Jesus Christ — Fully God, Fully Man, the Rescuer the Father Sent
"Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!'"
John 20:28"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."
John 1:14"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily."
Colossians 2:9Last week you met the Father — holy beyond imagining, and yet the One who planned your rescue and runs to welcome the returning home. But a plan is not a rescue until Someone carries it out. The road home had to be opened, and it had to be opened in person. This week you stand before the One the Father sent: God the Son, Jesus Christ.
Before a single star hung in the heavens, He was. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 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 (Hebrews 1:3). Angels worship Him. Every galaxy hangs on His word. He is not the greatest man who ever lived — He is the eternal Son, who was with the Father in glory "before the world existed" (John 17:5). This is who the Son is, and has always been.
And then — wonder past all telling — this same Son stepped down into His own creation. The hands that set the stars in their places learned to work wood in a carpenter's shop. The Word who spoke light into being grew tired, and hungry, and wept at the grave of a friend. Heaven's King walked our dust — fully God and fully man, one Person, come to seek and to save the lost. This week, behold Him: what He said, what He did, what it cost Him, and what happened on the third day — until you find yourself standing where a man named Thomas once stood, his cry rising in your own heart: "My Lord and my God."
To feel the force of this week, you need to know one thing about the world Jesus walked into. Every faithful Israelite prayed the same words morning and evening — words called the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). One God. Only one. No rivals, no partners, no second tier of little gods — that conviction was the backbone of Israel's whole faith, guarded for centuries at terrible cost. And God's personal name was held so holy that it was not even spoken aloud.
Into that world stepped a man who forgave sins, accepted worship, and took God's own name on His lips. To the people listening, this was not an inspiring spiritual teaching. It was either the truth — or the worst blasphemy imaginable. That is why they picked up stones. And that is why this week matters so much: Jesus did not leave open the option of calling Him merely a good man. He is either who He claimed to be, or He is not. By the end of this week, you will see why millions across every nation on earth have looked at Him and said what Thomas said: "My Lord and my God."
Some people say Jesus never actually claimed to be God. The people standing in front of Him would be astonished to hear that. One day, in a tense exchange with the religious leaders, Jesus said something no one saw coming: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). Not "before Abraham was, I was" — which would only claim to be very old. I AM. That is the name God spoke from the burning bush when Moses asked who was sending him: "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14) — the personal name of God, so holy that devout Israelites would not pronounce it. Jesus took that name and placed it on His own lips. The crowd did not miss the meaning for a second: "they picked up stones to throw at him" (John 8:59), because in their law, that claim — if false — was blasphemy deserving death.
It was not a one-time slip. "I and the Father are one," He said — and again the stones came out, and this time they told Him exactly why: "because you, being a man, make yourself God" (John 10:30, 33). "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). All authority in heaven and on earth is mine (Matthew 28:18). His enemies understood Him perfectly. The only question they got wrong was whether it was true.
And the door had been left ajar long before Bethlehem. Seven hundred years earlier, Isaiah had promised a child who would carry a name no mere child could carry — a child called "Mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6). Israel's own Scriptures were waiting for Someone greater than a prophet.
Imagine a royal palace with one throne in the great hall — and an unbreakable law that no one but the king may ever sit on it. Nobles, generals, foreign princes: all stand. For a thousand years, no one has dared. Then one day a man walks the length of the hall, in front of everyone — and sits down on the throne. There are only two possibilities, and everyone in the room knows it: either he is the king, or he has just committed the highest treason in the land. What no one can say is, "Perhaps he's simply a wise and humble teacher." The seat he took doesn't allow it. That is what Jesus did when He spoke the name I AM.
"Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'"
John 8:58"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:1
Words can be argued with. So Jesus did not only speak — He acted, and His actions were the kind that belong to God alone. One day four men lowered their paralyzed friend through a roof to reach Him, and Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven." The religious teachers sitting there were scandalized, and notice — their objection makes the point better than any sermon could: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). Exactly. A man can forgive a wrong done to him; only God can forgive sin itself. Jesus heard their thoughts, and then healed the man on the spot "that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10).
