Was Jesus Christ really fully God? 

How can He also be fully Man??

The incarnation: God eternal inside a normal, human body. God’s perfect spirit chose to be clothed in the flesh and blood he created. What a mind-blowing mystery! He spent time living as one of us only two thousand years ago, in Roman-occupied Palestine, in a little Jewish family. Jesus Christ wasn’t just the ultimate human, mixed in with some sinful weakness and selfish tendencies. He was God himself! In his human nature he had the capability to give in to the same temptations we face, but he chose to love, obey and honor God with every thought and action, and he chose to use his time amongst us humans to reveal who our heavenly Father really is.

I’ve heard teenagers debate whether Christians just invented this nice historical character to create an ideal of what we all aspire to be, or whether Christians ascribed strange divine qualities to an ordinary bloke. If you’re interested, have a look into the historical evidence, which far outnumbers even the sources documenting Cesar's life! I’ve heard Jews claim nowadays that Jesus was a good rabbi who taught the Law accurately, but who was a magician imbued with demonic powers! How can someone be good and evil at the same time? Please read through his teachings, and assess for yourself whether his character and conduct match up with his claims.

He claimed to be the Son of God, and even Yahweh Himself. He claimed to be the Jews’ Messiah, whom the Jewish prophets had declared would be born to a virgin, from a family descending from King David, who would bring peace and prosperity to Israel. He prophesied that he would be beaten, killed, and that he would then come back to life after three days. He also said that his followers would be hated and killed. How awkward! There’s no way that you would convincingly invite people into such circumstances, unless you really believed it, or you had evil mass-suicide desires!

Jesus was the kindest man who ever walked this planet. Just look at his compassion for mothers who lose their sons and how he gave value to despised prostitutes; look at his passion to always lift up the poor and downtrodden, and his generosity to keep healing the sick and delivering the demon-oppressed, even when he was so tired himself! You can see how human he was in how he, too, got hungry, thirsty, peopled-out, sad, frustrated.

In all this humanity, he lived in a totally supernatural way, and empowered others to do the same! I’m not talking about floating on clouds and issuing lightning bolts from his hands, but he prayed, stayed close to God, and worked miracles with the power of God’s Spirit in him! He did the most amazing physics-defying wonders, like walking on water, and multiplying food for thousands of people, and he invited his followers to join in! He was no ordinary man, and yet he showed us what life could be like with God.

Personally, the event in his life that so strikes me about his complete divinity and his complete humanity was his death on a Roman cross. The most humiliating and agonizing form of torture known to man - this is not something you’d agree to lightly! This man who lived such a stunning, perfect life surrendered to those who wanted to kill him for their own gain. Even when he was hanging there, bleeding and in excruciating pain, he still reached out to others in forgiveness - even the guilty thief who was crucified next to him.

The choice that Jesus made to die to take the blame and punishment for selfish people like you and me leaves me speechless. I get so easily offended when someone insults me or accuses me, and yet Jesus took all of this ridicule and injustice on himself. He absorbed into himself our heavenly Father’s anger against our sin, and he offered himself as a target for attack from demons instead of us. On this day, satan - the father of lies, and the one who has an evil hold on this world - thought he’d won.

When I look at this willing sacrifice, I can say that only God himself could love like that. And yet, if it was simply God making a sovereign, generous statement to wipe our debts to him, I would find it hard to relate to Jesus. If Jesus did not know by experience the deepest sorrows, temptations, and humiliations that we go through, I don’t know whether I would trust him as much to pour out my heart and reveal the darkest parts of my nature to him.

What happened after the cross gives me the utmost hope! Jesus' dead body was buried in a sealed tomb, with guards stationed outside. However, after three days of apparent silence, he got up and left that tomb! He had a completely new body, and went around visiting hundreds of people, so that they would believe that he is God, and that everything he told them was true! If he was just a man who had slept three nights, how could he walk through walls, and appear and disappear? You can’t do that with a normal human body, especially a bloody, crucified one! He wasn’t just a ghost: he ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his friends on numerous occasions!

As I see he’s also quite obviously God, I can also trust him to answer really impossible prayers that need divine intervention. Eyewitnesses saw him ascend into heaven before their very eyes - it sounds crazy, but this event drew hundreds and thousands of local people to lead transformed lives, believing in His divinity even unto their own martyred deaths. And millions have been doing the same every year since then.

He promised that he’s coming back to be our King, and that we’ll recognize him! He’s kept his resurrected human body, because he so loves humans and he wants to be with us forever! I’ve heard so many real-life stories of people seeing him in the flesh, even in the last few years - two of my good friends have! This man is amazing! This God is mind-blowingly loving, and all I can do now is offer my little life to be his. 

How will you respond?