Who Did Jesus Think He Was

To better understand the answer to this question, we need to look at Jesus both physically as well as spiritually. Mary, as the biological mother of Jesus was a direct descendent of King David by way of his son Nathan. Thus, her male children were legitimate claimants to the throne of David. The Jewish authorities never questioned this fact. Mary provided twenty-three of the forty-six pairs of chromosomes needed to create the human body. Mary’s egg in and of itself had no sin as it was not a whole person. The issue of original sin comes into the conception equation when the man or Adam, contributes his twenty-three pairs of chromosomes to complete the inception process. While Eve also sinned, the original covenant to not eat the fruit was between Adam and God. Adam was not tempted by Satan and yet still ate the fruit. He therefore received a corresponding curse from God. This curse affected both mankind and the Earth. As it relates to man, all of his offspring would inherit the cognitive propensity to sin and in doing so would receive the punishment of death, the grave and eternal spiritual separation from God. Since the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all people are now born with original sin, as the male gives all off spring a cognitive predisposition to sin. So, we are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are born sinners. We can choose not to sin but no one has ever lived a completely sin free life.

In order to break the curse, God created a second or last sin free man to be the one and only perfect human sacrifice for all the sins of mankind. This is why Jesus could not have a human father as He would have inherited the sin gene. And yet, Mary’s egg still needed twenty-three pairs of chromosomes from a male in order to create a sin free body for Jesus. Thus, it was necessary for God, through the creative power of the Holy Spirit, to provide the needed pairs of chromosomes (Luke 1:35). Jesus was not virgin born to make Him extra special. He was virgin born because it was the only way to make a body for Him that was sin free! To accomplish this, Jesus was conceived of the Holy spirit and born of a virgin (Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:27,34).

Jesus was born the exact same way all babies are born and Jesus grew up normally just like all children (Matthew 1:18; Luke 2:52). Jesus referred to Himself as Son of Man because He was in fact part man by way of Mary. But He also referred to Himself as the Son of God because God was in fact His biological father (John 8:40; I John 1:1). This is why God referred to Him as, “My only begotten human Son in whom I Am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus was never confused about who He was. He not only knew who He was, He also knew His mission on earth all before He famously met with the Temple priests. He listened to them and asked them pertinent questions as to how they derived their understandings of scripture. They in turn asked Him questions concerning Scripture and His answers astonished them in that they were founded on a depth of Scriptural knowledge unheard of coming from a 12-year-old child (Luke 2:41-50). He intentionally waited until the final days of His ministry to tell His disciples and followers of His true identity as the Son of God because He knew this title would severely complicate His ministry (Matthew 16:13-20). The religious leaders would and did see this title as blasphemous and Rome would and did see it as sedition against the Emperor. Therefore, Jesus waited until just before His third and final Passover to publicly reveal what many of His followers already knew and many more suspected (Matthew 21:7). For the majority of His ministry, Jesus wanted His followers to listen, watch and come to their own conclusion as to who He was. But there were those who wanted Him to simply tell them. By announcing His second title, He energized His followers and at the same time alienated others most notably the High Priest Caiaphas, Pilate and His disciple Judas (Matthew 16:16; Mark 8:27-30; John 4:20, 13:21-27).

Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He could feel hunger (Matthew 4:2), become thirsty (John 19:28), grow tired (John 4:6; Matthew 8:23-27; Luke 9:5-8), feel love and compassion (Matthew 9:36), weep with sadness (John 11:35), be tempted (Matthew 4:1-11; Hebrews 4:15), and display righteous anger at greedy and corrupt religious leaders (Matthew 23:13-39; John 2:13-16).  He could feel loneliness, abandonment and disappointment all brought on by his followers. But while Jesus was a physical being like all men, He was singularly different in that He was born without original sin. Jesus was free to sin but He chose not to. In order for Jesus to complete the plan of God for the salvation of mankind, His body would need to be completely Holy and without blemish so as to be fully indwelled by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this way, He was uniquely qualified in the eyes of God to serve as the only unblemished human sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. Adam was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Since the fall of Adam, all people are now born in the image of Adam and no longer God (Genesis 5:3). Now, all people are born with a spirit of the flesh not the Holy Spirit of God. That is to say, an innate passion or desire to continually experience the pleasures of the physical flesh and acquisitions of material wealth.  Jesus was born sin free in the image of God. He was born with the Eternal Spirit of the Word of God. Jesus was the Word of God made flesh. Thus He was God incarnate.