And it kept happening. He stood up in a storm that was drowning seasoned fishermen and told the sea itself to be still — and it obeyed (Mark 4:39-41). He called a dead man out of his tomb by name, and Lazarus came (John 11:43-44). And when people fell down and worshiped Him — the disciples in the boat, "Truly you are the Son of God" (Matthew 14:33); a healed blind man (John 9:38) — He accepted it. Think about that. In Scripture, when people tried to worship apostles or even angels, they were stopped immediately: "Stand up; I too am a man" (Acts 10:26); "You must not do that!... Worship God" (Revelation 22:9). Jesus never once said it. He received worship as His right — because it was.
Characters in a novel can do many things — but there are some things only the author can do: rewrite a ruined page, silence a storm he wrote into being, bring a character back from the dead with a stroke of the pen. When Jesus forgave sin, stilled the sea, and emptied a tomb, He was not performing tricks inside the story. He was doing what only the Author of the story can do — because the Author had stepped into His own book.
"'Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?'"
Mark 2:7"And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'"
Mark 4:41
Sit with the question the terrified fishermen asked in that boat: "Who then is this?" The wind does not take requests. The sea does not have ears. Death does not give refunds. And yet all three obeyed the voice of the man asleep on the cushion. The hands that were calloused from carpentry were the hands that set the stars in their places. This is who came looking for you.
Now hold on to the first two truths, because the third one is just as astonishing in the opposite direction. This same Jesus — the I AM, the Lord of wind and wave — was genuinely human. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). "When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman" (Galatians 4:4). He was not God wearing a human costume, and He was not a good man promoted to glory. He was born as a real baby, grew up as a real boy (Luke 2:52), got tired by a well in the afternoon heat (John 4:6), got hungry in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2), and wept real tears at the grave of a friend He loved (John 11:35).
Fully God and fully man — not half and half, not a mixture, but both natures complete in one Person. You do not have to fully understand it; no one does. But you do need to see why it had to be this way. A rescuer has to be able to reach both sides of the gap. "There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). To stand for us, He had to be truly one of us. To carry the infinite weight of our sin, He had to be truly God. Only one Person in all of history qualifies.
A bridge is only a bridge if it is anchored on both banks. Fastened only to the near shore, it is a pier — you can walk out on it, but you can never cross. Fastened only to the far shore, it can never be reached. Jesus is the bridge anchored on both banks of the gap sin opened: fully God, fastened to heaven's side; fully man, fastened to ours. That is why He could say, "I am the way... No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). He is not a way across. He is the only bridge that touches both banks.
Here is a tender gift hiding inside this doctrine. Because Jesus is truly human, He knows weakness from the inside — not as a spectator, but as one who lived it. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Tired? He has been tired. Grieving? He has stood at a grave and wept. Tempted? He faced it at full force and never gave in. When you pray, you are not explaining human life to a distant God who has only read about it. You are speaking to One who has lived it — and He still bears the scars.
"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."
John 1:14
Now we come to the reason He came at all. Remember the debt from Week 3 — the sin debt every one of us owes and none of us can pay. The Son did not come merely to teach us or inspire us. He came to pay it. "He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities... and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:5-6 — written seven hundred years before the cross). "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The innocent One took the place of the guilty. The Judge stepped down from the bench and served the sentence Himself.
And He did it freely. No one dragged the Son of God to a cross. "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18). He could have called legions of angels (Matthew 26:53); He stayed, out of love, in perfect agreement with the Father's plan. His last cry from the cross was a single word that merchants of that day wrote across settled bills: "It is finished" (John 19:30) — paid in full. Nothing left owing. Nothing for you to add.
Then came the third day. The tomb was empty — and not quietly. The risen Jesus appeared to Peter, to the Twelve, and "to more than five hundred brothers at one time," most of whom were still alive to be questioned when Paul wrote it down (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). He was no ghost: they touched Him, He ate fish in front of them (Luke 24:39-43), and His body still bore the scars. The resurrection is God's public verdict on the cross: the payment was accepted, death is defeated, and Jesus "was declared to be the Son of God in power... by his resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). A dead savior can be admired. Only a living One can save.
