It may seem like a simple question for believers, and even a tougher question for non-believers. We may know of or heard about Jesus Christ, but have we taken the time to know who He is? Once we know who Jesus Christ is, we can see how He exists.
When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them,
“But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 16:13-17
The question “But who do you say I am?” Can be asked of us in much the same way it was asked of the twelve disciples. So, do you know who Jesus Christ Is? I mean, really know who He is?
Well, don’t feel bad because there are many others who don’t know, and many of those don’t want to know. There are even some pastors and ministers of God’s Word who don’t know He. Now for those who want to know who Jesus Christ is, I will make a concerted effort to help you know who He is.
Throughout the ages there have been many conjectures and discussions about the Lord Jesus Christ. People have been asking, and still do, and will continue to do so until He comes back in judgement, who is this Jesus guy, and why should I care? Who is this man that claims attention of all the world? Who is this mighty man who has such an abiding place in the hearts of millions of people around the world?
There have been and will continue to be many views about Jesus. Some have said that He was a mad man, for saying the things He said, he must be insane to claim Himself to be God. Some have even gone as far as to say that He was in league with Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Then there are others who said that He was exactly what He claimed to be…Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. For those who believe Jesus is who He said He is, well know that just like Peter in our opening Scripture, that understanding came for the Father in heaven. Now, that knowledge has been to many a folk, but unlike you they refused to let that knowledge rest in their heart and take root.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10
The fear here is not that of being afraid, but that of giving reverence to God. To put it simply, it means to hear Him out, to listen carefully to what He has to say through the Word of God, that is the Bible. Isn’t that how we get to know someone? To have a conversation with them and then access what they are saying. That’s just common courtesy. But many a fool have discarded or not even bothered to find out, based on what someone else had to say about the man Jesus. God, Himself in His world asks for that common courtesy.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
Psalm 34:8
In this message I cannot tell you all about Jesus Christ. Even if I gave a message about Him every Sunday, I could not tell it all. John the apostle, the writer of the book of John wrote, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” So then, how am I going to encompass the character of Jesus Christ in this short 30 or so minutes of this message? I can do so by briefly and simply discussing the high points as we work towards answering the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
To tackle this question, we must first understand that He is a divine person. Someone who came from heaven, a godly individual.
Many critics have risen, and some from so-called Christian pulpits who declared that Jesus was not divine. They say that He was a mere man, the fairest flower of evolution, a good man, a good teacher, and maybe even a good prophet, but just a man after all. These critics pass into oblivion, while Jesus Christ, the divine Person continues to stand stronger than ever.
Okay, so where do we see or know about this divinity? His divinity is shown in His life. The Bible says that He was born of a virgin. Picture this, an angel comes from heaven to tell Mary that God is going to use her to bring His son into the world. Jesus did not have a human father. He was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that unlike normal babies who take upon the materials from the mother and father, the body of Jesus was knit together by the Holy Spirit, so that He could be born sinless. This is in keeping with the Word of God that says that anything born of the womb is born into sin, meaning that the genetic material handed down by our parents puts us in that line of sin. This is where Jesus Christ is different, no genetic material from mother of father were used, hence not being in that line of sin. To date, there has not been another birth like it. This was simply God’s method of breaking heredity. Understand this, God is not subject to any human or physical limitations…he made Adam from the dust of the earth, and Eve from a bone.
We marvel at His birth and cannot explain it without looking at the supernatural power of God. In Genesis 18:14 we have a rhetorical question from God, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” No, there is nothing too hard for God. He broke down every natural law and caused His Son to be born of a virgin.
To know who Jesus Christ is, is to know that He had a sinless character.
For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return;
when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.
1 Peter 2:21-24
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15
You may be asking yourself; how can this be true? How can I trust someone who wrote this without me seeing it myself. Well, the answer is this. The writers of the Gospels walked with Jesus and knew Him well. So, well that, they give their lives believing what they wrote. How many of you would die for a lie? The men who wrote these Scriptures knew the truth and died by the hands of men who wanted the truth to be hidden.
There has been a good man in the world, but none have been perfect like Jesus Christ. Every man that has ever lived has sinned. All the saints in history have sinned, but there was no sin in Jesus. Know that sin is the thing that causes us to be separated from God. But Jesus is the only one who had an unbroken relationship with the Father because He did not sin. No one has or ever will say, truthfully that Jesus spoke, thought, or acted sinfully. We have the word of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate just before Jesus’ crucifixion that he finds no fault in this man at all.
For you to know who Jesus Christ is, you need to know that He performed several never done miracles. The Bible records thirty-five miracles that Jesus performed. He gave sight to the blind, even to a person born blind, and the people remarked that this was a miracle that had never been done before. He restored body parts of the lame and lepers. He gave life to the dead. Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees came to Jesus and proclaimed that no man can do these miracles…except God be with him. He was right, only a divine Person could do the things Jesus did.
