Jesus Christ — Fully God, Fully Man, the Rescuer the Father Sent
Welcome to your daily work - the part of the study where real growth happens. This week you met Jesus Christ: the I AM who stilled the sea, the Word who became flesh, the innocent One who died in your place and rose again. Now spend seven days looking at Him closely - because no one who has truly seen who He is walks away unchanged. Each day takes about 15-20 minutes. Don't skip days. The reward belongs to those who do the work.
Each day this Treasury directs you to read a passage of Scripture. You'll notice we don't print the full passages here - and that's completely intentional. Every time you pick up your Bible to find the passage, you're building the most important habit of the Christian life: going to God's Word directly. You're also seeing the passage in its full context, the way God intended it to be read.
Don't have a physical Bible handy? No problem. Download the free YouVersion Bible App (bible.com) on your phone or tablet. It's free, it has dozens of translations including ESV and NIV, and it works offline once downloaded. A sixth grader can navigate it in thirty seconds.
Every day when you see "Read:" followed by a reference - open your Bible or YouVersion, find the passage, and read it slowly before continuing. That moment of reaching for Scripture is not a hurdle. It's the point.
"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 2:9Days 1-2: Work on the Primary verse. Read it out loud five times each morning. Say it from memory at midday. Pray it back to God in the evening.
Days 3-4: Add the Supporting verse, building it phrase by phrase. Recite both together.
Days 5-6: Going for the Bonus? Add Colossians 2:9 and practice all three.
Day 7: Recite everything you've memorized - then celebrate. You just hid God's Word in your heart, where no one can ever take it from you.
Today's truth: Jesus took God's own name on His lips - and everyone standing there knew exactly what He meant.
Read it slowly, and feel the tension build. It ends with Jesus saying, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58) - the name God spoke from the burning bush: "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14). Underline the crowd's response in verse 59. They didn't shrug at an interesting teaching. They picked up stones - because they understood the claim perfectly.
Keep Thomas in view all week. He was a faithful Israelite who had prayed the same words morning and evening his whole life: "The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). For a man like that, calling any human being God was the worst sin imaginable - the very blasphemy his people had resisted for centuries. Remember that. It will make what Thomas says at the end of this week the most staggering sentence he ever spoke.
"Lord Jesus, You are not one voice among many. You are the I AM - and You said it knowing it would cost You. Where I have quietly treated You as just a good teacher, or one option among several, forgive me and open my eyes. Show me who You really are this week, especially as I face _________________. Amen."
Today's truth: Words can be argued with. So Jesus acted - and His actions belong to God alone.
In the first story, watch the experts in the law. When Jesus said "your sins are forgiven," they were scandalized - and their objection makes the point better than any sermon could: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). Exactly. In the second story, underline the question the terrified fishermen asked: "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41). Sit with that question. It is the question of the whole week.
Here is a detail that is easy to miss in John 20. Thomas made his demand - nail marks, finger, hand, side - to the other disciples, in a room where Jesus was nowhere to be seen. Yet eight days later, Jesus walked in and answered Thomas's words almost point for point: "Put your finger here... put out your hand, and place it in my side" (John 20:27). He had heard every word. He hears yours too - the doubts you've only said out loud to other people, and the ones you've never said at all.
"Lord Jesus, the wind does not take requests and the sea does not have ears - but they obeyed You. You forgave sin, and only God can do that. So I bring You the storm I cannot calm and the debt I cannot pay: _________________. Do what only God can do. Amen."
Today's truth: Fully God and fully man - and because He is truly human, He knows what it is like to be you.
John begins where Genesis begins - "In the beginning" - and then says the unthinkable: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The hands that set the stars in their places learned to work wood in a carpenter's shop. He grew tired (John 4:6), grew hungry (Matthew 4:2), and wept at the grave of a friend (John 11:35). Then read the Hebrews passage twice: "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).
The shortest verse in the Bible is two words: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Stop and think about who was weeping. The eternal Son - the One through whom all things were made - stood at the tomb of His friend Lazarus with tears running down a real human face. He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, and He knew it. He wept anyway, because the people He loved were weeping. Your God does not watch your grief from a distance. He has stood where you stand, and He has felt what you feel.
"Lord Jesus, You know. You know tiredness from the inside, and hunger, and grief, and temptation at full force. So when I bring You _________________, I am not explaining human life to a stranger. Thank You that I can come to Your throne and find grace to help, exactly when I need it. Amen."
Today's truth: The innocent One took the place of the guilty - and "It is finished" means paid in full.
Read the whole chapter slowly - it is one of the most important pages in the Old Testament. "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). Underline every "our" and "us" you find. This was written about seven hundred years before the cross - and it reads like an eyewitness stood beneath it.
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves near Qumran is a complete scroll of Isaiah, copied more than a century before Jesus was born. You can see it today in Jerusalem. That means we hold physical proof that Isaiah 53 - the piercing, the crushing, the silent lamb, the grave with the rich - was written down long before the events it describes. No one edited the prophecy after the fact. God announced the cross centuries in advance, because the rescue was always the plan.
Notice what the risen Jesus chose to keep: the scars. "Put your finger here, and see my hands" (John 20:27). A resurrection body could presumably have been unmarked - but He kept the marks of the nails and the spear, and He showed them without a trace of shame. Why? Because they are not wounds anymore. They are receipts. Permanent, visible proof that the price of your rescue was paid in full - and He carried the proof into heaven itself.
