who is Jesus and why does it matter?

In my essay what is God like I’ve asserted that we are required to worship but are in fact incapable of it. That’s why it matters who Jesus is.

In the same way we know God as father and creator, we get some sense of who Jesus is through familiar metaphors. We know him as prophet, priest, and king.

Prophet (Acts 3:19-26) is the easy one. Every one believes Jesus was a prophet, although not everyone gets the image of an Old Testament prophet, the kind that might overthrow the tables of the money changers and pronounce woes on the Pharisees. Generally we like our prophets a little tamer than that, speaking clever platitudes and reminding us of our moral duty as opposed to the work of Biblical prophets who called down the judgment of God.

Priest (Hebrews 3:1) is a little harder to swallow. Priests do things for us that we can’t do for ourselves, and that’s a little humbling. But being a priest in Jesus day had nothing to do with hearing confession. It was a bloody business that involved slaughtering animals all day. No room for PETA in that calling. Thinking about sin and its consequences is hard work, and our understanding of priest is extremely shallow compared to what Christ did as our high priest.

And the king thing? We have no idea at all, even though Christ as sovereign Lord is where an understanding of who Jesus is must lead us in the end. This isn’t about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Henry, bound by Parliament and centuries of human reason and regulation. We’re talking Darius, with power of life and death, as less than a choir boy. Ultimately Jesus is the King (Revelation 17:14, 19:16) before whom the heavens and the earth will melt.

No, we don’t really get that. Not unless we understand that Jesus is God. Once we get that settled, the rest falls into place.

the deity of Christ

He is also man, wholly man. But it’s the deity thing we struggle with, even though he asserted it often and the early church affirmed it emphatically.

In John 8:23-24 he tells the Pharisees: “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

He forgives sins (Mark 2:5), says his words have the authority of Scripture (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-28), claims the angels and the kingdom of God as his own (Matthew 118:41), and informs the religious leaders that he existed before Abraham (John 8:58).

He also says to see him is to see the Father (John 10:30) and to know him is to know the Father (John 14:7-9). At his trial he is charged with claiming to be the Son of God (not a son of God) and has plenty of opportunity to clear up the confusion if it were not true. (In both John 5 and 10 we see that the Jews understood he was claiming to be God and tired to stone him.)

In other places he claims power over life, that God has given him all judgment, and that his work and the Father’s work are inseparable. If he wasn’t God he was mad.

No wonder then that John tells us the Word was God and came to dwell among us (John 1). According to the writer of Hebrews “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word (Hebrews 1:3).”

In Colossians 1:15 Paul says,

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

The church fathers also affirm his deity, so that by 325 A.D. the Nicene creed summarizes it in this way:

“We believe in God the Father All-sovereign, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all the ages, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into being.”

the humanity of Christ

But what about the man thing? That also matters. He is the Son of Man, and of Mary. He walked, he talked, he got hungry and tired. He wept and had compassion. He was tempted and nailed to a cross, where he died.

Not an ordinary man, of course. But completely man. Yet

“being in the form of God, [he] did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5-8).”

That’s why it matters. He becomes our mediator. Growing up in a village, working in a carpenter’s shop, hanging out in the marketplace, he was not a “high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).”

And he becomes our Savior. We’ll get to that.

And King too.

Don’t forget that part.