Jesus Christ

1. Who is Jesus?

Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of history. He split time in two (B.C. and A.D.), literally the turning point of everything. To Christians, calling Him a moral teacher or a prophet falls far short. He is the Incarnation, God becoming human (and staying God).

The Catholic Church teaches the Hypostatic Union: Jesus is one Person with two distinct natures, 100% God and 100% Man. Each nature in Him is whole. He is fully divine (possessing the full power and glory of God) and fully human (possessing a human body, soul, and will), which is why the Church rejects the half-and-half figure of the demi-god (50/50, like Hercules). It's the ultimate "both/and".

2. Timeline of His Earthly Life

3. Key Teachings

Jesus revolutionized ethics and theology. His teachings were often paradoxical and counter-cultural:

• The Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Jesus located true happiness in poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy and a hunger for righteousness (Matthew 5:3-12).
• Love Your Enemies: A radical departure from "eye for an eye." Jesus commanded love even for those who persecute you.
• The Kingdom of God: The reign of God, announced by Jesus as already at hand (Mark 1:15), taking root in human hearts now and fully realized in Heaven.

4. His Miracles

The Gospels record roughly three dozen miracles of Jesus, and they sort into four kinds: healings, exorcisms, power over nature, and raising the dead. Each Gospel presents them as signs that disclose who He is and that the reign of God has arrived in Him. Jesus refuses to perform on demand when the Pharisees ask for a sign from heaven (Mark 8:11-12), and He works no mighty deeds in Nazareth because of the unbelief there (Mark 6:5-6).

The four categories

• Healings: the leper who kneels and is touched (Mark 1:40-45), the paralytic lowered through the roof (Mark 2:1-12), the woman with the hemorrhage (Mark 5:25-34), blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho (Mark 10:46-52), the man born blind (John 9:1-41).
• Exorcisms: the man in the Capernaum synagogue (Mark 1:21-28) and the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20). Jesus reads these as evidence of a kingdom breaking in: "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20).
• Power over nature: the water made wine at Cana (John 2:1-11), the storm stilled on the lake (Mark 4:35-41), the feeding of the five thousand (recorded in all four Gospels, Mark 6:30-44 and John 6:1-15), walking on the water (Mark 6:45-52).
• Raising the dead: the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-43), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and Lazarus, four days in the tomb (John 11:1-44).

Why the Gospels call them signs

A miracle in the Gospels always carries an argument about Jesus' identity. He heals the paralytic explicitly so that His hearers "may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10). When John the Baptist sends from prison to ask whether Jesus is the one to come, the answer is a list of works, the blind seeing and the lame walking and the poor hearing good news (Luke 7:18-23), language drawn from Isaiah 35:5-6 and 61:1. The Catechism treats the miracles as signs that attest the Father sent Him and that the kingdom is present in His person, while noting they were meant to invite faith and could be refused (CCC 547-550).

John structures his Gospel around seven of these works and calls them signs: Cana (2:1-11), the official's son (4:46-54), the paralytic at Bethesda (5:1-9), the feeding of the five thousand (6:1-15), the walking on water (6:16-21), the man born blind (9:1-41), and the raising of Lazarus (11:1-44). Each one opens into a discourse that explains it, the loaves into the Bread of Life discourse that the Church reads as pointing to the Eucharist and the Real Presence, the blind man into a scene about who can see. John states the purpose plainly at the close: these signs are written "that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God" (John 20:30-31).

5. The Passion

The Passion is the suffering and death of Jesus, running from the Last Supper on Holy Thursday to His burial on Friday evening. All four Gospels devote a large share of their length to these hours, and most scholars hold that the Passion was the first stretch of the Gospel tradition to be told as one continuous narrative. The Church reads this as the hour Jesus came for, the self-offering by which He reconciles the world to the Father (see our guide to what salvation means and how it is worked out).

The Last Supper and the Eucharist

On the night before He died, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it and said "This is my body," then took the cup and named it the blood of the covenant poured out for many (Mark 14:22-25; Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:14-20). Paul passes on the same words as something already handed to him, the earliest written record of them (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the Eucharist at this supper and, in the command "Do this in memory of me," instituted the priesthood that would celebrate it (CCC 1337). John has no institution account in his supper narrative and gives instead the washing of the disciples' feet (John 13:1-17) and a long farewell discourse.

The Gospels differ on the day. Mark, Matthew and Luke present the meal as a Passover supper (Mark 14:12-16). John dates the crucifixion to the Day of Preparation before Passover (John 19:14), so that Jesus dies at the hour the lambs were slaughtered, and John the Baptist's earlier line about the Lamb of God (John 1:29) lands on the cross. Scholars have proposed calendar differences and theological arrangement to account for the gap. Both accounts stand in the canon, and the Church has never resolved the detail by discarding one of them.

Gethsemane, the arrest, and the trials

After the supper Jesus goes to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, takes Peter, James and John apart, and prays that the cup pass from Him while submitting to the Father's will (Mark 14:32-42). Luke alone records the sweat falling like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Judas arrives with an armed crowd and identifies Him with a kiss (Mark 14:43-46); a disciple cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant, and John alone names both men, Peter and Malchus (John 18:10).