The Word of God was with God before the beginning of creation. It was the Word of God that spoke creation into existence (John 1:1-5). There was never a time that God the Father, God the Word and God the Holy Spirit did not exist. In His eternal spiritual existence, scripture tells us the Word of God spoke creation into existence. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). In Hebrew, the word God is in the plural form and the word created means something created from nothing. Stephen Hawkins stated his belief that the universe must have been created from nothing. But as a self-avowed atheist, he was unable to explain how this was possible. He went on to say that one day we will understand, and he was right. In the Bible this day is called The Day of the Lord. We then learn how the three spiritual entities worked in unison to create the physical world. “And God creator God, El Shaddai said, the Word of God spoke the following commanded, let there be light in Hebrew ‘Be light’ and there was light thru the power of the Holy Spirit” (Genesis 1:3; John 1:1-5).  Thus, the Word of God spoke the command of God and the Holy Spirit of God brought that command into existence. For reasons we do not currently know or understand, God is one entity composed of three separate, equal, unique yet supremely unified parts coexisting in perfect harmony. Thus when you see Christ, you are at the same time seeing God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. An example of this would be the rose. We focus on the flower but the flower only exists because it is in complete harmony with the leaves and stems of the plant and they are in turn in complete harmony with the root system. Each of the three parts plays a vital role yet none is more important than the other in order to produce a rose. Without any one part, the rose ceases to exist. The Triune Godhead consist of God the Creator or Father, God the Word or Jesus the Christ and God the Holy Spirit or the Power of God. Perhaps another way to think of the Godhead is God the Father reveals a fully conceptualized idea, God the Word speaks the command to bring about the idea of God and the Holy Spirit initiates the command to its full fruition. In much the same way a person first has an idea, then decides to act on the idea and their hands perform the work in order to being the idea to a reality. While this concept of a Triune Godhead is hard for the human mind to fully grasp, in many ways this is as it should be. It makes sense that an All-powerful, Omnipotent, Eternal God would exist in a state that His creations cannot currently fully understand. But He has made His essence clearly known to us in Scripture. There are dozens of examples in Scripture where the Triune Godhead reveal themselves for us to contemplate as best we can with our current limited capacity to fully comprehend.

God the Word or Jesus, existed Eternally and in perfect unison with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. At the moment of Jesus’ birth, the Spirit of the Word of God for the first and last time in all Eternity, left the Throne or right hand of God in order to indwell a tiny sin free physical human body created especially by God for a very special purpose. As one might expect, the Spirit of the Word of God was given a royal escort from the Throne of God down to earth by an entourage of an innumerable army of angelic host. They came down from heaven, through the kingdom of the prince of this world or Satan, down to the land of Israel and into a stable in Bethlehem where the Spirit that spoke creation into existence indwelled the body of a sinless infant named Jesus. And apparently, since this heavenly host was already in the area, they went out into the grazing fields that surrounded the village of Bethlehem and appeared to a camp of shepherds to announce the miracle of what had just happened. And the shepherds looking up, literally saw for one brief moment in time, Heaven and Earth touch. The Word of God had become flesh and now dwelt with man. The world would never be the same again. This event was the first part of the shadow prophecy known today as the annual Jewish Feast of Sukkot or God dwells with mankind. Part two of this prophecy will occur with the Second Coming of Christ to take full possession of what He paid for with His life … the Earth.

Jesus claimed to be one with God the Father (John 5:18), called Himself the Son of God (Matthew 26:63-64). As the Word of God in the flesh, He spoke with authority on behalf of God (Matthew 7:29). As such, He continually confounded the brightest  Jewish scholars starting at the age of twelve (Luke 2:42). They were stunned at His depth of knowledge concerning Scripture.  Yet, no doubt perturbed at His youthful audacity to speak on the things of God with such authority when Jewish scholars had been debating these very issues for a thousand years. During His ministry, He performed thousands of miracles in rural and urban Israel as well as in the temple courts. He instantly healed every type of ailment from physical deformities to mental illness, leprosery and even demon possession. He is still today the only person to have ever been documented as having given sight to a person born blind. And this case was confirmed by the Jewish temple authorities (John 9:1-12). He raised three people from the dead. The first was a little girl only recently deceased. The second was a young man dead for a day and the third was His close friend Lazarus who was dead and had been entombed four days (John 11:38). He was worshipped by men and angels (Matthew 14:33). His name is synonymous with the other members of the Trinity (II Corinthians 13:14). All the fullness of Diety dwelt existed in Him (Colossians 2:9). Finally, and most importantly, God the Father called Him, “My only begotten human Son in whom I Am a name for God well pleased” (Baptism-Matthew 3:13-17 & Transfiguration-Matthew 17:1-8). The Book of John explains the relationship of His humanity and His Diety and how these two separate parts of His being are inextricably intertwined (John 1:14, 10:28-30).

In order to bring salvation to mankind, The Word of God had to become a man to fully represent the human race. Jesus also had to be born sin free in order to be the unblemished sacrificial lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29,36). And finally, He had to live among men, know their successes and failures and yet still voluntary sacrifice His life on their behalf.  We know with absolute assurance that God approved of the life Jesus led, His ministry and His sacrifice on the cross in that He raised Him from the dead. Think of it this way. If a person commits a crime, is judged and convicted of his crime and is imprisoned, how do we know when they have paid their debt for their crimes? The answer is when they are released from imprisonment. Jesus who committed no crime, allowed Himself to become sin. He was judged by God, convicted, died and was imprisoned in Sheol just as all men were at that time. But, having paid the sin debt of all mankind for all time, God released Him from prison and He arose from the dead. So it was with Christ on resurrection Sunday and so it is now with all who are in Christ (Ephesians 4:8).