Who is Jesus - really?
The eternal Son of God, who became a man to save us and bring us to God - and who is alive now.
Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, who became man to save us and bring us to God. When Jesus asked His disciples who they believed He was, Peter answered:
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Christ means the Messiah - the promised, anointed King.
His existence did not begin in Bethlehem.
John calls Him “the Word” and explains:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
The One who made you is the One who came for you.
Jesus’ own words point to His eternal, divine identity.
When God revealed Himself to Moses, He said:
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Jesus later declared:
Before Abraham was, I am.
His words echo God’s self-revelation to Moses. The next verse records His hearers’ response:
Then took they up stones to cast at him
On another occasion they said plainly why:
The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
They recognised it as a claim to be God. He did not take it back. And after He rose from the dead, one of His own disciples said this to His face:
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Jesus received that confession as belief. And He spoke a blessing over those who would believe without seeing. That blessing is open to you, if you will believe.
The eternal Son entered our world as a human being.
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.
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Jesus is truly God and truly human. In Him, God came near enough to be seen, heard, and known. This is how He treated someone who came to Him:
And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
A leper was unclean and had to live apart from everyone. Jesus touched him. Scripture says He was “moved with compassion” - this is the heart of the One who became man.
He came down for you.
We did nothing to deserve His coming. He came in willing obedience to His Father:
For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
Equality with God was His by right - that is what “thought it not robbery” means: not something seized, but His own. And this is what He did with it:
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 humbled Himself. He became obedient unto death. He said why:
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit
He died, and He rose again.
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: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
He was buried, and He rose bodily from the dead. Hundreds saw Him alive, and Paul wrote this while most of them were still living. He is alive now, and says so Himself:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore
He is the way to God.
Jesus Himself said:
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
There is one way to God, and He is it. He is not shutting you out. He is telling you the way in.
And this same Jesus invites you to come to Him.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
This is who Jesus is: the eternal God, who made you, who became a man for you, who died for you and rose again, and who will in no wise cast out the one who comes to Him. He said He came to seek and to save that which was lost. The next page is about our sin, and why we need saving.