Who Is Jesus? What the Whole Bible Says About Him
The Question Jesus Asked
Near the end of his ministry in Galilee, Jesus took his disciples north to the villages around Caesarea Philippi and asked them what people were saying about him. The answers they brought back were respectful. Some thought he was John the Baptist risen from the dead; others said Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Then he turned the question on the disciples themselves, and Simon Peter answered for them.
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Matthew 16:13-16
KJV
Every answer the crowds gave was a compliment, and every one fell short. Peter's answer was of another kind. He called Jesus the Christ1, the Anointed One whom God had promised, and the Son of the living God. Jesus told him that no man had taught him this; the Father in heaven had shown it to him. Matthew Henry, commenting on the passage, put the difference between the crowds and Peter in one sentence: "It is possible for men to have good thoughts of Christ, and yet not right ones, a high opinion of him, and yet not high enough."
People still give the crowds' answers: a good teacher, a prophet, a wise man, an example of love. Each holds something true, and none is high enough. The Bible's own answer does not begin in the Gospels. It begins in Genesis and runs to the last page of Revelation, and it can be followed in Scripture's own words: where he was promised, who he is, what he did, where he is now, and what he will yet do.
Promised from the Beginning
The first promise of a Saviour was spoken on the day sin entered the world. When God passed sentence on the serpent in the garden, he announced a long enmity between the serpent and the woman, and a son of the woman who would end it. The serpent would bruise his heel; he would bruise the serpent's head. A wound for the deliverer, and a deathblow for the enemy.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Genesis 3:15
KJV
From then on the promise narrows. The seed of the woman would come through Abraham, through Judah, through David. The prophet Micah named the town of his birth, Bethlehem, and in the same breath said that the ruler to come from it was one "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). Isaiah said the child to be born would be called "The mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6), and that he would be wounded for the transgressions of others (Isaiah 53:5). A ruler born in a small town who has existed from everlasting; a child who is the mighty God; a king who suffers for his people. Only one person in history answers to all of it. The main promises and their fulfilment are traced in 10 Key Prophecies About Jesus and Their Fulfillment.
Jesus read the Old Testament this way himself. On the evening of his resurrection, walking with two disciples to Emmaus, he began "at Moses and all the prophets" and expounded "in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). The Bible is one book with one central figure. Matthew Henry, writing on Peter's confession, said that God "had a church in the world from the beginning, and it was built upon the rock of the promised Seed".
The Eternal Word Made Flesh
The Gospel of John begins its account of Jesus before Bethlehem, before Abraham, before the world. It goes back to the first words of Genesis, "In the beginning", and says who was already there.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3
KJV
John calls him the Word2. The Greek term means something said, a thought put into speech, and Strong's lexicon notes that in John it names Christ himself as the Divine Expression. As a word makes known the mind of the one who speaks it, the Son makes God known. Three things are said of the Word in a single verse: he was there in the beginning, he was with God, and he was God. He is distinct from the Father, yet he is not a second God or a lesser one. All things were made by him; he himself was never made.
Then John says what no one could have guessed.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
KJV
The eternal Word became a man, and he did not stop being God to do it. Matthew Henry wrote on this verse: "when made flesh, he ceased not to be the Word of God." The Son took a human body and a human soul and lived among the people he had made. He spoke of his own eternity plainly: "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). That saying and the others like it are gathered in The "I AM" Sayings of Jesus in John's Gospel, and the whole teaching of God becoming man is set out in The Doctrine of the Incarnation: God Became Man.
True God
The apostles, writing to the young churches, said the same thing in their own words. Paul wrote to the Colossians that the Son is the image of the God no one can see, and that everything in heaven and on earth was made by him and for him.
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
"Firstborn" here does not mean the first thing God created; the next verse rules that out, since all things were created by him. In Scripture the firstborn is the heir, first in rank, and Hebrews calls the Son the one God has "appointed heir of all things" (Hebrews 1:2). A chapter later Paul says it without any figure at all: in him "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9).
The letter to the Hebrews opens on the same note.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Hebrews 1:1-3
KJV
God once spoke through the prophets, a piece at a time. In the Son he has spoken his fullest and final word. The Son is the brightness of God's glory, as light is the shining of the sun, and the exact image of his being. He made the worlds, and he holds them up now by his word. Jesus said the same of himself: "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9).
The disciples drew the conclusion. When Thomas saw the risen Jesus, he said to him, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28), and Jesus received the words as the faith he had been waiting for. The word for Lord3 means one supreme in authority. It could be a courteous "sir", and the KJV renders it "God" as well as "Lord"; set beside "my God" on Thomas's lips, there is no doubt which he meant. The evidence is gathered in full in The Deity of Christ: Biblical Evidence.
True Man
Scripture is just as plain that Jesus is a real man. He was "made of a woman, made under the law" (Galatians 4:4). He grew up: he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52). He grew tired on the road and sat down by Jacob's well (John 4:6). At the grave of his friend Lazarus, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). He was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). His humanity was no disguise.
Paul holds both truths together in the passage that follows the Son from heaven down to the cross.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
He was in the form of God and equal with God. He took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. He did not trade the first for the second; he added the second to the first. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who was taken to Rome to die for his faith around AD 108, wrote to the church at Ephesus: "There is one Healer, of flesh and spirit, begotten and not begotten, in the flesh made God, in death true life, both of Mary and of God, first passible then impassible: Jesus Christ our Lord." Each pair sets the Lord's manhood beside his Godhead. He was born of Mary, yet as God he never had a beginning. He is God come in the flesh. He is life itself, and he died. He was able to suffer (that is what "passible" means) in his mortal body, and he is beyond all suffering now that he is risen.
