Jesus of Nazareth

Life and work

Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who "became flesh and made his dwelling among us" so that God himself might enter human history in a real human body (John 1:1, 14). He was born, according to Matthew and Luke, of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem near the end of the reign of Herod the Great — a miraculous conception that was itself the sign that this child was "Immanuel," God with us (Matthew 1:22-23; Luke 1:26-38). Luke records shepherds visited by an angel on the night of his birth (Luke 2:8-20), while Matthew records magi from the East following a star to worship him, prompting Herod's massacre of infant boys in Bethlehem and the family's flight to Egypt (Matthew 2:1-18). In taking a human body, the eternal Son also took on real human growth and dependence, raised in the Galilean village of Nazareth by Mary and her husband Joseph; the only childhood episode recorded is a visit to the Jerusalem temple at age twelve, where he was already found discussing Scripture with the religious teachers (Luke 2:41-51).

Jesus began his public ministry around age thirty, baptized by his relative John the Baptist in the Jordan River — an event all four Gospels describe as accompanied by the Father's voice from heaven and the Spirit descending like a dove (Matthew 3:13-17), one of the New Testament's clearest pictures of the Trinity: the Son standing in the water, the Spirit resting on him, and the Father speaking over him. He then spent forty days fasting in the wilderness, genuinely hungry and genuinely tempted by Satan, yet he did not sin — he is a high priest who can sympathize with human weakness because he was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin (Matthew 4:1-11; Hebrews 4:15). He then gathered twelve apostles, drawn mostly from working Galilean fishermen and tradesmen, along with a wider circle of disciples that included women who supported his ministry financially (Luke 8:1-3).

His central message announced the arrival of "the kingdom of God" — God's own reign breaking into the world in his person, reordering human life around love of God and neighbor and reversing worldly status, so that the poor, the mourning, and the persecuted are called blessed (Matthew 5:1-12). He taught in parables — short, vivid stories of sowing seed, lost sheep, and a prodigal son welcomed home — and he taught as one bearing his own authority, not merely relaying someone else's (Matthew 7:28-29). The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is the fullest single collection of his ethical teaching, and it consistently presses past outward religious observance toward the transformation of the heart, because the one giving it is also the giver of the law he came to fulfill (Matthew 5:17).

The Gospels record Jesus performing miracles that only God could rightly claim: healing the blind, lame, and leprous with a word, casting out demonic spirits, calming a storm on the Sea of Galilee with a rebuke (Mark 4:35-41), feeding a crowd of five thousand from a few loaves and fish (Mark 6:30-44), and raising the dead, most dramatically his friend Lazarus after four days in the tomb (John 11:1-44). These were not mere displays of power but signs of who he is. And yet the one working them was, at the very same time, truly and fully man: he grew tired and slept in a boat during the storm he then calmed, sat down exhausted and thirsty at a well at midday (John 4:6), grew hungry after forty days without food (Matthew 4:2), and at Lazarus's tomb, though about to raise him, wept real tears of grief (John 11:35). This is exactly what it looks like for God the Son to take on a genuine human nature — the hypostatic union of full deity and full humanity in one person, without either nature being diminished.

Jesus repeatedly clashed with the Pharisees and other religious leaders, and the deeper offense was rarely just his handling of the Sabbath or his welcome of tax collectors and outcasts — it was his claim to forgive sins directly, his declaration that "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30), and his use of God's own covenant name for himself: "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). These were not the words of a merely wise teacher; they were claims to deity, understood as such by the people who heard them. His cleansing of the temple courts just before his final Passover, driving out the money changers, appears in all four Gospels and directly confronted the temple leadership on their own ground (Matthew 21:12-13; John 2:13-16). By this point the Gospel of John records that the chief priests and Pharisees had already resolved that he must be put to death (John 11:47-53).

