Who Do You Say That I Am? The Person, Work, and Glory of Christ
A synthesis: the Person of Christ, His threefold work, His names, the call to faith, and the living, returning Lord
1. The Central Question
Halfway through His ministry, at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus put to His disciples the question on which everything turns. First He asked who the crowds said He was; then He pressed it home: "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15–16). To this Jesus replied that flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but His Father in heaven (Matthew 16:17). That is the question every reader of the Gospels must finally answer, for to study the life of Christ is to be asked it. This closing unit gathers up what the whole story has shown us about who He is and what He has done. Doctrine and devotion meet in the answer, for the reply we give to His question shapes our whole life and our eternity.
2. The Person of Christ: True God and True Man
From the very first unit two truths have stood together, and neither may be let go: He is truly God and truly man, one Person.
He is truly God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1); and "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). In Him "dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). He forgave sins, commanded the wind and the sea, raised the dead, received worship, and rose from the grave Himself — works that belong to God alone.
He is truly man. Born of Mary, He grew in stature, hungered and thirsted, grew weary and slept, wept at a grave, was "in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15), and died a real death. He was no phantom, no mere appearance, no God in a costume of flesh.
And these are held in one Person — not God and man loosely tied together, not some blend that is neither, not a mere man later adopted into divinity, but the one eternal Son who took our nature to Himself. He did not cease to be God when He became man; though He was "in the form of God" and "did not consider it robbery to be equal with God," He "made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant" (Philippians 2:6–7), veiling His glory without ever laying aside His deity. This is the mystery and the glory of the incarnation: the Maker of all entered His own world as a child. The same lips that would one day say "I thirst" had already declared, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58). Both truths are necessary to our salvation: as true man He could stand in our place and die for men; as true God His one death has worth enough to redeem a world.
3. The Work of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King
The Scriptures gather His saving work under three ancient offices, and the whole life we have studied falls naturally under them.
As Prophet He revealed God perfectly. "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). He taught not as the scribes but with authority, and His word is nothing less than the word of God to us. In Him the long line of prophets reaches its end, for "God, who... spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:1–2); He is God's final and fullest Word.
As Priest He offered Himself as the one sacrifice for sins. The Lamb of God bore our judgment; "It is finished" declared the debt of sin paid in full. By that one offering "He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14), opening through the torn veil a new and living way to God. And now, risen and ascended, "He always lives to make intercession" for those who come to God through Him (Hebrews 7:25). He is at once the sacrifice and the Priest who offered it.
As King He rose from the dead and declared, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" (Matthew 28:18). He ascended to the right hand of the Father, He reigns now over all things, and He will return to judge the living and the dead and to make all things new. The manger led at last to a throne; and from that throne He sends His church into all the world, and the gospel goes forth under His authority until He comes.
4. His Names Confess His Glory
The titles He bore and claimed are themselves a confession of who He is. He is the Christ, the promised Messiah; the Son of Man, who is yet to come on the clouds of heaven; the Son of God, one with the Father; and Lord, the name that is above every name. As Son of Man He took our very flesh and will yet come on the clouds of heaven in glory; as Son of God He shares the eternal being of the Father, of one substance with Him.
So too the great "I AM" sayings of John's Gospel unveil Him: the bread of life, the light of the world, the door of the sheep, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, and the true vine. He said, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall never hunger" (John 6:35), and "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd gives His life for the sheep" (John 10:11). In each He meets a need that He alone can satisfy; and in each there echoes the divine Name, "I AM," that was spoken to Moses at the burning bush. To name Him rightly is already to worship.
5. The Call: Believe and Follow
The Gospels were not written as bare chronicle but to bring their readers to faith. John says it plainly: "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31). The same word that opened our first unit now closes the course, for this has been its aim all along.
And so the life of Christ presses its claim upon everyone who hears it. He does not ask first to be admired, but to be trusted and obeyed: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Matthew 16:24) — for "whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25). To know who He truly is, is to be summoned to bow before Him as Lord, to receive the life He gives, and to take up the road of discipleship behind Him. The right response to such a Lord is to repent of sin, to believe on Him, and to receive from His hand a new and everlasting life.
6. The Living and Returning Lord
He is not a figure left behind in the past. He is risen, ascended, and alive, and He has given His own this promise: "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). The Lord we study is the Lord who is present.
And He will come again. The angels said, "This same Jesus... will so come in like manner as you saw Him go" (Acts 1:11). Scripture holds out the sure hope of His return, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment, and a renewed creation — and though believers have long differed over the order and timing of those last things, the great certainty is the Lord Himself, who has conquered death and will not fail to keep His word. This is the blessed hope, that we wait "for the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13), and that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).
For the day is coming when "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10–11). Some will bow in glad love and some in compelled submission, but every knee will bow and every tongue confess Him.
The story that began before time, entered our world in a manger, walked our dusty roads, died upon our cross, rose from our borrowed grave, and ascended to the throne of heaven, is not yet finished; it waits only for His return. And the question He asked at Caesarea Philippi still stands before each of us, and will not be put off forever: "Who do you say that I am?"