Who Is Jesus? Part 8

Who Is Jesus? Part 8
Thursday, January 29, 2026 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / Thought for Today / Truth telling

Who is Jesus? As we have discovered throughout the series, Jesus is both fully God and fully man. It is vital for our salvation that Jesus be both fully God and fully man.

If Jesus is only one or the other, He cannot be our Savior. If He were only divine, He never became one of us, He was never tempted—as we are—in all things, yet without sin. If Jesus were only divine, He never truly died on the cross for our sins. That was a view some of the ancient Gnostics held: Jesus only appeared to be crucified. If Jesus is only divine, we are still dead in our sins, unredeemed.

On the other hand, if Jesus is only human, we are no better off. If Jesus was merely human, he’d have no divine, direct connection with the true and Living God. Even if under those circumstances he lived a sinless life, we would not be redeemed, we would not be saved. According to the Law, he would in essence only have saved himself. He’d have been righteous, but that would be of no direct help to any of us. All of us struggle with sin, every one of us have sinned. None of us are righteous.

That Jesus is merely human is the view the other world religions take. Islam in particular is direct that Jesus is not God, The Islamic Jesus, Isa, even says as much. This false Jesus becomes an example for all of us to follow. We too, if we try hard enough, can live a sinless life like he did. Through our own efforts, we can achieve perfection.

That is a biblical lie. The truth is: we cannot save ourselves. Our sin is against the infinite holy God. We are finite. Yes, other religions offer their own view of some sort of “god” or “gods”, “gods” we can connect with. But those “gods” are not the true God, the God who describes Himself at great length in the Bible. As Scripture declares, those “gods” are false demonic manifestations.

Thus, only by being both fully God and fully human can Jesus become the bridge between us and the Holy Living God. By being both, Jesus made a way for us. Through his death, we are forgiven; through his resurrection we have a guaranteed eternal future and hope.

There is one “catch”: we must accept Jesus’s death for our sins, we must believe in him. Jesus offers us the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, but a gift can be refused. And we’re not talking the Christmas socks with the blinking lights from a crazy uncle (a gift one would like to refuse): we’re talking the offer of eternal life.

The sad thing is, most people refuse God’s gift. The growing teaching—one I dealt with in my first book—of Christian universal salvation, is a lie. Only those who accept Christ will be saved. If someone lives like “hell”, barring their repentance, their destiny will be eternal hell.

We worship the true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus truly is our Savior, born of Mary, human, as we celebrated this past Christmas, but also truly and fully God.

Philippians 2:5–11 (NAU): Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

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