After entering Jerusalem to crowds hailing him as king (Matthew 21:1-11), Jesus shared a final Passover meal with his twelve apostles, where he took the bread and the cup and named exactly what was coming: his body given, his blood poured out "for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:14-20) — the origin of the Christian practice of communion, and his own explanation of why he had come. He then withdrew to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, his soul "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," and yet submitting, "not my will, but yours be done" (Matthew 26:36-39). It is impossible to read that prayer and see anything but a real man facing real anguish — and, at the very same time, the Son knowingly walking toward the cross he had come to bear. He was arrested there after being identified by a kiss from Judas Iscariot, one of his own twelve (Matthew 26:47-50).

Jesus was tried before the Jewish council on charges of blasphemy — for claiming to be the Son of God, which was true — then handed to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who ordered his crucifixion despite finding no legal basis for the charge (Luke 23:1-25; John 19:1-16). He was crucified outside Jerusalem at Golgotha alongside two criminals and died within hours, a death the Gospel of John confirms by a soldier piercing his side (John 19:31-37). This was not a life cut short by circumstance; it was the reason he came. He lived the sinless life no other person could live, and then, in the place of sinners, bore the punishment they deserved: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53:4-6; 1 Peter 2:24; Romans 5:8). He was buried in a nearby rock-cut tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:57-60).

All four Gospels report that the tomb was found empty on the third day and that Jesus appeared alive afterward to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to the eleven remaining apostles, and — as Paul recounts — to more than five hundred people at once, most of whom were still living when he wrote (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). This was no vision or metaphor; it was a bodily resurrection, the Father's own vindication of everything Jesus had claimed, declaring him to be the Son of God in power (Romans 1:4). Forty days of resurrection appearances culminated in his ascension into heaven before his apostles' eyes, where he is now exalted, given the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Acts 1:6-11; Philippians 2:9-11). This good news — that God himself came, lived without sin, died in the place of sinners, and rose again — is the center of the Christian faith, offered freely to anyone who will call on him as Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9).

Dating

Born before Herod the Great's death in 4 BC (Matthew 2), so the birth is usually placed c. 6-4 BC — meaning the traditional BC/AD dividing line, calculated centuries later by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, was off by a few years, which is why Jesus is dated 'before Christ.' The crucifixion falls under Pontius Pilate's well-documented governorship (AD 26-36), exactly as the Gospels describe; the two serious candidates are AD 30 and AD 33 (each fitting a Friday Passover), and both have substantial evangelical support — AD 30 is followed here, with AD 33 (defended in detail by Harold Hoehner) a well-established alternative rather than a fringe view.

Questions and debates

Historians agree that Jesus was a real Jewish teacher executed by Roman crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, but there is genuine scholarly debate over how to weigh and harmonize details across the four Gospels, which were written decades after his death and sometimes differ on chronology, precise wording of sayings, and the sequence of events around the resurrection.

Scholars continue to debate exactly why the Jewish religious leadership saw Jesus as enough of a threat to hand him over to Rome — proposed factors include his temple protest, his popularity with crowds during a volatile Passover season, perceived claims to divine authority, and Rome's own low tolerance for anything resembling a movement around a popular "king of the Jews."

The reliability and extent of the Testimonium Flavianum, a passage about Jesus in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, has been debated by scholars for centuries — most now think Josephus wrote something about Jesus, but that Christian scribes later expanded or altered the passage, making it hard to know exactly what Josephus originally said.

Extra-biblical evidence

Scripture references

• Luke 2:1-20 — Birth in Bethlehem
• Matthew 3:13-17 — Baptism by John the Baptist
• Matthew 5-7 — The Sermon on the Mount
• Mark 6:30-44 — Feeds five thousand
• John 11:1-44 — Raises Lazarus from the dead
• Matthew 21:1-11 — Triumphal entry into Jerusalem
• Luke 22:14-20 — The Last Supper
• Matthew 27:32-56 — Crucifixion
• John 20:1-18 — Empty tomb and resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene
• Acts 1:6-11 — Ascension into heaven

Further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Jesus Christ
• PBS Frontline: From Jesus to Christ — The First Christians

Reflect

Jesus asked his closest friends, 'Who do you say that I am?' — how would you answer him today, in your own words?