Know that Jesus willingly died for us. He died a sacrificial death for the world, but sadly, most of the world will not accept His sacrifice. Love is one of God’s greatest attributes, and He showed that love when He gave His only begotten Son as a sin offering for us. Jesus died, not because He wanted to, nor because He deserved to die, but because out of His great love for us that He became the solution to the sin problem that separates us from God. Jesus’ sacrificial death paid the price for the sin that entered through Adam. Jesus paid a price that we combined could never repay. One of the thieves on the cross next to Jesus, after changing his thoughts and ideas, facing death, he recognized Jesus as the Divine One dying with him when he said, “Lord, remember me when you come into paradise”. The captain of the Roman guards who oversaw the crucifixion also recognized the Divine One on the cross, after all the strange events occurred before Jesus died, when he stated “Truly, this man was the God.”
Jesus’ resurrection is the peak of His claims to divinity. Other people have been risen from the dead by the hands of another, but Jesus is the only one who raised Himself from the grave. In the old days, a Frenchman cried out, “Why will men follow Christ, and not me and my teachings?” To that someone replied, “If you will die and come back alive from the grave in three days, men will follow you. Only Jesus can do that because He conquered death and the grave because He was divine.
The last thing about the eyewitness accounts of His divinity is this, after His resurrection He stayed on the earth for forty days preaching and teaching, and at the end, right before His disciples’ eyes, ascended into heaven.
Who is Jesus Christ? To further answer this question, we now look to His own claims of divinity, claims which the people of the time thought He was insane.
I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together [b]with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
John 17:4-5
In His greatest prayer Jesus, He claimed existence with the Father in heaven before the world began. In John 1:1 Jesus claimed that before the foundations of the world were created, He was there. Jesus was present when God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” It was that image and likeness that Christ presented to the world when He was here some 2000 years ago. Now I am not taking about His physical appearance, what I am talking about is His character…that is the image and likeness of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Jesus outright claimed to be God in the flesh when He said, “He that have seen me has seen the Father.” People in trying to refute the Bible have asked me to show me God. I said sure, let’s look at the book of John, in which Jesus makes the most claims to Him being equated with God. Question, can you forgive sins? You may be able to forgive someone for something they have done to you, but no one other than God can forgive you sins so that you do not face His judgement. Well, Jesus claimed to forgive sins. He did so on many occasions. Instead of telling them you’re healed, He told them your sins are forgiven, and they were healed.
So He got into a boat, crossed over, and came to His own city. Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, “This Man blasphemes!”
But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—then He said to the paralytic,
“Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” And he arose and departed to his house.
Matthew 9:1-7
The religious leaders understood that the only One who could forgive sins was God. In healing the man by simply forgiving him for his sins, Jesus shows that He is divine in nature. Jesus forgives sins, and the proof was in the healed man, so Jesus is God. Nough said.
We talked earlier about the virgin birth of Jesus, where God created a body for Himself, so that He could tabernacle with us on earth. Matthew says they will call Him Emmanuel, which means God with us. As God the Father dwelt in the Jewish temple, so Jesus Christ dwells in a body with humanity. Jesus Christ dwelt or tabernacled with us.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became 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. Let’s look at some more proofs that Jesus Christ is God.
• In Isaiah 44:6, God is speaking, and says, “I am the first, and I am the last.” In Revelation 22:13, Jesus is speaking, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.”
• In Psalm 24 we are presented with a question, “Who is the King of glory?” and the answer comes back, “The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.” In 1 Corinthians 2:8 Paul writes that “they…crucified the Lord of glory.” In these Scriptures God and Jesus are spoken of in the same terms.
God has five definite attributes – Jesus has them all.
• God is omnipotent. We read that omnipotence is also ascribed to Jesus. While He walked this earth, He had power over demons, disease, and death, over the winds and the sea. He even knew where to catch fish, as well as telling a disciple to catch a fish and in its mouth would be money.
• God is omniscient. The woman at the well found out that Jesus knew all the secrets of her heart. Not only that, but Jesus also read the evil intents of the religious leaders. God is the only one who possesses all knowledge. From this we can say that Jesus is God.
• God is omnipresent. He is at all places at all times. Jesus tells us the same when He says that whenever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He will be in the midst. Just think of the many churches open right now in the name of Jesus, and there He is…one person in thousands, if not millions of places at the same time.
• God is eternal. Where did God come from? We don’t know because He existed before time and energy was created. In the book of Genesis 1:1, we have the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In John 1:1 we read, “In the beginning was the Word.” In Exodus, at the burning bush, Moses asked who it was that was sending Him to free his people. The reply was, “Tell them I Am has sent me.” Jesus when dealing with the religious leaders mentioned that Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Jesus coming into the world. The leaders replied with, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” To that Jesus said “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” Jesus boldly asserted that He existed before Abraham, and to top it off He said that He was God, by using personal name of I AM.
• God is immutable. This is a term that means God never changes. But we also read that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Now back to our question of the day. Who is Jesus Christ? Based on what we talked about, concluding with the five attributes of God…the answer is…Jesus Christ is God!
