Christians believe that Jesus is more than an ordinary man. In Jesus the one true God entered into the human experience in order to deal with our most deep seated problem. That means that he is more than a great teacher, a great prophet or, even, an angelic or god type figure!

Jesus shows God's great love

Seeing Jesus like this transforms our understanding of God. It shows the quality of God's love for us. God is not a distant, disinterested judge who sits on high handing down angry judgements. Nor is God a paternalistic monarch who sits in his palace sending out his emissaries to 'do good' for his subjects whilst he stays safely cut off from the problems and the danger.

In Jesus, God has actually experienced temptation, family life, growing up, poverty, hunger, being part of an oppressed occupied population, adulation, desertion, betrayal, injustice, mockery, torture, death – he really does know how hard it can be! He did this to deal with our sin, so that we could come into a relationship with God and receive eternal life (See 'Why did Jesus Die?').

Jesus changes our morality

What shapes our understanding of God also shapes our understanding of morality. If God was willing to stoop down to save me then I must be willing to stoop down to help others. So it is that the Christian understanding of goodness and love is active and sacrificial, because that is God's way!

Trinity: one in three and three in one.

Christians believe that there is but one God, and he only is to be worshipped. Does that mean, then, that when God became man God was no longer in heaven, and that when Jesus died, God died? The answer to both those questions is ‘No!’

We find that within the one God there are three persons referred to as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It was God the Son who took on human experience in the person of Jesus. At the same time God was reigning in heaven as God the Father. The same paradox continues today. The Father and the Son are in heaven, yet I can know them because God the Holy Spirit comes to us when we are borne again. (‘Son of God’ is a title for Jesus to indicate the intimate relationship. Another significant title is the ‘Word of God’)

How can God be one and yet show himself in three ways? It might help if I tell you that I am a father, a son and a husband, but I am not three people, I am just one man! I have different relationships and roles with different people, but when I am with my wife and am relating as a husband I am still a father to my children and a son to my parents.

Why do Christians believe that Jesus is divine?

There are three reasons why Christians believe that Jesus is the very Word of God or Son of God: because of what Jesus did, said and claimed about himself.

What Jesus did

Jesus did many things which show his special power. These include: turning water into wine, many healings, walking on water, feeding 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish, stilling a storm, raising the dead. These do not prove that Jesus is divine, but do indicate that God’s power was involved in the ministry of Jesus, so we must take what he said seriously.

What Jesus said

Jesus said many things which would be outrageous if he was just a man. If he is God then those same sayings are reasonable.

Here are some examples:

• Jesus said that we should love him more than our wives, more than our parents, more than our children and more than ourselves (Matthew 10:27; Luke 14:26)
• He said that if we wanted eternal life we had to follow him (Mark 10:17-21)
• He said that "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matt 10:39)
• He claimed: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
• He claimed to be able to forgive sins. His critics objected that no one but God had the authority to forgive sins. They were right, but they had missed the point that Jesus was God. (Matt 9:6; Mark 2:7, 10; Luke 5:21, 24)
• He said that: "before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:58) – Abraham lived thousands of years before Jesus.

What Jesus claimed

Jesus made a number of direct claims to being more than a man.

• Jesus said: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)
• He said: "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30)
• When he was asked: "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus replied: "I am and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:61-62)
• When the disciple, Thomas, saw Jesus after his death and was convinced that he really had come back to life he said to Jesus: "My Lord and my God!" Significantly, Jesus replied: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:28-29) In this short reply Jesus tells Thomas that he is right to call him Lord and God and, what is more, we are blessed if we do the same!

Three logical options

The influential writer and broadcaster of last century, C. S. Lewis, pointed out that we have three options when we try to make sense of what Jesus said and did. Either he really was God or he was not. If he was not then he was either mad, because he thought he was, or he was wicked because he was deliberately deceiving people. Those are the choices: either Jesus was mad, bad or God, but he was definitely not just a great moral teacher or a prophet.

C. S. Lewis put it this way:

"I am trying here to prevent people saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord. But don't come up with any patronising nonsense about him being a great moral teacher. He hasn't left that alternative open to us."