Do you believe in Jesus? You may have been asked that question and been unsure how to reply. Belief in Jesus might simply involve acknowledging that such a person did exist in a specific time and place in the same way that we recognize the reality of other memorable people such as William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman. But for those of us who claim to be Christian, more than history is at stake.

You have a lot to consider. Some factors that contribute to your makeup are pretty much done deals. You came into this world with your genetic code in place, so things like eye color, height, curls and complexion are predetermined.

Religious faith can’t be inherited like freckles. You may belong to families whose members have traditionally been Christian, perhaps for centuries. You can point to your parents’ firm insistence that you receive the sacraments and go to Mass on a regular basis. But spending time in church can’t make you a Christian any more than spending time in a garage can make you a car.

What does make a Christian is knowing Jesus as a unique person with both a human and a divine nature, accepting his teachings and trying to live them out, and modeling our own lives on his. In other words, being a Christian means being a disciple (follower) of Jesus. The only way that’s possible is through a close personal relationship with him and that, of course, implies that Jesus is, not that Jesus was.

It’s hard to imagine anyone entering into a close personal relationship with a stranger, so let’s see what can be known about Jesus.

Is Jesus Real?

It’s been roughly two thousand years since Jesus walked the dusty roads of Judea and Galilee. From time to time, his actual existence as a historical person has been called into question, so let’s deal with that first.

The most obvious place to turn for information about Jesus’ life on earth is the Bible’s Christian Scriptures (New Testament). All the books contained there center on Jesus.

That’s quite a contrast to the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), where a great many important people share the literary spotlight. Even such towering figures as Abraham, Moses and David have prominent roles in some biblical books, lesser stature in others, and in some books are never mentioned at all.

That every Gospel, every letter, every writing of any kind in the New Testament focuses on Jesus demonstrates his unparalleled position. All others pale by comparison. The Christian Scriptures are unquestionably the primary source of information about Jesus.

But in the first century or so after Jesus, other writers referred to him as well. A historian named Flavius Josephus wrote of him, “Now about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed he should be called a man. He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of those who receive the truth with pleasure, and won over many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Christ....” Roman historians mentioned him as well.

Even so, you can’t go to the library and check out a biography of Jesus. The Gospels, often defined as accounts of Jesus’ life, don’t qualify as biographies because none of them tells his life story in total, birth to death.

Two Gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, trace Jesus’ human origins and early years in their first two chapters, and they tell very different stories indeed. Luke’s version contains most of what we usually associate with the first Christmas: the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the stable birth and the manger, the night sky filled with angels and the visit of the shepherds.

Luke’s is the only Gospel to record the 12-year-old Jesus’ journey with his parents to Jerusalem for Passover. Following that episode, all four Gospels are silent until Jesus went public, around the age of 30.

Where was he, and what was he doing during the 18 or so years of his adolescence and young adulthood that go unrecorded? We can sketch in some areas based on what the Gospels tell us about his early family life and what archaeologists and Scripture scholars are learning about the time and place in which he lived.

Nicknamed ’Shua?

Jesus spent his entire life, some 33 years, in a tiny sliver of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. During its long history, this area has had a number of names: Canaan, Israel, Palestine, among others. When Jesus lived there, it was part of the vast Roman Empire and consisted of Galilee in the north, where Jesus grew up, and Judea in the south, where he was born and later died and rose.

The Gospels of Luke and Matthew agree that Jesus’ hometown was a Galilean village named Nazareth, where his foster father, Joseph, was a skilled workman. Although it has long been assumed he was a carpenter (“Is he not the carpenter’s son?”—Matthew 13:55), that may be too narrow a definition. Joseph would certainly have apprenticed Jesus. Long-standing tradition had each generation teaching the next the family trade. Did Jesus work at this trade during at least some of the unrecorded years? It seems reasonable to think so.

Although we commonly translate his name as Jesus, it was closer to Yeshua in Hebrew. The neighborhood kids may have called him ’Shua, a common abbreviation, and his daily life wasn’t much different from theirs. Like them, Jesus was Jewish, an important aspect of his identity.

Being Jewish had to do with both race and religion. Jewish boys who learned to read used the sacred books of the Hebrew Scriptures as their text. There they learned their people’s history: how their ancestors, the Israelites, long before entered into a covenant (solemn agreement) with God and thus became the Chosen People. Far more than a label, Jewishness was a complete identity.

Short Career Curve

All four Gospels record Jesus’ first public appearance in much the same way: his baptism by John, a distant relative who had acquired quite a reputation for both his baptisms and his preaching. >From what we’re told, John would have been fairly hard to ignore with his “clothing made of camel’s hair...his food, locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4), not to mention his startling references to some of the most powerful people of his day as, “You brood of vipers (snakes)!” (Matthew 3:7).

When Jesus appeared on the scene, John became suddenly humble, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” (Matthew 3:14) And, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him. Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God” (John 1:32-34). There was something very different about this Jesus from the opening episode of his public life.

John the Baptizer is about the only person other than Jesus who finds a prominent place in the pages of all four Gospels. Following Jesus’ baptism and 40-day desert retreat (not recorded by John), each Gospel seems to take off in a different direction.