Two trials follow. Before the Sanhedrin, witnesses contradict each other until the high priest asks directly whether He is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One; Jesus answers "I am" and speaks of the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and the council calls it blasphemy (Mark 14:53-65). Luke places this assembly at daybreak (Luke 22:66-71). John gives no formal night trial at all, sending Jesus first to Annas and then to Caiaphas (John 18:13-24). Before Pilate the charge is recast in political terms, a claim to kingship (Mark 15:1-5). Luke adds a hearing before Herod Antipas (Luke 23:6-12); John records the long exchange about a kingdom not from this world and Pilate's question "What is truth?" (John 18:33-38). Pilate offers the crowd Barabbas, then hands Jesus over (Mark 15:6-15).

The scourging and the crucifixion

Jesus is scourged, and the soldiers dress Him in purple, press a crown of thorns onto His head and mock Him as king of the Jews (Mark 15:15-20; John 19:1-3). He is led to Golgotha, the place of the skull, and crucified between two criminals; Pilate fixes the charge above Him, written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek (Mark 15:22-27; John 19:19-20). Mark puts the crucifixion at the third hour (Mark 15:25); John's chronology runs later in the day. Darkness covers the land from the sixth to the ninth hour (Mark 15:33).

The seven last words

The seven last words are a devotional harmony, gathering the sayings from the cross that appear across Luke and John and Mark. No single Gospel contains all seven.

• "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
• "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).
• "Woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother" (John 19:26-27).
• "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46), the opening line of Psalm 22, a psalm that moves through abandonment to vindication.
• "I am thirsty" (John 19:28).
• "It is finished" (John 19:30).
• "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46), quoting Psalm 31:5.

Death and burial

Jesus dies in the afternoon. The curtain of the Temple tears from top to bottom, and the centurion facing Him says, "Truly this man was God's Son" (Mark 15:37-39). John reports that the soldiers found Him already dead, so instead of breaking His legs one pierced His side with a lance, and blood and water flowed out (John 19:31-34). Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the council, asks Pilate for the body, wraps it in linen and lays it in a rock tomb, and the women watch where it is placed (Mark 15:42-47). John adds Nicodemus bringing myrrh and aloes (John 19:39-40); Matthew adds the sealing of the tomb and the posting of a guard (Matthew 27:62-66).

6. Resurrection

On the first day of the week the tomb was found empty, and over the following weeks Jesus appeared alive to His disciples. Christians hold that He rose bodily from the dead, in the same body that was crucified and now transformed beyond the reach of death. This is the claim the whole faith rests on, and Paul says so in the bluntest terms available: "if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14).

The empty tomb

All four Gospels report women coming to the tomb at dawn and finding the stone rolled away and the body gone (Mark 16:1-8; Matthew 28:1-10; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10). The details vary: the number of women, whether one figure or two announce the news, whether Peter alone runs to the tomb (Luke 24:12) or Peter and the beloved disciple together (John 20:3-8). Every account agrees on two things that no one inventing a first-century legal case would have chosen, that the tomb was empty and that women were the first witnesses, in a period when a woman's testimony carried less weight than a man's in Jewish and Roman courts alike (Josephus, Antiquities 4.219). Historians across the theological spectrum treat that detail as awkward for anyone composing the story from scratch.

The appearances

• Mary Magdalene in the garden, taking Him for the gardener until He says her name (John 20:11-18).
• The road to Emmaus: two disciples walk with a stranger who opens the Scriptures to them, and they recognize Him in the breaking of the bread, at which point He vanishes (Luke 24:13-35).
• The upper room on the evening of the first day, where He shows His hands and side, gives peace, and breathes on them with authority to forgive sins (John 20:19-23).
• Thomas, absent the first time and unwilling to accept the report, invited a week later to put his finger in the wounds, answering "My Lord and my God" (John 20:24-29).
• The lakeside in Galilee: a night of empty nets, a catch of fish, breakfast on the shore, and Peter asked three times whether he loves Him (John 21:1-19). Matthew places the commission to make disciples of all nations on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20).
• More than five hundred at once: Paul hands on a list he received, that Christ appeared to Cephas, then the Twelve, then "to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive" (1 Corinthians 15:5-8), then to James, then to all the apostles, and last to Paul himself. Written around AD 55, this is the earliest surviving account of the appearances, and the appeal to living witnesses is an invitation to check.

What kind of body

The Church holds that the risen body of Christ is His own crucified body, glorified. The Gospels keep both sides of that in view. He is physical: He shows the wounds and asks Thomas to touch them (John 20:27), and He eats a piece of grilled fish in front of the disciples (Luke 24:42-43). He is also changed: He enters a room whose doors are locked (John 20:19), and those closest to Him fail at first to recognize Him (Luke 24:16; John 20:14). Lazarus was restored to a life that would end again in the ordinary way (John 11:44). Christ has passed through death into a state where "death no longer has dominion over him" (Romans 6:9). The Catechism describes His humanity as it exists now as a real body that shares the divine glory and is no longer bound by space and time (CCC 645-646). Paul calls Him the first fruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20), which is why the general resurrection of the body at the end of history is promised on the pattern of His.

After forty days

Luke closes the appearances with the Ascension: Jesus leads the disciples out to Bethany, blesses them and is carried up into heaven (Luke 24:50-53), and Acts places this forty days after the resurrection, with two men in white asking the disciples why they stand looking up and promising He will come back the same way (Acts 1:3-11). That promise is the subject of its own guide on the Second Coming and what the Church teaches about it.

7. C.S. Lewis's Trilemma: Is He God?

Many people say, "I accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but not as God." C.S. Lewis argued this position is impossible. Jesus claimed to forgive sins (which only God can do), to be the Judge of the world, and to exist before Abraham. You can call Him a fool, a demon, or God. But "great moral teacher"? Sorry, that option isn't on the menu.

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