times in John’s gospel, including Jesus saying He existed before the world was created.
Now you might wonder, what do we really lose if Jesus were just a human being? After all, this is a really strange thing to believe—it’s hard to understand! But just because it’s strange, doesn’t mean it’s not true. If we lose this belief we lose everything worth believing about Christianity because Jesus, the man who is God, is the center of our faith.
Catherine says
Is there a curriculum in connection to the 99 in :99 that we could possibly use with our High School Students?
Brian Dembowczyk says
The 99 Essential Doctrines are part of The Gospel Project Bible study resource, which you can learn more about on this site by clicking Students at the top of any page.