Christology (Christ)

Question 7199. If Jesus fulfilled the law, why did Paul still offer temple sacrifices in Acts 21, why will sacrifices return in the millennial temple, and why do certain things ...

Question 1188. If we want a model for biblical interpretation, we could have no better teacher than the Lord Jesus himself. He was raised on the Hebrew Scriptures, he quoted ...

Question 60202. Few sentences have done more damage than the claim that the Jews killed Jesus. It has been shouted outside synagogues, painted on walls, preached from pulpits, and used ...

Question 03047 To say that Jesus is our High Priest is to say that He is the one who represents us before God and brings God to us, the mediator ...

Question 60020. Mormonism presents itself as restored Christianity, and it does so with real confidence. Two young men in white shirts arrive at the door with Bibles under their arms, ...

Question 60021. Scientology is one of the most recognised new religions in the world and one of the least understood, which is not an accident. Most people know the celebrities, ...

Question 60019. Jehovah's Witnesses are probably the group my church members ask me about most, for the simple reason that they are the ones who knock. Few movements are so ...

Question 08087 The question of Jesus preaching to demons between his death and resurrection comes up more often than you might expect, usually after somebody has read 1 Peter 3 ...

Question 6065. Temptation and sin are not the same thing, and confusing them has done enormous damage to sensitive Christians. Many believers spend years apologising to God for being tempted, ...

Question 3017. Jesus and Christ get used interchangeably by most Christians, myself included in ordinary conversation, and there is nothing wrong with that shorthand. But the two words are doing ...

Question 3060. Ask about the appearance of Jesus and most people can supply an answer instantly: long hair, flowing robe, serene European features, perhaps a soft glow. Two thousand years ...

Question 3014. The resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which the entire Christian faith turns, and I say that without any exaggeration. Paul makes the same point in blunt ...

Question 3016. Jesus had to rise from the dead, and I mean that word "had" with full theological weight rather than as a loose figure of speech. His resurrection was ...

Question 60022. The resurrection of Jesus is not one Christian belief among many. It is the claim on which everything else stands or falls, and the New Testament says so ...

Question 3065. When Jesus prayed, who was listening? It is one of the sharpest questions a sceptic, or a Muslim friend, or an honest child can put to a Christian ...

Question 3064. The day Jesus died is fixed in the Christian calendar as Good Friday, and most believers have never thought to question it. But some have, and their argument ...

Question 2071. Functional subordination is the term I use to describe what Jesus means in John 14:28 when He tells His disciples, 'the Father is greater than I' (John 14:28) ...

Question 60082. Word of Faith teaching reaches more people worldwide today than most historic denominations do, which is one reason I think it deserves a careful answer rather than a ...

Question 3087. The book of Ruth is only four chapters long, a quiet rural story of famine, bereavement, gleaning, and a wedding, set in the lawless era of the judges ...

Question 7086. The scapegoat theory of atonement is a way of understanding the cross that draws on the ritual of Leviticus 16 and, in its modern form, on sociological accounts ...

Question 3013. Christ our advocate is one of those short phrases that manages to be both deeply pastoral and precisely theological all in a single breath. John writes, "My little ...

Question 2013. The phrase eternal generation of the Son appears in no single verse of Scripture in those exact words, and that immediately raises a fair question. Is this a ...

Question 2030. God and temptation seem, on the surface, to sit uneasily together in Scripture, since James tells us plainly that God cannot be tempted, and yet the Gospels tell ...

Question 3066. Here is a question that sounds mischievous but deserves a careful answer: if Jesus is God, and Scripture says that in him 'all things hold together' (Colossians 1:17), ...

Question 3067. Was Jesus a political revolutionary, executed for taking on an empire? Plenty of voices say so, and every age tries to recruit him; our politicised age has recruited ...

Question 3068. The Jewish identity of Jesus is the plainest fact on the pages of the four Gospels, yet the question in our title still catches people out. Was Jesus ...

Question 3075. That Jesus learned obedience is the startling claim of Hebrews 5:8: "Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." Read that slowly and the ...

Question 3078. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is one of the most arresting phrases in the whole Bible, and depending on which translation you pick up, ...

