Who Is Jesus?

We all carry an image of Jesus in our heads: the one from childhood catechism, the one from a film, the one from a phrase heard in the family, the one we built up over conflicts or consolations.

We all carry an image of Jesus in our heads: the one from childhood catechism, the one from a film, the one from a phrase heard in the family, the one we built up over conflicts or consolations. The problem is that these images can stay on the surface — and one day the real question returns: deep down, who is He?

Jesus does not answer by pointing to a book or a doctrine — He points to His own person. If you want to know who God is, it is Him you must look at. The invisible Father becomes visible in the Son. Which means that what you find in Jesus — His gentleness with the fragile, His anger against injustice, His cross — is what you find in God.

“Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’”

John 14:9

Biblical echoes

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Philippians 2:6-7 Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant.

Revelation 3:14 The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

Hebrews 1.3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Colossians 2.9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Illustration

The portrait no one had managed to paint

Read by an AI voice

In a mountain village, an old painter had spent his life portraying God. He had painted vast skies, lightning, thrones of fire. People admired his canvases, but as they left his studio they went home a little more troubled: that God was great, yes, but distant, impossible to approach.

One winter evening a young man knocked at his door, numb with cold. The painter took him in, shared his bread, lit the fire, and listened to his sorrows late into the night. By morning the stranger had gone. But on the table he had left a short note: “Tonight you showed me the Father better than all your canvases.”

The old man sat still for a long time. At last he understood what he had sought all his life without finding. God had not been content to be admired from afar: the Word had become flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The one who was in the form of God had not clung to his rank as a prize, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7) — to the point of coming to sit at a table, to share bread, to listen to a weary heart.

The painter took up his brushes again. But this time he no longer tried to invent the face of God with strokes of lightning. He painted one man leaning toward another. For he had grasped that this Jesus was not a pale copy of the Father: he is the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1:3), and in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). In him, nothing is approximate. He is the Amen, the faithful and true witness (Revelation 3:14) — God’s definitive “yes” to humanity.

We all carry an image of Jesus in our heads. But the true answer to “Who is he?” he does not give us by describing himself: he gives it by coming to sit at our table. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”