If someone walked up right now, as you're reading this page, and asked "Who is Jesus?" how would you respond?
Many Americans are confused about who Jesus Christ is and what it means to follow Him. While most believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, for instance, 42% believe that when He lived on earth, "Jesus Christ was human and committed sins, just like other people." How contrary to the facts!

Who is Jesus?
The message of classic Christianity is centered in a person - Jesus Christ. You can have Confucianism without Confucius, Buddhism without Buddha, and Judaism without Abraham or Moses. But Christianity is different.
Relationship with Jesus Christ is the origin, motivation, and goal of the classic Christian faith. Everything about Christianity is determined by the person and work of Jesus. Its teachings are teachgins about Him. He is the source of its ideas. He was the origin and will be the fulfillment of its hopes. Christiainity includes belief that Jesus Christ is alive, that He is divine, and that He is still inviting us to know Him personally.
Jesus Christ's claim of divinity is the most extreme claim anyone ever made. Of all the great sages and prophets throught out world history, Jesus alone claimed to be God-become-man. Other religions are a matter of man seeking and struggling toward God. Christianity is what God has done for man in seeking him and reaching down to help him.

What exactly do Christians believe about Jesus?
FIRST, Christians believe in Christmas. When Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary's womb and born nine months later, God Himself entered human history.

SECOND, Christians believe in Good Friday. After three to four years of ministering throughout Palestine, Jesus Christ told His disciples that He would be arrested, convicted, and crucified on a Roman cross.
Jesus willingly died to bring people into a right relationship with God by paying the penalty for their sins, granting them the promise of eternal life, making them part of God's family forever, and giving them free access to God throught prayer.

THIRD, Christians believe in Easter. After three days in a tomb Jesus rose from the dead, appeared to His disciples repeatedly over a period of forty days, then met together with hundreds of followers before ascending back to heaven.
According to a Newsweek cover story: "By any measure, the resurrection of Jesus is the most radical of Christian doctrines. His teachings, His compassion for others, even His martyr's death - all find parallels in other stories and religious traditions. But no other historical figure has ever claimed to be God and risen from the dead."
To truly experience Jesus Christ's divinity, one has to believe what the apostle Paul wrote: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures...He was buried...and He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (1Corinthians 15:3-6a) and "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men" (1Timothy 2:5-6a).

One of us?
I believe that, in Jesus, God became one of us. God incarnate (Jesus) shared a common name with thousands of other Jewish boys - yet for all practical purposes He remained a stranger. For thirty years almost no one outside Nazareth knew Him, let alone grasped His divine identity.
To be certain, Jesus' manner and character impressed many in His town. He epitomized the Jewish ideals of truthfulness, wisdom, reverence, and love. But no one - perhaps only His widowed mother - knew He was God in a human body.
Shortly after turning thirty years of age, however, Jesus embarked on a most difficult task - revealing His true identity to a people long convinced that God was in His heaven, period.
Jesus revealed God's desire for nearness to us. How much closwer could He have come than by becoming one of us? Jesus was perfect. Without sin. Full of emotion. Fully God and at the same time fully human.
I reject the misconception popular in certain pseudo-religious circles that Jesus was passionless, mild, weak. How pathetic - and how utterly unsupported by the earliest historical records, which paint vivid picures of Jesus' emotions. Here is a man who loves and rebukes, who laughs and cries. Far from a caricature, we see Jesus four-dimensionally and fully alive.
Jesus wasn't simply a first-century wonder-worker, either. He didn't perform magic shows. Jesus' earthly miracles were pointed and purposeful because they were all related to the kingdom of heaven.
In his gospel, St. John calls these miracles "signs." Signs of What? Signs of God's mercy and power. Signs that demand a response:
Do you believe Jesus is God-become-man?