Who Is Jesus?

The eternal Son of God was sent by the Father, taking on a human nature, in order to accomplish salvation for sinful humanity in His life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

Have you ever found yourself in need of rescue? Have you ever been in a situation where your life was in the hands of another?

The doctrine of sin teaches us that our rebellion has led to sin, exile, depravity, and death—we need rescue. In a sense, we are trapped. Our lives are on the line. We are in desperate need of someone coming to our rescue. Now, with the doctrine of Christology, we turn our eyes to what that rescue requires and how it is accomplished. More precisely, we turn our eyes to a Person, able to save, willing to lay down His life for ours, to bring us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

When we speak of the good news of our salvation, the gospel, we speak often of the cross of Christ. But the significance of the crucifixion emerges as it is set in its context. Before we can understand the significance of that death, we must first meditate on the significance of the life that preceded it. Before we can speak of the forgiveness of sin, we must speak of the person who made forgiveness of sin possible. Before we can treasure the cross, we must treasure the incarnation.

The gospel is not just what Jesus came to do but who Jesus is. Christianity centers around not only what Jesus accomplished (our salvation), but on the one who accomplished it (the Son of God incarnate). The word incarnate means “embodied in flesh.” But the Christian concept of incarnation includes not just the taking on of a body but of a human nature. In other words, Jesus possessed a human body, soul, mind, and will.

In the incarnation, the eternal Son of God is sent by the Father to take to Himself a human nature, in order to accomplish salvation on our behalf. The Son of God assumes, or adds to Himself, a human nature. This act makes Jesus Christ the God-Man. Two natures, one divine and one human, in one person.

Basic Christology, or the doctrine of Christ, is: Jesus is fully God. Jesus is fully human, yet without sin. Jesus is one person.

This holds significant impact for our understanding of the gospel because our salvation is accomplished by the only person who has ever lived who is fully God and fully man. Because of the incarnation, Jesus becomes the supreme and perfect revelation of God. God is exactly like Jesus. Paul tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). The author of Hebrews announces that Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s nature (Heb. 1:1–4).

That means that if you have a view of God that is inconsistent with Jesus, then you do not have a God that should be worshipped but an idol to be destroyed. God is just like Jesus. What a comfort! When we come to know Jesus, we can be confident that we have come to know God. If we want to know what God is like, we need look no further than Jesus.