Here the Father's plan (Week 4) and the Son's obedience meet. The Father planned the rescue before the world began; the Son carried it out in blood and breath and a borrowed tomb He did not need for long. The cross is where God's justice and God's love embraced — sin fully punished, sinners freely welcomed. This is the good news at the center of everything: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
The hands that formed Adam from the dust were nailed to wood that He Himself had made grow. The mouth that said "Let there be light" said "It is finished." The One who cannot die took on a life that could — precisely so He could lay it down for you. And then, because He is who He is, death could not hold Him.
Where is Jesus now? Not in the tomb, and not merely in history. "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:9-11). He is ruling right now at the Father's right hand (Hebrews 1:3) — interceding for His people, building His church, preparing a place for His own (Romans 8:34; Matthew 16:18; John 14:2-3). One day every knee will bow, willingly or not. The question this week presses is whether yours will bow now, gladly.
And here is what that word "Lord" is really confessing. "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). A few lines later, Paul shows us where that promise comes from: "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13) — words the prophet Joel wrote about calling on the name of God Himself (Joel 2:32). So to confess "Jesus is Lord" is, first of all, to say who He is — everything Thomas said with his hand near the wounds: my Lord and my God. It is not signing a contract of perfect obedience; no one surrenders perfectly, and our submission grows for the rest of our lives. But understand what you are receiving: one whole Christ. There are no halves of Him — no Savior who is not also the King. And no one who has truly seen who He is walks away unchanged. Real faith follows Him — not to earn the rescue, but because of it. His rule is not a burden but a shelter: "My sheep hear my voice... and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28).
Imagine a sailor pulled half-drowned from a storm-black sea, wrapped in a blanket on the deck of the ship that saved him. Would he then stand up and say to the captain, "Thank you for the rescue — but I'll be taking the wheel now"? The thought is absurd. The hands that pulled you from the water are the hands you now gladly trust with the course. Jesus is not a lifeguard who returns you to your old shore. He is the Captain who brings you aboard — rescued and under His command, and safer under it than you have ever been.
"...because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
Romans 10:9
Everything this week has taught comes together in one room, one week after the resurrection, in the story of a man history has nicknamed "Doubting Thomas." He deserves better — and his story might be yours.
Remember who Thomas was: a faithful Israelite who had prayed the Shema his whole life. The LORD is one. No man is God; to say otherwise was the blasphemy his people had resisted for centuries. And Thomas had just watched Jesus die. Whatever hopes he had carried died on that cross with Him. So when the other disciples came to him glowing — "We have seen the Lord!" — Thomas said what an honest, wounded man says: "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe" (John 20:25). Notice: Jesus does not condemn him for that. Eight days later, Jesus came — through locked doors — and went straight to Thomas. He did not scold first. He offered exactly what Thomas had asked for: "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe" (John 20:27).
And then it happened — the summit of John's whole Gospel. The lifelong monotheist looked at the risen man in front of him, wounds and all, and every defense collapsed into worship: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Hear how staggering that is from his lips: a son of the Shema calling a man God — to His face. And Jesus did not correct him. He did not say "Stand up; I too am a man," as Peter would later say, or "Worship God," as the angel would. He accepted it — and then He turned, in effect, toward you: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). That blessing was spoken over every person who would ever read this page. Thomas got the scars in front of him. You get his testimony, and the testimony of hundreds like him — and the same risen Lord, standing before you with the same question.
