Introduction to Christology

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph 2:19-20).

Now we come to the core of Christianity, the person and work of Jesus Christ. It may seem odd to say that it is Christ, not God, who is the core of our faith, but it is what Jesus did — his work — in which we place our trust, and his character and teachings are the ultimate revelation of God. As William Lane Craig said, “The Christian religion stands or falls with the person of Jesus Christ. Judaism could survive without Moses, Buddhism without Buddha, Islam without Mohammed; but Christianity could not survive without Christ.”¹ That’s probably why God the Father is covered in two lines of the Apostles’ Creed while it takes ten lines to cover the fundamentals about Jesus. The Nicene Creed goes into even more detail:

“[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”

People today have as many misguided ideas about Jesus as they do about God. Everyone wants to have their own personal Jesus. Pop culture, New Agers, and political parties all want to give you their version of Jesus. Their version always looks an awful lot like them. It’s fine if everyone wants to have their own take on the Tooth Fairy, but we have to base our beliefs about Jesus on the real man and the life he really led. We are no more entitled to our own personal Jesus than we are to our own personal Abraham Lincoln. The facts have to be our guide, in this case the facts as recorded by his friends and followers. That some people don’t like the facts does not make them any less factual.

The scriptures say that Christ is the chief cornerstone of the Church. He determines the shape of what she can be. When we try to build something out of line with him, the whole structure falls apart. History has shown that to be true time and again. So we’re going to spend some time learning about the real Jesus of history as revealed by the apostles who knew him and their disciples.


1 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith

image credit: Cornerstone, R Miller used by Creative Commons