Jesus’s Nature

Introduction

Christian tradition has long affirmed that Jesus is divine—one “person” of a triune Godhead. This framework interprets his authority, miracles, and exaltation as evidence of inherent deity. Yet the New Testament also presents Jesus as a fully human figure who lived, acted, and suffered within the constraints of human biology.

A second model has garnered some support and that is the idea that God manifested himself as the human Jesus, so-called Modalism[i].  In this model, God presents an image that is indistinguishable from a biological human and expresses God’s character and power.

A coherent alternative to divinity arises when we consider Jesus as a fully human being perfectly indwelt by God’s Spirit, beginning at his baptism. This Spirit not only governed his thoughts, speech, and actions, but would also transform his lifeless, post‑crucifixion body into something entirely new—Paul’s “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42-45).

Jesus’s Identity Models

The Incarnation Model

The traditional Trinitarian model identifies three divine “persons”—Father, Son, and Spirit—within a single “Godhead”.  Jesus’s miracles, authority, and exaltation are interpreted as expressions of his inherent deity, which is intrinsically integrated within his being. Passages such as Jn 1:1, Phil 2:6-7, and Heb 1:2-3 are commonly read as affirming Christ’s preexistence and participation in creation, and so his divinity.

The weakness of this model is in its superficial conceptual foundation in addressing Jesus.

Jesus speaks of God as his “Father,” which yields a picture of two divine beings in a kind of genealogical relationship. Jesus speaks separately of the Holy Spirit, producing a third divine actor. So, church fathers (Nicea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD)) found it natural to affirm three separate actors. These early councils went to great lengths to articulate Jesus’s humanity coexisting with his (preexistent) Deity.

However, to preserve the monotheism inherited from Judaism, Christian tradition posits a “Godhead”—not a distinct identity but a kind of composite organism consisting of three functionaries, though Scripture never depicts a “Godhead” acting as a unified entity (despite the Tanakh’s use of the plural-form ’elohim e.g., Gen 1:26 “…Let us make man in our image.”)

Like Modalism, the Trinitarian model suffers from our inability to identify with its God manifestation.  He’s God and we’re not, so our ability to emotionally relate is challenged from what it would be if he were simply human.

Modalism – Jesus as Theophany

Modalism is the theory of God manifesting himself in whatever context and in whatever form suits his purposes.  Genesis 18 contains an example of a divine manifestation in the form of Abraham’s visitor(s)[ii].

This theory is attractive because God is unconstrained in the forms and contexts in which he may choose to manifest: as Abraham’s human-like visitor, as a “burning bush”, a “devouring fire” atop Sinai, the indwelt Spirit within God’s transformed followers, or Jesus.

Its weakness in its application to Jesus as a theophany is his loss of relatability as “one of us”, while his human-like birth, life-long experiences and physical death strain its credulity (theophanies generally don’t persist for 30 years).  It’s possible, but unlikely.

Both the Incarnation and Modalism’s theophany see the figure of Jesus as fully divine.

Jesus as Fully Human and Spirit-Indwelt

This model—deeply rooted in biblical language—understands Jesus as a biologically human man who becomes wholly indwelt by God’s Spirit, apparently from his baptism onward. This view takes seriously Jesus’s insistence that the Father dwelling in him performs the works (Jn 14:10) and fulfills the prophetic expectation of a Spirit-anointed human agent: Deut 18:18–19 and Isa 61:1–2

1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

This Jubilee‑themed declaration (Lk 4:18-19) emphasizes spiritual and pastoral miracles—acts of genuine care, liberation, and comfort for Israel’s oppressed. The Gospels portray Jesus’s genuine human life, suffering, and death, and underscore the longstanding biblical pattern of God empowering those he conscripts into his service.

On this reading, Jesus’s authority, wisdom, and miraculous power arise not from inherent deity but from perfect alignment with his indwelt Spirit of God.

Comparing Models

Functional Equivalence

We first note that each model’s Jesus persona is identical, functionally.  Each can draw on and express the character and power of God.  One functional difference is that the theophany doesn’t physically die as do the others, though his observers nevertheless experience him dying.  The distinction between the perfectly Spirit-indwelt Jesus and the Jesus as the incarnation of God, however, is undetectable.

Ontology

Ontologically, the waters are a bit muddy.  The Incarnation model conflates a human Jesus, and a deity Jesus, into one entity.  So, for example, people argue about whether, or the extent to which, Jesus was – or could be — tempted (as humans are).  Most believe he, as God, is incapable of sin.  Answering any question regarding this Jesus’s nature is problematic since he possesses two identities that are different in kind.

In the theophany model, its ontology is clear.  Jesus is God.  One must assume that God is immune to human frailty and so doesn’t “experience” his apparent humanity in the same way as the other models involving humans.

The ontology of the Spirit-indwelt human model is similarly clear.   Jesus is a man who happens to be animated and empowered by God’s Spirit.  It is God, through his Spirit, who therefore determines the extent to which Jesus experiences and demonstrates the properties of divinity.

