Who was Jesus Christ?
Short answer
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew who lived in Galilee in the first century, announced the arrival of God’s Kingdom, and was crucified in Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. Christians claim more: that he is God’s Son, raised on the third day, and that in him God took up a human life.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 3 min read
The question has two layers, and confusing them is what stalls most conversations on the subject. One is historical: what is known about a man called Jesus, born at the end of Herod’s reign, executed under Pontius Pilate. The other is a matter of faith: who that man is. The first layer can be examined by anyone; the second is a confession, and the very text that supports it admits as much without disguise.
What the Gospels narrate fits in a few lines. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, in Galilee, and began to act publicly around the age of thirty, after John baptized him in the Jordan. The content of his preaching was God’s Kingdom — announced as something already drawing near, not as a distant promise. He taught in parables, healed, ate with people the religion of the day kept at a distance, came into conflict with the Temple leadership, and was executed in Jerusalem at a Passover, in the form of death Rome reserved for slaves and rebels.
The next layer is where the answer stops being description. The earliest Christian communities did not merely claim that Jesus was a remarkable teacher: they claimed that he came back from the dead and that in him God became human. That confession already appears formulated in letters written a few decades after the crucifixion, before the Gospels were even drafted — which means it was not a late addition by people far from the events.
It is worth noticing how the texts present themselves. No Gospel announces itself as a neutral biography; John states in writing that he recorded these things so the reader would believe. Knowing that does not disqualify the source, it lets you read it for what it is. And Jesus himself, in the accounts, returns the question rather than settling it by decree: he asks the disciples who they say he is. The question is still open in exactly that form today.
What the passages say
4Then Joseph also ascended from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,
5in order to be declared, with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child.
6Then it happened that, while they were there, the days were completed, so that she would give birth.
7And she brought forth her firstborn son. And she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.
The birth anchored in a place, a family and an administrative circumstance — a registration, a journey, an inn with no room. It is the kind of detail that sets the story on a map and in a calendar, rather than in the undefined time of legend.
23And Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old, being (as it was supposed) the son of Joseph, who was of Heli, who was of Matthat,
The only indication of age anywhere in the New Testament about the start of the public ministry. Note the caution of the formula: about thirty years old, not an exact figure — the text reports what it knows and stops where it does not.
14Then, after John was handed over, Jesus went into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God,
15and saying: “For the time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
The shortest summary of what Jesus preached, placed by Mark right at the opening. The central subject is not himself: it is the kingdom of God, announced as having drawn near, with a call to change course attached.
15Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16Simon Peter responded by saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The question of this page, asked by Jesus himself of the disciples, and Peter’s answer. It is the moment the Gospels stop narrating and require a position from whoever is reading.
6who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be seized.
7Instead, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and accepting the state of a man.
8He humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, even the death of the Cross.
A hymn Paul quotes rather than composes — that is, a text already circulating in the communities before this letter. It describes Jesus descending from a divine condition all the way to the death of the Cross, which shows the confession about his identity took shape very early.
31But these things have been written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so that, in believing, you may have life in his name.
The purpose of the book, written by the author himself: the accounts were selected in order to lead to belief. It is the declaration of intent that lets you read the Gospel for what it is, instead of demanding from it a neutrality it never promised.