Who is Jesus?
Image used with permission from The Chosen TV Series.
Christians have two ways of understanding who Jesus is. Two ways that start at very different places, but ultimately end up saying the same thing.
The first way starts with God- the God who made this universe and everything in it.
Imagine what an introduction from this God might look like; imagine this God wanted to show us what they are like. There could be messages sent to us (and Christians think this God has done that). Perhaps there might be intentional clues and hints put into the fabric of this world (and we think God has done that too).
But by far the best way for God to be fully introduced to us would be for God to genuinely become a human. Because then, if we met this God-human, we wouldn’t just be learning about God, we would actually be meeting God!
The first way Christians understand who Jesus is, is that he is God become human – Jesus is God introducing us to God’s self in a way that we can really know the God who made this universe and everything in it.
God became human
God became Human
Video used with permission from The Chosen TV Series. (S01E08)
The second way Christians understand who Jesus is starts with a human – a normal, everyday human – someone who puts his trousers on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.
This human lived at a particular time and at a particular place – being an individual human meant he had a particular culture, a particular gender, a particular body, a particular group of friends and acquaintances, and a particular name – Jesus.
But these friends and acquaintances noticed that Jesus said and did things that humans don’t do. He healed people; he controlled the wind and rain with a word; he spent time with outcasts and people that polite society rejected. And when he died, he came back alive again. Normal people don’t do that! Those around him eventually worked out that the reason for all this is that God’s Spirit was guiding and empowering him.
Jesus wasn’t just an extraordinary human, he was a human-God.
So working from the top down, Jesus is a God-human. Working from the bottom up, Jesus is a human-God.
Any way you look at it, the utterly unique thing about Jesus is that he is the meeting point between creator and creation. Jesus is not just God’s introduction to us; God is standing with us on humanity’s side, leading us back to God’s self. Everything Jesus is, said, or did is all about bringing God and humanity together.
Our Baptist faith communities exist to participate in Jesus' ongoing work of bringing God and humanity together – we refer to this as gospel renewal to people and places.
Click here to find a local church. Or if you would like to read more about Jesus, a good place to start would be an account of his life that a medical doctor wrote who lived at the same time as Jesus, the doctor’s name was Luke. The book is based on extensive research, and you can read it online here. (Luke, NLT).
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