"Lord Jesus, You were pierced for my transgressions and crushed for my iniquities - mine. You said 'It is finished,' and You meant it: nothing left owing, nothing for me to add. So I stop trying to pay a debt You already settled. I bring You my guilt over _________________ and I leave it at the cross. Thank You. Amen."
Today's truth: The tomb is empty. The payment was accepted. Death is defeated - and He is alive right now.
Paul lists the witnesses like a man handing you evidence: Peter, the Twelve, then "more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive" (1 Corinthians 15:6) - in other words, go ask them. And Luke shows you the risen Jesus was no ghost: "Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39) - and then He ate fish in front of them. The resurrection is God's public verdict on the cross: payment accepted, death defeated, and Jesus "declared to be the Son of God in power... by his resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4).
Do the math in John 20. Jesus rose on Sunday - and Thomas spent the next eight days refusing to believe it. Eight days of the other disciples glowing while Thomas held out. Here is the wonder: the risen Lord of the universe did not write him off, and did not wait for Thomas to fix himself. He came back - through locked doors - for one doubting man. A dead savior can be admired. Only a living One can come looking for you.
"Lord Jesus, You are not a memory. You are alive at this very moment - the same Jesus who ate fish on the shore and showed Thomas Your hands. Because You live, I also will live. So I bring You the fear that death and loss hold over me, especially _________________, and I set the empty tomb against it. Amen."
Today's truth: He is not Savior only. He is Lord - and His rule is not a burden but a shelter.
Trace the arc of the passage: from the glory of heaven, down to a servant's form, down to death on a cross - and then the great reversal: "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). One day every knee will bow, willingly or not. Today's question is whether yours will bow now, gladly. Remember from the study: you receive one whole Christ. There are no halves of Him - no Savior who is not also the King. And no one surrenders perfectly; real faith follows Him, and our submission grows for the rest of our lives. His rule is a shelter: "My sheep hear my voice... and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28).
Notice what seeing the risen Jesus produced in Thomas. Not applause. Not "Welcome back!" Not even "I'm sorry I doubted." The first words out of his mouth were allegiance: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). When you truly see who Jesus is, surrender is not a burden someone talks you into - it is the only response that makes sense. The hands that pulled you from the water are the hands you can trust with the wheel.
"Lord Jesus, You are not my assistant, my advisor, or my last resort. You are Lord. I know I don't surrender perfectly - but I want to surrender honestly. So I ask You plainly: what part of my life am I still steering? Today I hand over _________________. Your rule is my shelter, and no one can snatch me out of Your hand. Amen."
Today's goal: Read the whole story, gather up the week, and say it for yourself: my Lord and my God.
You know the pieces now - the Shema Thomas prayed his whole life, the eight days of doubt, the locked doors, the scars. Today read the whole scene slowly, and watch a lifelong monotheist's every defense collapse into worship: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Jesus did not correct him - He accepted the worship as His right. And then He turned, in effect, toward you: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). Keep reading through verse 31, and you will find John telling you exactly why he wrote his Gospel: "so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
Morgan Jackson, a leader of the audio-Bible ministry Faith Comes By Hearing, tells of visiting a village of the Konkomba people in Ghana - a community that could not read. When he told the village leaders he had God's Word in their own tongue, they didn't believe it was possible: "God doesn't speak our language. He only speaks English." Then he pushed the button - and the recording began where Matthew begins, with the family record of Jesus the Messiah, in Konkomba. Soon three hundred villagers had gathered to listen to God speak their language, and the disbelief turned to joy: "Jesus is now one of us. He speaks our language! He knows us - we don't need a translator to speak to God!" Not one of those three hundred had seen the scars. They heard - and they believed. Jesus's blessing in John 20:29 was not a consolation prize for people born too late to touch the wounds. It was a promise - and it is still coming true, in languages Thomas never heard, in places he never saw.
Say every verse you've memorized this week out loud, from memory. (John 20:28 - and John 1:14 and Colossians 2:9 if you took the challenge.)
"Jesus Christ is fully God - before a single star hung in the heavens, He was.
He became fully man - He knows what it is like to be me.
He died in my place - and 'It is finished' means paid in full.
He rose from the dead - and He is alive at this very moment.
He is Lord of all - and His rule is not my burden but my shelter.
This is not wishful thinking. This is not religious sentiment.
This is revealed truth. And so I say it with Thomas:
my Lord and my God."
"Jesus never actually claimed to be God.
That idea was invented by the church centuries later."
Practice your answer out loud right now, in your own words, like you're talking to a friend. Remember the pieces: if He never claimed it, why did they pick up stones (John 8:58-59)?... His enemies told Him to His face why they wanted Him dead - "because you, being a man, make yourself God" (John 10:33)... He accepted worship that faithful men and angels always refused... and when Thomas called Him "My Lord and my God," He blessed him rather than correcting him. His friends worshiped Him and His enemies executed Him for precisely that claim.
And remember the rule: gentleness and respect. Don't fight the documentary - open the Gospel. A gentle invitation to read the Gospel of John together will do more than winning the argument ever could. The goal is never to win - it's to love the person asking.
Look back at what you wrote on Day One about who you thought Jesus was. How would you answer now? What changed - and what will you do about it?
"Lord Jesus, thank You for this week. I have seen You more clearly - 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, keep meeting me the way You met Thomas. And I say it with him, and I want to mean it more every day: my Lord and my God. Amen."
Well done. You did the work - and the work is where the reward is.
Next week: God the Holy Spirit. (Jesus said it was to your advantage that He go away. Next week you find out why.)