This has been the church's confession from the first: one Person, fully God and fully man, the two natures neither mixed together nor pulled apart. Because he is man, he could stand in our place and die. Because he is God, his death could save. Paul calls him the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). His manhood is set out in The Humanity of Christ: Biblical Evidence, and the union of the two natures, with the term theologians use for it, in The Hypostatic Union: Fully God and Fully Man.
The Christ, the Son of the Living God
"Christ" is not a surname. It is a title. The Greek word means anointed, and it stands for the Hebrew Messiah4, which the lexicon defines as an anointed one, usually a person consecrated to God's service such as a king or a priest, and specifically the Messiah. In Israel, God set apart priests, kings and prophets by anointing: Aaron the priest (Leviticus 8:12), David the king (1 Samuel 16:13), Elisha the prophet (1 Kings 19:16). The Christ is the one in whom all three offices meet.
Matthew Henry, on Peter's confession, called him "the great Prophet, Priest, and King of the church; the true Messiah promised to the fathers". As prophet he speaks God's word, as priest he offers the sacrifice and prays for his people, and as king he rules them.
His personal name carries his mission. Jesus5 is the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua6, a name built from the LORD's own name and the verb to save. The angel told Joseph why the child must be given it: "thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Peter's other phrase, "the Son of the living God", says that his relation to the Father is unlike anyone else's; John calls him "the only begotten of the Father". The name Jesus used most often for himself was "the Son of man", which points back to Daniel's vision of one like the Son of man who receives an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14). More of his names are explained in 10 Names of Jesus and What They Mean.
What He Came to Do
Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to his Father, and he spent it serving others. Matthew sums up his work in Galilee: he went about "teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people" (Matthew 4:23). Peter, preaching to the first Gentiles who believed, said that he "went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him" (Acts 10:38). He taught with authority, forgave sins, stilled storms and raised the dead.
Yet he said himself that his life was aimed at his death. He came "to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). John the Baptist pointed to him at the start: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). On the cross he bore the penalty that sinners owed; Peter wrote that he "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). Paul says that God made peace "through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). That was the heel bruised in Genesis 3:15, and on the same day the serpent's head was crushed.
Paul gives the heart of the gospel in a few lines, the message he had received and handed on to the churches.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
He died, was buried, and rose again on the third day, as the Scriptures had said. His resurrection was bodily. The tomb was empty, and the risen Lord showed the disciples his hands and his feet, telling them that "a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have" (Luke 24:39); then he ate in front of them (Luke 24:43). He was seen "of above five hundred brethren at once" (1 Corinthians 15:6). Paul calls him "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:18), the first of a harvest that will include all his people. Ignatius, writing to the church at Smyrna, held to this against those who said the Lord's body had only seemed real: "I know that He was possessed of a body not only in His being born and crucified, but I also know that He was so after His resurrection, and believe that He is so now." The evidence is set out in The Resurrection of Jesus.
Where He Is Now
For forty days after he rose, Jesus showed himself to his disciples and spoke to them of the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). Then, on "the mount called Olivet" (Acts 1:12), he was taken up before their eyes, and "a cloud received him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9). He did not leave his human nature behind. The same Jesus, in the same body, now raised and glorified, sits at the Father's right hand. Hebrews says that after he "had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12). Before he went, he told the eleven, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18).
He reigns as king, and he ministers as priest. His sacrifice is finished; his care for his people goes on without a break.
Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
Hebrews 7:25
KJV
Paul asks who can condemn those for whom Christ died, and answers by pointing to the risen Lord at God's right hand, "who also maketh intercession for us" (Romans 8:34). A man who knows weakness from the inside now pleads for his people in heaven. His present reign is described in The Ascension of Christ and His Current Session.
He Will Come Again
As the disciples stood watching the sky, two men in white apparel stood by them with a promise.
Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
Acts 1:11
KJV
The same Jesus will come back, as visibly as he went. He had promised it himself: "I will come again, and receive you unto myself" (John 14:3). John saw it in Revelation: "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him" (Revelation 1:7). He will raise the dead, judge the world in righteousness and make all things new. Then the end of Paul's passage in Philippians will be fulfilled to the letter: "every knee should bow", and "every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10-11).
Faithful Christians have read the order of the last events in different ways, especially the thousand years of Revelation 20 and how they stand to his coming. Every one of those readings holds what Scripture plainly says: he will come personally, bodily and visibly, and of his kingdom there will be no end. The promise is explained further in The Second Coming of Christ.
"But Whom Say Ye That I Am?"
Scripture's answer is one Person, seen from many sides. He is the Seed promised in Eden; the Word who was with God and was God; the Son who made the worlds; the man born at Bethlehem who grew tired and wept; the Christ, anointed as prophet, priest and king; the Lamb who died for sins; the Lord who rose bodily from the grave; the High Priest who intercedes at God's right hand; and the King who will come again. John wrote his Gospel for this very reason: "that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name" (John 20:31).
When Peter answered, Jesus told him the answer had not come from his own wit: "flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 16:17). To know who Jesus is, is a gift God gives, and he gives it through his Word. Some weeks after the resurrection, on the day of Pentecost, the same Peter who had denied him three times stood up in Jerusalem and said it to the whole city: "God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36).
Matthew Henry said of Jesus' question that it is one "we should every one of us be frequently putting to ourselves", and he added: "It is well or ill with us, according as our thoughts are right or wrong concerning Jesus Christ." The crowds at Caesarea Philippi had opinions about Jesus. Peter had an answer. The question has not changed, and it still comes to every reader in Jesus' own words.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
Matthew 16:15
KJV