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Bible Studies Core Christian Beliefs
Who Is Jesus?
The central question of the New Testament, and the one Jesus put to his own followers.
The gospels put this question to their readers deliberately, and Jesus puts it to his own followers directly. It is the question the New Testament is organised around.
What you’ll explore
- 01 “Who do you say that I am?”
- 02 What the gospels show him doing
- 03 The claims he made about himself
- 04 Fully God and fully human
- 05 What historians can and cannot establish
- 06 Why the church calls him Lord
- 07 What that means for an ordinary Tuesday
“Who do you say that I am?”
Read Mark 8:27-30
Jesus asks first what people are saying, then makes it personal. Peter’s answer — you are the Christ — is accepted and immediately followed by an instruction to tell nobody, and then by the first prediction of the cross. Getting the title right and understanding what it means turn out to be two different things.
What the gospels show him doing
Read Mark 1:21-45; Luke 7:36-50
He teaches with an authority people remark on, heals, casts out, touches a leper, and forgives a woman’s sins to the scandal of the room. The pattern is worth noticing before the titles: what he does is what raises the question of who he is.
The claims he made about himself
Read John 8:56-59; Mark 2:5-12; Matthew 11:27
He says "before Abraham was, I am" and his hearers pick up stones, which tells you how they understood it. He forgives sins, which the scribes rightly note is God’s prerogative. Christians hold that these claims are what they appear to be; the reaction of his first audience is at least evidence that they were heard that way.
Fully God and fully human
Read John 1:14; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 4:15; Mark 4:38
The Word became flesh; in him the fullness of deity dwells; he was tempted as we are; he slept in a boat in a storm because he was tired. The church settled on holding both without dissolving either — the definition agreed at Chalcedon in 451 — after several serious attempts to simplify it in one direction or the other.
What historians can and cannot establish
Read Luke 3:1-2
Luke anchors his account in named rulers and datable years. That Jesus of Nazareth lived, taught, gathered followers, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate is accepted by nearly all historians, Christian or not. That he is God incarnate is a claim of faith — held by the church from its earliest years, and not the sort of thing historical method can settle either way.
Why the church calls him Lord
Read Philippians 2:5-11; Romans 10:9
The hymn Paul quotes has every knee bowing and every tongue confessing Jesus as Lord — language taken from Isaiah 45, where it is said of God. "Jesus is Lord" appears to be the earliest Christian confession, and in an empire that said Caesar is lord it was not a private sentiment. It is a statement about who is actually in charge.
What that means for an ordinary Tuesday
Read Colossians 3:17; Matthew 25:37-40
Paul’s conclusion from the highest Christology in his letters is to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks. Jesus locates himself among the hungry and imprisoned. The doctrine cashes out at the level of how you treat people this week.
Questions to sit with
- If Jesus asked you the Mark 8 question today, what would you actually say?
- Which half — his deity or his humanity — do you tend to quietly drop?
- Where does "Jesus is Lord" cost you something?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.