From being brushed off as a mythical legend to being worshiped as God, Jesus is the most controversial figure in the history of mankind. Certain things, however, we can know for sure. The most basic one is that he indeed lived in the land of Israel during the first century. Which then makes us wonder, what kind of person was he?

It is my goal to prove to you that he was God who came down to earth in human form, despite how crazy that may sound. Rest assured, that the supporting arguments here will not sound as crazy.

First point to be made in support of this is Christ’s (the official title of Jesus) birth. Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus, records that Mary was found to be with a child through the Holy Spirit. Now, many opponents of Christianity in Jesus’ days accused Jesus of being an illegitimate child (or the more offensive word, a bastard), and a malicious rumor spread that Mary had slept with a Roman soldier before getting married to her husband, Joseph. Which is interesting in itself, because it acquiesces with the idea that Jesus was not born out of ordinary marriage-bed shared by Joseph and Mary. However, this rumor is simply a dirty and foul gossip conjured up by anti-Christian factions to discredit Jesus and his followers. Upon discovering her unexplained pregnancy, Joseph is recorded to have set up his mind to quietly divorce Mary. Joseph was also suspecting a similar reason for her pregnancy as others. However, he suddenly changed his mind and decided to keep her and the baby. Was it out of his compassion? No, since he was planning to both be compassionate and divorce her by covering up the whole matter away from public eyes. The true reason for his change of mind was nothing less than a vision–which could have been the only way to persuade a law-abiding Jew such as Joseph in such a situation–which informed him that Jesus was born through the power of God’s Spirit.

The point at hand is amplified when you consider a prophecy from the Old Testament written by Isaiah:

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel [which means God with us]” (Isaiah 7)

So not only is Isaiah speaking of a supernatural, virgin birth which marks the Christ’s entrance into the world, but also the identity of the person fulfilling the first half of this prophecy: God with us. But why does the virgin birth prove Jesus as God? Because every ordinary human comes into the world through the union of a man and a woman. But if someone comes into the world by bypassing this fundamental principle, and exactly fulfills a prophecy saying so, which also reveals who that person will be, then he is God in human form.

If his birth was not miraculous enough, his acts during his mission are and confirm his divinity. Another disciple of Jesus, John, comments, “If all of his miracles were recorded into books, there would not be enough space in the world to contain them all.” Ranging from raising a four-day-old corpse back to life to multiplying few loaves of bread and pieces of fish to feed thousands if not ten thousand, Jesus’ acts of wonder sound too fantastical to be true. But if they were just one or two, we could brush them off as fantastic embellishments. As it is, however, there are miracles after miracles and stories after stories that if the writers of the New Testament were lying or concocting them, they would seriously need to be listed as the worst cases of having compulsive lying disorder. How could a mere man walk on a stormy sea, for example? How could a man calm the raging waves with a verbal command? These are also put into perspective when you look at how the Old Testament describes God:

 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
 He made the storm be still,
    and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad that the waters^[c] were quiet,
    and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!

(Psalm 107)

The Old Testament attributes the power to calm seas to God, and Jesus does that so naturally and with authority, right before the eyes of his followers. Now, there are some who say that the ability to do miracles is no indicator that someone is God, as some prophets of old have done miracles as well. However, in the cases of the prophets, they performed fewer miracles and attributed them to God and His power, being therefore called “men of God“. Jesus, on the other hand, not only does miracles with perfect ease and with a few words, but also attributes the miracles to himself, saying that he even has the power to raise the dead. But one may say, aren’t these all stories made up–only found in the Bible? Not quite. In the Talmud and extrabiblical historians’ writings (e.g. see Josephus in Antiquities), Jesus is recognized to have been a “miracle-worker”. The truth of these miracles actually having taken place also explains how so many people from all around the middle east came to see him and follow him.

These are some reasons to think seriously and affirmatively about the divinity of Jesus. So then, what does that mean about how you should live?