Question 13011. Gnostic teaching is the ancient heresy that refuses to die. It surfaces in the second century in developed form, it is answered in seed form inside the New ...

Question 3084. Roman crucifixion has a strong claim to being the cruellest method of execution human beings have ever devised, and the question of whether anything since has surpassed it ...

Question 3085. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle of Jesus, apart from the resurrection itself, recorded in all four Gospels (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; ...

Question 3082. Righteous anger sounds to many people like a contradiction in terms, because most of the anger we have ever seen, or produced, has been anything but righteous. Yet ...

Question 3080. The humour of Jesus is a subject that makes some Christians nervous, as though laughter were somehow beneath the Man of Sorrows. Nobody asks this question expecting a ...

Question 3081. The fig tree that Jesus cursed has puzzled readers for centuries, and I understand why: at first glance it looks like an overreaction to a piece of vegetation, ...

Question 3003. The meaning of Christ gets lost the moment we treat the word as though it were simply Jesus' surname, the way we might say John Smith. It is ...

Question 3079. Jesus walking on water tends to provoke one of two responses: straightforward acceptance of a miracle performed by the Son of God, or a hunt for some naturalistic ...

Question 3074. "Jesus wept" is the shortest verse in our English Bibles, and it may be the most surprising, because the One shedding tears at the tomb of Lazarus knew ...

Question 3073. The virgin birth is not a decorative detail on the edge of the Christmas story; it is load-bearing doctrine, and if you remove it the whole structure of ...

Question 3052. The historical Jesus is a phrase you will meet in television documentaries, paperback bestsellers and undergraduate courses, usually delivered with a knowing tone: behind the Christ of the ...

Question 3053. How is Jesus different from other religious leaders? It is one of the most common questions a thoughtful unbeliever asks, and it deserves a serious answer rather than ...

Question 3054. Is Jesus Michael the archangel? If you have ever spent an hour on the doorstep with Jehovah's Witnesses, you will have met this claim, for it is a ...

Question 3056. The genealogies of Jesus look, at first glance, like the least promising material in the New Testament: lists of names, many of them unpronounceable, standing between you and ...

Question 3055. Open Matthew 1 and Luke 3 side by side and you will meet a genuine puzzle: two genealogies of Jesus that do not match. Matthew begins with Abraham ...

Question 3057. The parables of Jesus are among the most famous stories ever told. The prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the sower, the lost sheep, the pearl of great price: ...

Question 3058. People love a gap, and the so-called lost years of Jesus are one of history's most famous. The Gospels give us his birth, the flight to Egypt, one ...

Question 3059. Every few years the claim that Jesus married resurfaces, usually with a book launch attached. Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code sent it round the world: Jesus ...

Question 3044. Son of David is the very first title given to Jesus in the New Testament: 'The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the ...

Question 3045. Messiah and Christ both mean the anointed one, and that single fact unlocks more of your Bible than almost any other piece of vocabulary. Many people assume Christ ...

Question 3046. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29). With those words John the Baptist introduced Jesus to Israel, and he chose ...

Question 3048. The deity of Christ is often said to be a later invention, a doctrine bolted onto the memory of a humble rabbi by councils and emperors centuries after ...

Question 3036. The blood of Jesus is one of the most repeated themes in the New Testament, and yet I find that many Christians are hazy about what it actually ...

Question 3037. Who killed Jesus? It sounds like a simple historical question, the kind a detective could close in an afternoon. Roman soldiers drove the nails, so surely the case ...

Question 3038. The crucifixion of Jesus raises a question most of us have never stopped to ask: why that particular death? If the Son of God had to die for ...

Question 3041. The ascension of Jesus is the forgotten doctrine of the Christian faith. We celebrate the incarnation at Christmas and the resurrection at Easter, but Ascension Day passes most ...

Question 3043. Jesus is Lord. Three words, and the earliest, shortest confession of the Christian faith (Romans 10:9). Long before the creeds of the councils, before the New Testament was ...

Question 3040. The resurrection body of Jesus is the single best piece of evidence for what your own future body will be like. That is not my speculation; it is ...

Question 3031. Jesus is superior to angels in a way that the New Testament, particularly the opening chapters of Hebrews, takes considerable care to establish, because a persistent confusion in ...