Arguments for Incarnation

  • This has been the standard assumption of Christianity since at least the fourth century.
  • Many verses when interpreted literally appear to speak of the preexistence and deity of Jesus (e.g., (Jn 1:1-2, 17:5, 24, 8:58, Phil 2:6-7, Heb 10:5-7)[iii].
  • The author of John is particularly supportive of a divine Jesus.

Arguments for Theophany

  • Clarifies who the Deity is and what he has done. Whether one worships YHVH or Jesus, he is worshipping God.  God is the singular actor in Creation.
  • Eliminates the charge that God murdered his Son (widely held by many).

Weaknesses of the Incarnation Model

  • The case for the Trinity is weak.  Its foundation is the Gospel narratives mentioning Jesus, God as his “Father”, and the mysterious Holy Spirit that he will “send”.  Three “persons”, therefore, require a theology of a Trinity.
  • The extent of Jesus’s “Godness” as incarnate is unclear (and debated e.g. temptation, sin)
  • The object of our veneration is unclear – should it be Jesus or the Father?

Weaknesses of the Theophany Model

  • It makes no sense for Jesus to pray “to” the Father if Jesus is a Theophany of the “Father”
  • As simply a manifestation, the theophany would experience no human physical suffering/death. Therefore, there is no possibility of “sacrificial” atonement (if that’s one’s requirement).
  • A theophany, while perfectly real to those interacting with it, is a bit disingenuous when in the form of a human being. It’s a kind of deception, while a burning bush or fiery mountain is not.

Arguments for Jesus’s Spirit-Indwelt Humanity

  • Jesus claims this of himself, and repeatedly, most clearly in John 14:10:

“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

If Jesus was God incarnate (or a theophany of God), this statement would seem out of place.  While it doesn’t specifically attest to his humanity, it does testify to his dependency, and:

Lk 4 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor…”

 (quoting Is 61:1).

  • If Jesus was human, then he didn’t preexist the beginning of the world. Several considerations suggest that a literal reading of the preexistence passages (see above) may not have been intended. While we cannot explore each of these in detail, the following points merit further study in the context of Jn 17:5:

5And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

    1. This statement might be an instance of the “prophetic past tense” or “prophetic perfect” in which an assured future condition is expressed as already having happened.
    2. Some early manuscripts read “the glory that was with you” instead of “the glory I had with you”.
    3. The statement might be an instance of the Hebraic idiom of “Having something with God”
    4. The credibility of a literal interpretation suffers when comparing it with Jesus’s previous statement in John 17:3 “… that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Passages describing Christ “with God before creation” can be understood as prophetic perfect, Hebraic idiom, or functional descriptions of God’s creative Word/Wisdom. This avoids positing two divine beings prior to Genesis 1:1.

  • The Bible’s testimony is that Jesus suffered and died, characteristic of a human
  • The object of worship and veneration is clear – God (the Father)
  • The Bible presents extensive testimony of Jesus’s relationship and interchange with God the Father. If Jesus was an integrated whole of man and God, such interchanges seem to lose their meaning and impact.
  • Jesus demonstrated his one moment of human frailty while in Gethsemane (Mt 26:39)
  • Many verses speak of Jesus’s post-resurrection Glorification (Mt 25:31-32, Jn 5:22, Ro 2:16, 2 Cor 5:10, 2 Tim 4:1, Rev 22:12). Once again, this seems problematic if Jesus was always wholly God.  Post-resurrection Christ is identified separately as “Lord” (κύριος kúrios) distinct from God (Θεός Theós or κύριος as substitute for the OT’s “YHVH”).

Why the Spirit-Infused Human Jesus Makes Perfect Sense

Jesus as Humanity’s Model

Jesus, the man wholly indwelt by God, stands as the antitype of all who sincerely respond to God’s call and so turn to him, thus being transformed by his Spirit. God’s promised salvation is the gift of his Spirit for all people who express submission and devotion to him.  In this sense, he is our exemplar.

The man Jesus was animated by the same Spirit of God that is offered to all under God’s New Covenant. This is the condition he publicly declared of himself in the synagogue at Nazareth, citing Isaiah 61:1 (Luke 4:18):

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…”

Because Jesus lived as a Spirit‑indwelt human being, he is identified in Scripture as the model for all who would follow him—the “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29).  If from the Creator of the Universe, this would seem to be an odd statement.  The New Testament repeatedly affirms this characteristic of Jesus:

1Pe 2:21-23

21For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

1Jn 2:5-6

5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Phl 2:1-2

1So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Jesus demonstrated what human life looks like when filled to overflowing with God’s Spirit—his kindness, compassion, piety, humility, and freedom from worldly anxieties. While Jesus’s faithfulness to God through the Spirit surpassed that of even the most devout among his followers, the pattern remains clear: a life wholly devoted to carrying out the will of God. 

