Who Is This Jesus?

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says…

Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, fully God, fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever present Lord.

Genesis 18:1ff.; Psalms 2:7ff.; 110:1ff.; Isaiah 7:14; Isaiah 53:1-12; Matthew 1:18-23; 3:17; 8:29; 11:27; 14:33; 16:16,27; 17:5; 27; 28:1-6,19; Mark 1:1; 3:11; Luke 1:35; 4:41; 22:70; 24:46; John 1:1-18,29; 10:30,38; 11:25-27; 12:44-50; 14:7-11; 16:15-16,28; 17:1-5, 21-22; 20:1-20,28; Acts 1:9; 2:22-24; 7:55-56; 9:4-5,20; Romans 1:3-4; 3:23-26; 5:6-21; 8:1-3,34; 10:4; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2:2; 8:6; 15:1-8,24-28; 2 Corinthians 5:19-21; 8:9; Galatians 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:20; 3:11; 4:7-10; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:13-22; 2:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; 3:16; Titus 2:13-14; Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-15; 7:14-28; 9:12-15,24-28; 12:2; 13:8; 1 Peter 2:21-25; 3:22; 1 John 1:7-9; 3:2; 4:14-15; 5:9; 2 John 7-9; Revelation 1:13-16; 5:9-14; 12:10-11; 13:8; 19:16.

The True Divinity of Christ

That Jesus is God is the cornerstone of Christianity. Second Peter 1:1 calls Jesus “our God and savior.” When Paul says, “All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13), clearly referring to Jesus (Rom. 10:9-10), he is quoting Joel 2:32, which uses the covenant name for God (translated “LORD”). Both John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16 attribute the work of creation to Jesus, which the Bible attributes to God in its first verse. Jesus claims deity when He tells the Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Sometimes the weight of His claims are lost on modern readers, but the Jews knew exactly what He was saying. For instance, John 5:18 says that the Jews sought to kill him because “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” And in Mark 2, when Jesus forgives the paralyzed man’s sin, they contest, “He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Perhaps the most direct statement of Jesus’ deity is found in John 1:1, where the Apostle writes, “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

     The clear consensus of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is more than another prophet in a long line. He is not just a good teacher. He is the eternal Lord of life. The New Testament knows no Christianity that does not see Jesus as truly divine. The person who believes the New Testament’s claim will fall on bended knee, as Thomas, and cry, “My Lord and my God!” Upon these claims, especially the claims from Jesus’ own lips, we must agree with C. S. Lewis:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.[1]

The True Humanity of Christ

Jesus’ humanity is as essential to our faith as His divinity. Jesus’ mission on earth, what He often called His “hour” (John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23; etc.), was to die on behalf of His people. Because Jesus’ work was a mediatorial work, He had to be human. He had to be human to live as our representative—fulfilling all that Adam failed to do—and to die as our representative. Though miraculously conceived by a virgin through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18), Jesus’ birth was natural (Luke 2:7). He grew in strength and understanding, just like every other boy (Lk 2:40). He grew weary (Jn 4:6), hungry (Mt 4:2), and thirsty (Jn 19:28), and He was tempted (Mat. 4:3-11; Heb. 4:15). The New Testament writers are careful to give clear attestation to Jesus’ actual physical embodiment because of a false teaching that arose in the early church. John writes in his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14), and in his first epistle, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 Jn 4:2).

     We may be tempted at this juncture to ask, “How can a man also be God?” but the reality is a man never became God. The eternal God put on flesh to complete His great rescue mission as a man. And nothing is impossible for God.

The Threefold Office of Christ

Jesus came to complete His work as a man fulfilling an office. The office is known by the names of both Messiah and Christ. These titles are from the Hebrew and Greeks words “to anoint” or “the anointed.” The three anointed offices found in the Old Testament are prophet, priest, and king. In addition to this designation, many of the predictive prophecies of the Christ are connected to one of these offices. For example, Moses promises a prophet like him (Deut. 18:15), a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps. 110:4), and a future David to come (Hos. 3:5).

Prophet

A prophet is one who speaks on behalf of God to His people. A regular refrain of the prophets is “thus says the Lord” because they were God’s mouthpiece. Moses was the most significant Old Testament prophet because God used him to deliver His people from Egypt—the single most significant event in their national history—and to give them the Law—the centerpiece of God’s revelation before Jesus. As the prophet like Moses, Jesus both reveals God and delivers His people from a greater Egypt. Paul says in Colossians that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and the author of Hebrews writes, “He is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). Further drawing upon Jesus’ relationship to Moses, John writes in his prologue, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17). But Jesus did more than reveal like Moses; He also delivered like Moses. When the angel visits Joseph to announce Jesus’ birth, he declares, “he will save his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). Jesus is the greater deliverer, not from Rome as many would have suspected, but from the great eternal oppressor: sin. By the shedding of His own blood, Jesus delivered all who would call upon Him from death to life, from orphanhood to the family of God, and from darkness into light. He is the Prophet like Moses.

Priest

The priest’s primary function is to atone for sin. In atoning for sin, they are doing a mediatory work of intercession as well. As our great high priest, Jesus bears our sins once and for all. Hebrews 9:12 draws on the Day of Atonement when the high priest would have entered into the holy of holies to atone first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people (though Christ had no sin to atone for): “he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” There are two major distinctions between Christ’s priesthood and the temporal priests. First, Jesus’ redemption is not annual but eternal. And second, where the priest offered the blood of animals, Jesus served as the sacrificial Lamb as well. But Jesus’ priestly work is not limited to the days of His flesh. Today, according to Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25, Jesus continues His work of intercession. Dane Ortlund has written about Christ’s intercessory work:

If conversion so changed us that we never sinned again, we would not need Christ’s intercessory work. We would only need his death and resurrection to pay for our pre-conversion sins. But he is a comprehensive Savior. His present intercessory work applies his past atoning work moment-by-moment before the Father as we move through life desiring to please the Lord but often failing.[2]

Praise be to God that today we have an advocate (1 John 2:1), a great high priest who cares for and has identified with us.

King

Jesus is “the ruler of kings on earth” (Rev. 1:5). He is the root of Jesse (Isa. 11:10; Rev. 22:16), the Son of David who ever occupies his throne (2 Sam. 7:16), and the rock cut out by no human hand whose kingdom is everlasting (Dan. 2:44). As David was the great champion of Israel against Goliath, Jesus is our Champion who has defeated our foe, the devil. The kingship of Jesus, though veiled at His first coming, will be the undeniable theme of His return. On that day, the angel will proclaim, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Mat. 28:18), though “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8). One day, the sovereignty of our Lord, as well as His working throughout all history, will be apparent.

The Work of Jesus

We get a purpose statement of Jesus’ ministry in a couple of different places in the Scripture. In Luke 19:10, Jesus says that He came to “seek and to save the lost,” and in 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” The way that Jesus completed His mission is through His death and resurrection. By His death, He atoned for sin once and for all, and by His resurrection, He defeated death. Jesus predicts His own death and resurrection frequently throughout His earthly ministry. In Mark alone, He foretells His death and resurrection three times in three chapters (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33).

Jesus died once for all in our place, the atonement for sin (PSA; Heb. 9:12; 1 John 4:). He arose on the third day, defeating death for us, signaling that God has accepted His sacrifice, and validating all of His claims. He ascended, pouring out gifts (Eph. 4:7-11). He is now seated at the right hand of glory (Heb. 1:3), ever interceding for us (Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34). One day, He will return to make all things new (Rev. 21:5; 22:20).

[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 56.

[2] Dane Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 31.