Maybe you have been Thomas — hearing others talk about Jesus while carrying your own quiet doubts, your own wounds. Hear the good news: the risen Jesus is not offended by honest seekers; He came toward Thomas, and He is not hiding from you. He is fully God, so He is able to save you. He became fully man, so He could take your place. He died bearing the punishment your sins deserved, and He rose — so the payment is accepted and the door stands open. The Bible calls the way through it repentance and faith: turning from your sin, and trusting that what Jesus did in His death and resurrection is enough — fully enough — to save you. "To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). If your heart is stirring, do not push it away. We walked through this good news step by step in Week 3 — go there, read it slowly, and settle it with God. And when you do, Thomas's words make a fine first prayer: "My Lord and my God."
"...always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect." — 1 Peter 3:15
"Jesus never actually claimed to be God.
That idea was invented by the church centuries later."
A coworker who watched a documentary; a friend quoting something from the internet; a family member who says Jesus was "a great moral teacher, nothing more." It sounds scholarly, and it deserves a real answer — not a defensive one.
Invite them to look at the reactions, not just the words. When Jesus said "before Abraham was, I am," the crowd immediately picked up stones (John 8:58-59) — the penalty for blasphemy, not for inspirational teaching. When He said "I and the Father are one," they told Him to His face why they wanted Him dead: "because you, being a man, make yourself God" (John 10:30-33). He forgave sins — and the experts in the law gasped, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). He accepted worship that faithful men and angels always refused (Matthew 14:33; compare Acts 10:26). And when Thomas called Him "My Lord and my God," He blessed him rather than correcting him (John 20:28-29). Whatever one decides about Jesus, "He never claimed it" is not honestly available — His friends worshiped Him and His enemies executed Him for precisely that claim.
"If Jesus never claimed to be God, why did they pick up stones? You don't execute a man for saying 'love your neighbor.' His enemies understood His claim perfectly — the only question they got wrong was whether it was true. A merely good teacher was never on the menu: a man who claims to be God is either lying, or deceived, or exactly who He says He is."
Don't fight the documentary; open the Gospel. Most people who say this have never actually read one. A gentle invitation — "Would you read the Gospel of John with me and see what He says for Himself?" — will do more than winning the argument ever could. And remember Thomas: honest doubt, brought honestly to Jesus, is not the enemy of faith. It is often the road to it. (If your friend's deeper question is whether the Gospels themselves can be trusted, that is a fair question with a good answer — and we give it three full weeks in Weeks 10–12.)
Practice the stones question out loud until it is yours: "If He never claimed it — why the stones?" Then pray for one person you could invite into the Gospel of John.
When you pray —
Remember who is listening: the I AM who knows what it is to be tired, tempted, and grieved. You are not explaining human life to a stranger. Speak to Him as Thomas finally did — as Lord, and as God, and as the One who came toward you.
When doubts whisper that Jesus was just a man —
Go back to the stones, the sea, the empty tomb. Ask the fishermen's question honestly: "Who then is this?" Doubt brought to Jesus, like Thomas's, is not the end of faith — it is often the doorway.
When you feel too weak or too ashamed to approach God —
Remember your High Priest has scars. He sympathizes — He does not sneer (Hebrews 4:15-16). Come to the throne of grace anyway; that is exactly what it is for.
When you're tempted to keep Jesus as Savior but not as Lord —
Remember the rescued sailor. The hands that pulled you from the water can be trusted with the wheel. Ask Him plainly: "Lord, what part of my life am I still steering?" — and hand it over.
When death frightens you, or grief sits heavy —
Remember the third day. If you belong to Christ, the tomb is not your ending any more than it was His. "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19).
You've now met the Father who planned the rescue and the Son who accomplished it. But on the night before the cross, Jesus told His friends something surprising: "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you" (John 16:7). Advantage? How could His leaving ever be better? Next week you'll find out, as we meet the third Person of the one true God: the Holy Spirit — who He is, what He does, and how God Himself comes to dwell in everyone who belongs to Jesus.
"Lord Jesus, I have seen You more clearly this week — the I AM who stilled the sea, the Word who became flesh, the innocent One who took my place and rose again. Where I have doubted, meet me the way You met Thomas. Where I have kept You as Savior but steered my own life, be my Lord in truth. I say it with Thomas, and I want to mean it more every day: my Lord and my God. Amen."