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Who is Jesus?

Jesus is God. The Christian God is a single, perfect divine being who is composed of three Persons (known as the Trinity): the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is God the Son.

Jesus became human and was miraculously conceived and born to a human mother, Mary. (Mary was still a virgin at the time Jesus was born.) This is known as the Incarnation. He lived as a human, taught people about God and performed many miracles, including restoring life to the dead. He was crucified and died, but was resurrected three days later and appeared to his followers. He is now with God the Father in heaven, and has promised to return to Earth a second time.

Jesus' death served as a guilt sacrifice to God the Father. We deserve eternal death for the wrongs we've done and our failure to follow God, but Jesus' death was a substitute for this penalty. God the Father punished all evil acts of all people when Jesus died. God did this so that he could forgive us for the evil we do, and give us eternal life with him. If we accept Jesus as our God and accept his substitutionary payment for our wrongs, then God will forgive us and we will be saved from the punishment we deserve.

Jesus is also the Jewish Messiah, a leader and savior whose coming was predicted by the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament). "Christ" is the Greek word for Messiah, which is why Jesus is also called Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus or simply Christ.

Jesus was and is still fully divine, as well as fully human. His becoming human means that he added human attributes to his nature, not that he lost any of his divine attributes (though he voluntarily allowed some of these to be limited while he lived on Earth).

The life story and teachings of Jesus are recorded in four books of the Bible known as the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Further information (from Rational Christianity)