Who Is Jesus?

From Message to Identity: A Historical Shift in Christian Thought**

In the earliest phase of Christian reflection, the central concern was not the question “Who is Jesus?” but rather what Jesus taught, how he lived, and what he proclaimed about the Kingdom of God. Jesus moved from village to village, healed the sick, comforted the marginalized, and announced that the Kingdom of God was near. The focus of his preaching was not himself but God—God’s will, God’s justice, and how human beings are called to live.

The Gospel narratives suggest that Jesus did not strongly promote a public declaration of his own status. He did not explicitly claim to be a king, a priest, or God. Instead, he appears to have understood his role as that of a divinely appointed messenger or prophet. Even the term Messiah is best understood not as a claim to political or priestly authority, but in the broader sense of one appointed by God for a particular mission. In Israel’s tradition, kings and priests were “anointed ones,” yet Jesus did not attempt to assume such institutional power. His task was to proclaim God’s message, call society to repentance, and announce the coming of God’s Kingdom.

Nevertheless, during Jesus’ lifetime, the question “Who is he?” arose forcefully among the people. Some regarded him as a prophet, others as Elijah, others as God’s envoy, and still others as the Messiah. After his crucifixion, a decisive shift occurred. The experiences of the disciples—especially their conviction that Jesus had been raised from the dead—transformed their understanding of him. The belief that “Jesus is the Messiah” rapidly gained strength within the early Christian community.

This belief soon developed further. Attention gradually moved away from Jesus’ message to Jesus’ identity. The confession “Jesus is the Messiah” evolved into the claim “Jesus is God.” Within the Greco-Roman world, ideas such as divine sons, incarnations, and godlike saviors were culturally familiar, which made this development historically plausible rather than abrupt or unnatural.

Once Jesus was understood as divine, new and profound questions emerged: Why did God become human? Why did God accept death on a cross? Why would God need to suffer and die? Christianity could not endure without providing answers to these questions, and early Christian thinkers therefore developed theological explanations.

At this point, the concept of salvation took a more defined shape. Humanity’s fundamental problem was interpreted as bondage to sin. Because of sin, human beings were seen as alienated from God, spiritually dead, guilty before divine justice, and incapable of saving themselves by their own efforts. Salvation thus came to mean deliverance from this condition.

Jesus’ crucifixion was interpreted as the decisive means of salvation. The sacrificial system of the Hebrew Scriptures was read as a foreshadowing of this event, and its ultimate fulfillment was believed to occur in Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Jesus was understood as dying as a substitute for human sin; if Jesus was truly God, then God himself had offered himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of the world.

These interpretations were articulated and developed in the writings of Paul, the Gospel of John, and later by the Church Fathers. Over time, they became the foundational structure of Christian theology. What began as a movement centered on the proclamation of God’s Kingdom gradually transformed into a faith system focused on Jesus’ nature, divinity, sacrificial death, and redemptive role.

In summary, Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a prophetic messenger. The community came to recognize him as the Messiah. Experiences of resurrection led to the belief that he was divine. That belief generated new theological questions, and the answers to those questions formed the core of what is now known as Christianity. The shift from Jesus’ message to Jesus’ identity thus represents a decisive intellectual and theological turning point in Christian history.