Most people would say they know who Jesus is. Ask them to describe Him, and the answers go in a hundred directions: a good teacher, a prophet, a symbol of love. The question sounds simple, but it may be the most important one a person ever answers. If we get Jesus wrong, we get everything wrong.
The Bible puts it at the center of salvation itself: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
Right Name, Wrong Person
A. W. Tozer famously wrote that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. It matters just as much where that picture comes from. If the God in your mind isn’t defined by the Bible, you might have the right name but the wrong person.
Picture finding a bag at the airport with your name on the tag that belongs to someone else. That can happen with Jesus too. Paul says there are “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’” in the world, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:5-6).
There is the Jesus of the Bible, and there is a jesus of our imagination. The second one has the right name and none of the power. The Jesus of the Bible can save, heal, deliver, fill you with the Holy Spirit and pull your life up out of the pit. A Jesus we invent can do nothing for us, because “no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11).
So who is Jesus, according to Scripture? Here are seven things the Bible says you need to know.
1. Jesus Is Fully God
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19).
Jesus is God in the flesh. He was God before He came to earth, He was God while He walked the earth, and He is God now and forever. While He was here, He voluntarily set aside the privileges of His divinity. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). But He never stopped being God.
This leads into the doctrine of the Trinity: God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each person is fully God, and there is one God.
2. Jesus Is Fully Human
Jesus is not half God and half man. He is fully God and fully man, what theologians call the hypostatic union. He ate, drank, worked and slept. He had a real body.
Even in the first century, some teachers claimed Jesus only seemed to have a body. John answered them directly: “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2). This matters because the cross was not a symbol. It was a real death and a real payment.
Because He is both God and man, Jesus is the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5). He represents us perfectly to the Father, and He represents the Father perfectly to us. He is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
3. Jesus Lived a Sinless Life
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
Many Americans do not believe this. A national survey cited in this message, from the American Bible Society’s State of the Bible research, found that fewer than half of American adults believe Jesus was sinless. But this is not a side issue. If Jesus is not sinless, no one is saved. Only a spotless Lamb could pay for the sins of others. And because He was tempted as we are, He understands us.
4. Jesus Died on a Cross
“He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
His death on the cross was the payment required for our sin to be completely forgiven.
5. Jesus Rose from the Dead
“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).
Here is a simple way to remember it: the cross gets it for you, and the resurrection gets it to you. The cross paid the bill in full. The resurrection delivers what the cross purchased. Because Jesus lives, you can be free, you can be healed, and you can go to heaven.
The resurrection is also where Christianity gets its authority. Ask where that authority comes from, and the usual answers are the Pope or the Bible. The deeper answer is the resurrection: Jesus Christ walked out of the grave, and we serve a risen, living Savior.
6. Jesus Will Come Again
Christ “will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28). Paul calls it “our blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
No one knows the day or the hour, so be wary of anyone selling a date. But He is coming.
7. Jesus Will Judge All People
Revelation 20 describes a great white throne, with the dead “great and small, standing before the throne.” Every person will be “judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done” (Revelation 20:12). That is bad news for all of us, because no one has done enough to pay for their own sin.
But another book is opened: “the book of life.” Those whose names are written there are judged by the finished work of Jesus, not by their own record. Those whose names are not written there face the lake of fire.
Why It Matters
Who Jesus is decides everything else: what you build your life on, where your hope comes from, and where you will spend eternity. A Jesus of our own making cannot answer prayer, forgive sin or open heaven. The Jesus of the Bible can do all three.
That is why Citylight Church is building everything on Jesus. An incredible life is built on the finished work of Jesus Christ. If you are not sure your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, start where Romans 10:9 starts. Confess that Jesus is Lord, believe that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.