His humanity allows us to be drawn into his story as one-like-him.  In many ways, his story is our story. Our transformation by the Spirit is like his.  Our lives in the Spirit can be types of the life he lived.

Unfulfilled Promises and Their Convergence

Elsewhere I have argued that, in Jesus’s day, three major promises that YHVH had made to his people remained unfulfilled [iv].

  1. First, God’s promise to Abram that his descendants would become a blessing to all families (Gen 12:3) and nations (Gen 22:18) of the earth had not yet reached its intended scope.
  2. Second, the prophetic assurances that God would regather the dispersed northern tribes of Israel and reunite them with the faithful of Judah as his single covenant people (e.g., Eze 37:21-23, Am 9:14-15, Is 11:11-12) had not been realized.
  3. Third, the widely attested promise of a “New Covenant” (Jer 31:31-34, Eze 36:24-28, Joel 2:28) remained unfulfilled: Israel did not yet possess hearts of flesh, God’s law written within them, or the indwelling Spirit animating them in love of God and neighbor. Only a portion of the people possessed genuine knowledge of God.

These three promises, however, are not independent. Their fulfillment is interwoven. The implementation of one necessarily advances the others.

God’s fulfillment of his New Covenant promises was—and remains—contingent upon his instilling his Spirit within those who seek him. Some of these were Jews; many others were distant descendants of the exiled northern tribes, now living as gentiles throughout the Levant, Asia, and Egypt. The divine call extended even further, drawing in individuals from the nations who had no ancestral connection to Israel. They were simply “the nations”—pagan gentiles, fulfilling God’s “blessing to all nations” promise to Abraham.

As these various groups responded to God’s summons to repent and return to him, two of God’s promises were being fulfilled simultaneously: the Abrahamic promise of blessing to the nations, and the regathering to YHVH of the dispersed descendants of Israel alongside faithful Judahites who likewise sought God and his will.

All of these individuals experienced the New Covenant transformation effected by God’s Spirit—just as seekers of God do today, and just as Jesus had perfectly experienced. This transformation produced in them an innate desire to please and love God, and to love their neighbors. It is precisely this transformation of the human Jesus that becomes crucial for understanding his nature.

Conclusions

From a functional standpoint, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the Jesuses of our three alternative models. In each case, the effective agent is God. Nothing accomplished by one could not be accomplished by the others.

Yet for interpreters of Jesus’s story, one crucial difference emerges.

If Jesus is understood as divine—God himself—then his actions become categorically inimitable. We instinctively excuse ourselves from attempting to live as he lived: he is God; we are not. The difference in kind creates an unbridgeable gap.

However, if Jesus is understood as fully human, infused with God’s nature and Spirit (beginning at the Jordan), and if Scripture teaches that God intends to infuse all who seek after him with that same Spirit—granting them a heart like Jesus’s, imparting divine wisdom and knowledge as Jesus displayed, and distributing gifts of the Spirit enabling them to live as Jesus would live if he was them[v]—then we are drawn directly into the narrative. God’s intention is to make his followers Christ‑like.

A difficulty with the Jesus‑as‑divinity model remains its conceptual superficiality.  Nevertheless, many Christians raised within Trinitarian contexts never encounter the alternative: Jesus as God’s Spirit‑empowered human agent and Son, and harbinger of God’s New Covenant.

Once this alternative is considered, however, its clarity, coherence, and explanatory power become striking.  Jesus is the first of “many brothers”, and the archetype of God’s transformational call of his people back to faithfulness that is the signature of his New Covenant.

[i] I have discussed the attraction of Modalism in the following pieces: Thinking About The Trinity – A Pilgrim’s Search, The Singular God and the Divine Christ: A Case for Modalism – A Pilgrim’s Search

[ii] “Angels” of the LORD – A Pilgrim’s Search

[iii] Admittedly, the normal way most would interpret these verses is quite literally, that before Creation there was, in some sense, God and Christ together in glory.  However, it’s possible these are simply surmises by the author of John as to in what sense Christ existed “with” YHVH to result in Jesus’s statement Jn 8:58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 

This may be an example of what scholars call the “intrusion of divine speech,” in which a speaker suddenly utters first‑person statements as though speaking directly as YHVH. Numerous instances appear in the later prophets (e.g., Dt 7:4; 11:13–14; 17:2–3; 28:20; Is 3:14–15; 29:1–4; Jer 4:17; Hos 9:15, and others). Such examples reinforce the idea that God can express aspects of his divinity—including his own speech—through any chosen context or agent, whether a prophet, a bush, or Jesus himself.

The issue is: “Did Jesus pre-exist ‘with God’, or was this simply YHVH’s voice emanating from Jesus?”  Two quite distinct situations.

[iv] Unpacking the New Covenant Gospel, Forgiven vs Transformed to Righteousness, Paul’s Real Gospel

[v] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, NavPress, 2012, pp 241

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