Jesus is the cornerstone of Christianity. As both God and man, He lived and breathed and graced us with His presence on Earth doing many miracles, the greatest of all being His death and resurrection from the dead. An essential doctrine in the Christian faith that Christians believe is the truth that God is one and exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Another essential doctrine is that Jesus-Christ is God the Son and the second Person of the Godhead or Holy Trinity along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In Theology, the study of the doctrine of Jesus-Christ is called Christology.
As the Son of God and the Son of man, His nature as both fully divine and fully human has been a cause for debate for centuries to this very day. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God in the flesh and the image of the invisible God (John 1:14, Colossians 1:15). He came to show us who God is and demonstrated God’s great love for us by dying and being raised from the dead to save us from our sins in order to make us right with God, to bring us back to life and to give us the hope of full restoration and eternal life with Him. What we believe about Jesus is incredibly important as He is the only way to God and the only means of our salvation.
Jesus-Christ is fully God, and we see the reality of His divinity in passages of Scripture that point to His eternal existence, His sonship and relationship to God the Father, a number of characteristics only attributed to God and His resurrection from the dead.
Jesus is God the Son and as God the Son He has always existed. And at the right time, the Father sent Him from Heaven to Earth and He was born as one of us to show us who God is and to save us from our sins. The following passages declare the eternal existence of Jesus:
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-5, 14
John 1 mirrors Genesis 1:1-5 (the first book and verses of the Bible) and in doing so declares that Jesus has no beginning; He was there in the beginning with God and was involved in creation as God. In His life and ministry Jesus made statements that implied His divinity and eternal existence in that He was with the Father before creation and existed before the Old Testament patriarchs:
5 Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
John 17:5
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”
John 8:58
Jesus is God the Son and the Son of God. Before Jesus’ incarnation as one of us, God the Father and God the Son had always been Father and Son. They have always had a father and son relationship and will for all of eternity. And even as a man, Jesus is still the Son of God because He was miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit. And this was beautifully explained to Jesus’ mother, Mary, by the angel who appeared to her announcing that she’d been chosen by God to become Jesus’ mother:
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
Luke 1:34-35 (NIV)
It’s important to note that the biblical concept of sonship is akin to saying that father and son share in the same nature. In essence this means that Jesus being the Son of God makes Him an equal to God. He affirmed this and in doing so upset the religious leaders of His day:
17 But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
John 5:17-18
Lastly, another stamp of approval on Jesus’ divinity and sonship to God was by the God the Father Himself and the Holy Spirit. God the Father affirmed and declared Jesus’ Sonship and relationship to Himself at His baptism and after the Transfiguration:
16 After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the
heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, 17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Matthew 3:16-17
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” 6When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. 7 And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”
Matthew 17:5-7
In both passages, the voice is the voice of God the Father.
There is a number of characteristics that are exclusive to God in the Bible that we see applied to Jesus during His life and after He was raised from the dead:
The Bible teaches that God and God alone should be worshipped, and He has got supreme authority and with that authority only He can forgive and judge us (Exodus 20:1-4, Psalms 103:2-3, 50:6). Jesus’ unique knowledge of the God Father and His being greater than Moses and Elijah point to His eternal existence as God the Son.
Through incarnation, Jesus became one of us. During His earthly ministry, He encountered many people who did not accept His divinity and reasonably assumed that He was Joseph’s biological son (Matthew 13:55). Because of this familiarity with His humanity, He was not able to do many miracles in some cities because to the locals He was just ‘the carpenter’s son’. Jesus’ ultimate miracle of being raised from the dead confirmed that He was God:
3 concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, 4 who was declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,…
Romans 1:3-4
Jesus’ resurrection proved that He was the Son of God. If He was born of Adam like that the rest of us who are born sinners, He would not have been able to carry our sins in His body and do away with them. In being raised from the dead, Jesus demonstrated that He was God incarnate with no sin and that He had successfully taken away our sins in His flesh and forgiven us as God since only God can forgive us from our sins.
Jesus is fully divine and also fully human. We see His humanity reflected in His incarnation & birth, His human sonship and His human limitations.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as
of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
6 ... although He existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Although He was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was born as a babe like all of us and grew up to become a man. The importance of the virgin birth is that it assures us that Jesus’ conception was indeed miraculous and not the fruit of human conception:
30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favour with
God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall
name Him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and
the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David;33 and He will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel,
“How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
Luke 1:30-35
Jesus’ human sonship is affirmed by His genealogies in Matthew 1:1-17 (Joseph’s line). Luke 3:23-38 (Mary’s line) traces Jesus’s lineage all the way back to Adam, the first man who God created out of the dust of the Earth (Genesis 2:7).
Jesus was called the Son of David by many. In Jewish culture (Jesus’ culture of origin), the title ‘Son of David’ was associated with the Messianic promise. ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ means ‘anointed one’. So no, ‘Christ’ not His last name. In the Old Testament, God promised that He would send His Christ to restore His Kingdom and to redeem the world, and His Christ would be a descendent of King David. This is why people who could discern that Jesus was the Christ called Him ‘Son of David’ (Matthew 20:29-34, 21:9, 22:41-45).
Jesus often referred to Himself as the Son of Man (Matthew 26:17, Luke 21:17, Mark 13:26). At face value, it seems like He is pointing to His humanity. However, in some of the Scriptures where He calls Himself so, He is talking about His Second Coming when He will establish in His Kingdom in a distant future. ‘Son of Man’ could therefore be a reference to His eternal existence before His incarnation as seen in an Old Testament prophecy of Daniel:
13 “I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.
14 “And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.
Daniel 7:13-14
As a man, Jesus experienced our human limitations that He never had as God the Son prior to His incarnation.
In conclusion, the truth of about Jesus’ divinity and humanity is true because the Bible tells us so. And the Bible is true because it is the Word of God. By the grace of God, we can appreciate aspects of His divinity and His humanity in the Scriptures and also in our day-to-day lives. However, as human beings who are finite, we can also struggle to fully wrap our minds around a lot of things the Bible teaches including the truth about Jesus’ nature. God gives us understanding and at the same time we also see in part due our finiteness (1 Corinthians 13:12); our limitation is an invitation to have faith in God. And thankfully, as God incarnate Jesus knows exactly what it’s like to be human. Out of fierce love for us, He became one of us, died for our sins so we could be forgiven and have a relationship with God forever.