Jesus

Every page on this site eventually points here. Jesus of Nazareth is not one figure among many that Scripture discusses; He is the reason Scripture exists at all, the Person the whole story has been building toward from its opening pages.

The Old Testament announces Him centuries before His birth. Isaiah names the coming child 'The mighty God' and 'The Prince of Peace' seven hundred years early (Isaiah 9:6). Micah pinpoints His birthplace as the small town of Bethlehem, and then says something remarkable about His origin: His 'goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting' (Micah 5:2). A child born in time, and yet eternal: the Old Testament already holds both truths together before the New Testament ever explains how.

Matthew and Luke tell the story of that birth. His name itself carries the announcement: He shall be called Emmanuel, 'God with us' (Matthew 1:23). The angel who announces His birth to shepherds calls Him 'a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord' (Luke 2:11): three titles stacked together, each one claiming something enormous about who has just been born in an ordinary stable.

John's Gospel goes further back than Bethlehem. Before the world existed, John writes, 'the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John 1:1). Then comes the turn that changes everything: 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John 1:14). The eternal Son did not simply visit humanity from a safe distance. He became one of us, fully, while remaining fully God.

Jesus made claims about Himself that no ordinary teacher would dare to make. He said no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6): not one way among several, but the way. When Peter was asked directly who Jesus was, he answered plainly: 'the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matthew 16:16), and Jesus did not correct him. He accepted worship. He forgave sins. He said that whoever had seen Him had seen the Father.

Paul, writing to churches who had never met Jesus in the flesh, describes Him as 'the image of the invisible God' (Colossians 1:15): the One through whom, and for whom, everything was created. Hebrews calls Him 'the express image' of God's own person, the exact representation, upholding the entire universe by the power of His word (Hebrews 1:3). These are not poetic exaggerations from admiring followers. They are careful theological claims from people willing to die for their accuracy.

His life did not end at the cross, though the cross is where the weight of the whole Bible's story of sin and sacrifice comes to rest. Hebrews says He endured it 'for the joy that was set before him' (Hebrews 12:2): looking past the suffering to what it would accomplish. Three days later the tomb was empty, and the risen Jesus could say of Himself, 'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending... the Almighty' (Revelation 1:8).

Every subject explored on this site (Israel, judgment, joy, the judges, even the silent centuries between the testaments), eventually runs into this same Person. That is not an accident of arrangement. It is the shape of the Bible itself, which Jesus said was written about Him from the beginning.