Question 3030. The impeccability of Christ, the conviction that Jesus was actually unable to sin, raises an honest and important question. If He could not possibly have sinned, were His ...

Question 3029. Firstborn over creation is one of the titles most frequently misused by groups who want to argue that Jesus was God's first created being. Read the phrase in ...

Question 3028. Eternal generation is the theological term that answers what sounds, at first, like a contradiction: how can Jesus be eternal, without beginning or end, if He was also ...

Question 3025. Jesus' descent into Hades is a phrase drawn from the historic creeds, and it has confused almost as many Christians as it has clarified, because the words can ...

Question 3022. Jesus is not idle in heaven, and His heavenly intercession for believers is only one part, though the most frequently mentioned part, of an active present ministry that ...

Question 3021. Where is Jesus now is a question with a precise biblical answer, and theologians have a specific term for it: the session of Christ, His seated reign at ...

Question 3027. Jesus is still human now, and His glorified humanity is not a temporary costume He will one day set aside once His earthly mission is fully wrapped up ...

Question 3019. Did Jesus really rise from the dead in a bodily resurrection, or is this simply a comforting story the early church told itself? I want to take that ...

Question 3015. The transfiguration of Jesus is one of the strangest and most wonderful scenes in the Gospels, the moment when the ordinary appearance Jesus had worn for thirty years ...

Question 3012. Son of Man is the title Jesus used of Himself more often than any other in the Gospels, and it is also the one most commonly misunderstood among ...

Question 3007. The sinlessness of Christ is where this question ultimately lands, though getting there requires asking something quite specific first. When Adam fell, sin entered the human race, and ...

Question 3006. We rightly emphasise the deity of Jesus, but the humanity of Jesus receives just as much insistence in Scripture, and I do not think we can afford to ...

Question 3011. The baptism of Jesus raises an obvious question the moment you think about it seriously. John's baptism was "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark ...

Question 3010. Working out the consciousness of Christ during His earthly life pushes us further into the mystery of the incarnation than almost any other question in this series. When ...

Question 3009. The childhood of Jesus receives only the briefest treatment in the Gospels, and yet those few verses raise questions that repay careful attention. Did the infant Jesus know ...

Question 3008. Whether the impeccability of Christ is actually true has occupied theologians for most of church history, and I understand why the question keeps resurfacing. If Jesus could not ...

Question 3005. The hypostatic union is, in my judgment, one of the most profound truths in the whole of Christian theology, and also one of the most practically important. It ...

Question 3004. The deity of Jesus is the foundation Christianity stands or falls on. If Jesus is not God, Christianity collapses and we remain in our sins. If He truly ...

Question 3076 Few words in all of Scripture carry the weight of those spoken by Jesus from the cross in John 19:30: “It is finished.” In the original Greek, this ...

Question 3077. The trials of Jesus, when you lay the four Gospel accounts side by side, turn out to number six distinct hearings, three before Jewish authorities and three before ...

Question 3001. The identity of Jesus is, I think, the one question none of us gets to avoid indefinitely. Jesus put it to His own disciples at Caesarea Philippi, and ...

Question 3002. Whether there were genuine brothers of Jesus has been argued over for most of Church history, largely because of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. Once ...

Question 3026. Only begotten Son is a phrase that has caused more confusion than almost any other title given to Jesus, because in ordinary English "begotten" sounds like it describes ...

Question 7079. Physical healing as a guaranteed benefit of the atonement is taught confidently in a good many places, and the proof text is almost always the same. Isaiah says ...

Question 3062. The other resurrections of the Bible are far less famous than the empty tomb, but they are worth knowing well: nine raisings by my count, spread from the ...

Question 3061. Christianity stands or falls on bodily resurrection, and Paul says so without blinking: 'if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in ...

Question 3063. Few lines in the Apostles' Creed cause more raised eyebrows than the confession that Jesus did 'descend into hell'. What can that possibly mean? Between the cross and ...

Question 8. Which doctrines are essential for salvation is a question that deserves great care, because the wrong answer in either direction is dangerous. Make the list too long and ...

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 ...