What is Christology?

Question 3000.

Christology, once you get past the imposing name, is simply the study of Christ, and I want to start there because the word puts people off far more than the subject deserves. It sounds like something reserved for seminary corridors and footnoted journals, when in fact every Christian is already doing Christology every time they think seriously about who Jesus is.

The word itself comes from two Greek terms, Christos (Χριστός), meaning Anointed One or Messiah, and logos, meaning word or reasoned account. Put them together and you get an ordered, careful account of the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the study of Christ has always been about, from the apostles onward.

Why the study of Christ cannot be optional

Some Christians assume they can simply read the Gospels and skip the theology, as though Christology were an extra layer of complexity laid over a simpler original message. I understand the instinct. But the New Testament itself will not let us stop at description. It keeps asking us to decide something about Jesus, not simply to admire Him.

The apostle John puts it about as starkly as language allows. “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). That is not a verse about etiquette or preference. Getting Jesus wrong, John says, places a person in the company of antichrist. The study of Christ is not academic throat clearing before the real business of faith begins. It is the real business, and I explore who Jesus actually is in the very next question.

What the study of Christ actually covers

When I sit down to think through Christology with a new believer, I usually walk through it in a rough order that follows the shape of Jesus’ own life and work. Who is He eternally, before Bethlehem ever happened? What took place when the Word became flesh? What kind of man did that make Him, alongside what kind of God He remained? What did His death actually achieve, and why did an empty tomb matter so much to Paul that he built the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 around it?

Every one of those questions gets its own dedicated answer elsewhere on this site, because each deserves careful, unhurried treatment. This question exists to give you the map before we walk the country.

The study of Christ did not begin with theologians in libraries

It is worth remembering that Christology started life in Galilean villages and Roman courtrooms, not in academic committees. Jesus asked His own disciples to reckon with the question directly: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Peter’s answer, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is itself a piece of Christology, spoken by a fisherman rather than a professor.

The councils that came later, Nicaea and Chalcedon among them, were not inventing new doctrine. They were defending what the apostles had already taught against those who wanted to trim Jesus down to something more manageable, whether a created being, a divine illusion wearing human skin, or two separate persons awkwardly sharing one body. Their careful, sometimes technical language exists to protect a simple confession, not to complicate it.

Why Jesus refuses to be a side issue

Every other Christian doctrine eventually leans on Christology for its support. Our understanding of salvation depends on who died on the cross and what that death was worth. Our confidence in prayer depends on having a mediator who is both fully able to represent God to us and fully able to represent us to God. Our hope for the future rests on a bodily resurrection that actually happened to a real, identifiable person.

Pull the study of Christ out of the structure and the rest of the building comes down with it. This is why I keep returning to it, question after question, rather than treating it as one topic among many on a long list, and it is why I have given the hypostatic union its own extended treatment later in this series.

Approaching the study of Christ with humility

None of this means we will resolve every mystery. The incarnation, the joining of full deity and full humanity in one Person, is something Scripture asserts far more confidently than it explains. I have found over years of preaching that the wisest posture before Christology is worship rather than mastery. We are given enough to know Him truly. We are not given so much that wonder becomes impossible.

That balance, enough clarity to trust Him and enough mystery to keep us on our knees, has always struck me as exactly right for creatures addressing their Creator.

Where the study of Christ leads a Christian

I have watched clear thinking about Jesus steady believers through genuine crises of faith. When cults arrive at the door with a diminished Christ, when culture offers a Jesus reduced to moral teacher, when grief tempts someone to wonder whether any of it is real, sound Christology does not just win an argument. It gives a person something solid to stand on.

That is ultimately what this whole category of questions on the site is for, and it is why patient, unhurried study of Christ matters more than winning a passing argument.

How this fits into the wider shape of doctrine

If you have already read through some of the material on Theology Proper, you will notice how naturally it flows into this category. We move from asking who God is to asking how God the Son became flesh, walked among us, and secured our redemption. The two studies were never meant to be separated, and reading them together will give you a far sturdier grasp of the whole gospel than either could give alone.

How to actually begin the study of Christ for yourself

People sometimes ask me where to start, as though the study of Christ were a locked door requiring a special key. It is not. Start with one Gospel, read it slowly, and let Matthew or John or Luke or Mark introduce you to Jesus on their own terms before you bring in every cross reference and every technical term. The technical vocabulary, hypostatic union, kenosis, communicatio idiomatum, exists to protect what the Gospels already show you plainly. It is scaffolding, not the building itself.

Once you have a Gospel or two under your belt, this series is designed to help you go deeper on the specific questions that arise naturally from that reading. Who is this man who forgives sins and calms storms? How can He be tired at a well and yet claim to have existed before Abraham? Those are not signs that the text is confused. They are exactly the kind of questions careful Christology exists to answer, and I have tried to take each one in turn rather than leaving you to work it out unaided.

I would also gently push back on the idea that the study of Christ is only for those with theological training. Every Sunday school class that teaches a child who Jesus is, is doing Christology. Every believer who prays in Jesus’ name and means something specific by that name is relying on Christology, whether they could define the term or not. My aim in this whole series is simply to make explicit and careful what most Christians already believe implicitly, so that the belief becomes sturdier under pressure.

Why every generation has to do this work afresh

It is tempting to assume that because Nicaea and Chalcedon settled these questions long ago, we can simply inherit the conclusions without doing any of the thinking ourselves. I understand the appeal of that shortcut, but I do not think Scripture allows it. Each generation faces its own version of the old errors dressed in new clothes, whether a popular Netflix documentary reviving ancient Gnostic claims, a friendly door knocker with a subtly diminished Christ, or simply the quiet cultural pressure to treat Jesus as a wise teacher rather than the divine Saviour Scripture presents.

That is why I keep coming back to the study of Christ rather than assuming the matter is closed. Settled doctrine still needs to be freshly understood, freshly defended, and freshly loved by every generation of believers, including this one, including you.

So, now what?

So, now what? I would encourage you to read this whole series slowly rather than in one sitting, letting each answer settle before moving to the next. Christology rewards patience. Sit with the person of Jesus for a while, and notice what changes in you as you do.

And if a question about Him has been nagging at you that this series has not yet covered, tell me. I would rather answer it than have you carry it unaddressed.

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.”

1 John 2:22, ESV