Mark immediately records a series of healings, both physical and supernatural (1:21—2:12). Matthew sets the stage for Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, by far the most famous of his public addresses and, some say, a summary of his entire message (Chapters 5—7). Luke takes Jesus back to Nazareth for a sort of inaugural address to the hometown folks in the synagogue where he grew up (4:16-30). And John situates Jesus in another Galilean town, Cana, where he helps a hapless wedding couple by turning water into wine (2:1-11), thereby performing his first “sign,” the term John prefers to “miracle.”

Four stories from four writers about the same period in the life of one individual. Which to believe? Strange as it may seem, we can believe them all if we remember that the Gospels are not biographies and were never intended to be.

When episodes of Jesus’ life were recalled after his death and resurrection, that they happened was of infinitely greater importance than when they happened. Writers, therefore, often inserted them in their texts wherever they suited their purposes best.

A good example is the time Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple. Both Mark and Matthew place that relatively late in Jesus’ career (Mark 11:15-19, Matthew 21:12-17) while John positions it immediately following the Cana story (2:13-22). Luke doesn’t tell this story at all, possibly because Luke seems to tone down or omit strong language and violence.

One reason the Gospel writers took somewhat different approaches to recording Jesus’ public ministry is that they were writing for quite different audiences. Matthew’s Gospel was read primarily by Jews, so it could be assumed that they were well acquainted with their heritage in the Hebrew Scriptures and wouldn’t need to have it explained. This Gospel is peppered with direct and indirect quotations from these texts, and Jesus’ Jewishness is especially obvious.

Mark’s audience must have been  more heavily gentile, as he was careful to explain Jewish customs (for example, 7:1-4). Luke, a gentile himself, wrote for people much like himself, showing Jesus as a universal savior, not merely a Jewish messiah. John’s Gospel, written last, speaks to a generation whose understanding of Jesus’ message has been influenced by events and trends of a later period.

Jesus is portrayed primarily as a healer by Mark, a teacher by Matthew, a compassionate friend of the downtrodden and outcasts by Luke, and the majestic Son of God by John. He is all of these and more, of course, but each writer elects to shine the spotlight on a particular feature.

It’s much like asking your friends and family to choose the best picture from your yearbook proofs. They may all pick a different one because each person sees you a little differently, but no matter which angle the picture’s taken from, it’s still you.

So when we put all the portraits of Jesus together, we see a man who, over a period of some three years, preached a wonderfully new way to live a godly life. He taught with parables (stories taken from daily life that often had a special twist or sting), made a special point of including those who lived on the outskirts or never belonged (lepers, the poor, sinners, etc.), healed, brought the dead back to life, and brought deeper, more profound meaning to God’s law.

Jesus was a great man during those public years, no question. But was he—is he—more than that?

After-death Experience

Jesus’ arrest and trial, his tragic death, and most of all, his resurrection led everyone—from those who had encountered him only briefly to those who had been closest to him for years—to raise the question: Who is Jesus...really? What does Jesus mean in my life?

All of the Gospels were written in response to such questions. All reflect what is known as post-resurrection theology. In other words, it was the earth-shaking events of Jesus’ death and resurrection that set everyone thinking. Eventually, those thoughts found their way into writing.

The Gospels reflect the pondering of Jesus’ followers on his life and its meaning. Look at any Gospel or all of them. Notice how great a percentage of the total text is devoted to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus’ earlier sayings and deeds were recalled in an effort to shed light on these two events.

If Jesus experienced resurrection, he must surely be more than merely human. Did he ever claim to be? Not in so many words, perhaps, but the message is certainly contained in various Gospel episodes.

During the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus states that he has not “come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (5:17).

Later in the same sermon, Jesus repeats a formula several times: “You have heard...but I say to you.” In each instance, Jesus takes one of the Ten Commandments or another instance from that great body of laws and gives it a broader, deeper interpretation (5:21-26, 27-30, 33-37, 38-42, 43-48). Those who heard him would have been astonished. He not only extended the law of God, but also did it on his own authority (“I say to you”). Only God could do that.

In John’s Gospel, where Jesus is seen as most majestic and divine, there are several “I am” statements (“I am the bread of life”—6:35, “I am the light of the world”—8:12; “I am the resurrection and the life”—11:25). Each of these is intended to make the hearer recall Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush. When asked his name, God replied, “I am who am....This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). Jesus’ “I am” statements are revelations of his divinity.

Will I Follow?

Now we face the same decision all of those who preceded us in Christian history had to make and the one all those who follow us will have to make as well: Do I believe in Jesus? If I say I do, what do I mean by that? Is Jesus simply another figure in human history? Should he be remembered as a remarkable teacher, an inspirational preacher, an extraordinarily kind and caring person, but only that? If so, Jesus was.

But if, in addition to all that, he actually rose from the dead, ascended to God and is on a par with God, then what are the implications for my life? If I elect to be a disciple, I make a conscious decision to model my life on his, to live out his teaching even when it’s unpopular, to make my life available for him to use as he wishes, and to try to live in such a way that this life will be the beginning of my connection with him.

Have you met Jesus in the Gospels? Do you believe? Then you can truly say, “Jesus is.”

Virginia Smith is one of the general editors of and a contributor to Scripture From Scratch, also published by St. Anthony Messenger Press.