Jesus: What the Record Says From Isaiah 7:14 to Revelation

The Man Whose Name Runs Through the Whole Book

Jesus is named in the dossier as a man of the tribe of Judah, living in the era of the New Testament, listed with the Hebrew word עִמָּנוּאֵל beside his name. His parents are given as Joseph and Mary (Matthew 1:16-18), and four brothers are named: James, Joses, Simon, and Jude (Matthew 13:55 as the source of those entries). According to Ussher, Annals of the World (1650), he was born 4 BC and died AD 33, a life of thirty-six years. No other chronology is offered, and none should be assumed.

His footprint in Scripture is unlike any other person in this collection: 1,160 verses across 224 passages, beginning at Isaiah 7:14 and running to Revelation. The books that carry him most heavily are John with 253 verses, Matthew with 166, Luke with 103, Mark with 88, then Acts with 72 and Romans with 70. Nearly every book of the New Testament names him, down to two verses in James. This is not a man remembered in a corner of the record; he is its spine.

The Healed Man and the Hostility

One scene comes to us in full. A man had been made well, and did not know by whom, "for Jesus had withdrawn, a crowd being in the place" (John 5:13). Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said, "Behold, you are made well. Sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you" (John 5:14). The healed man went and told the Jews who had healed him, and the result was not gratitude but pursuit: "For this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath" (John 5:16). His answer was short and enormous: "My Father is still working, so I am working, too" (John 5:17). Healing, withdrawal, a warning against sin, and men seeking his death, all inside five verses.

The Resurrection as the Load-Bearing Wall

The longest passage in the dossier is an argument, not a story. "Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1 Corinthians 15:12). What follows is a chain of consequences drawn out without mercy: "But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:13-14). More than that, the preachers themselves become liars: "Yes, we are also found false witnesses of God, because we testified about God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn't raise up, if it is so that the dead are not raised" (1 Corinthians 15:15). Everything is staked on one event.

Reconciliation, and Men Sent to Beg

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The source of it is named: "all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation; namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). And so the appeal goes out through men: "We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).

That ministry has a shape in Romans 15:16-20. The work is priestly, "that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:16), and the boasting is not in the worker: "For I will not dare to speak of any things except those which Christ worked through me" (Romans 15:18). The reach given is "from Jerusalem, and around as far as to Illyricum" (Romans 15:19), with the aim of preaching "not where Christ was already named" (Romans 15:20).

What he holds together, he holds to the end. He "will also confirm you until the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:8), though the same letter must beg that "there be no divisions among you" (1 Corinthians 1:10). And in prison the summary is two clauses: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), with Christ magnified "whether by life or by death" (Philippians 1:20).

What Is Not Here

Honesty requires naming the shape of this record. The dossier reports no sin and no failure of Jesus; the failing in these passages belongs to others, to those who sought to kill him (John 5:16) and to a church quarrelling in divisions (1 Corinthians 1:10). No children are named. Beyond the six passages quoted, hundreds of references stand as references only, and nothing may be told about them here that the text itself has not been made to say.

The Line to Christ

With Jesus the line is not drawn to someone else; he is the end of it. He is preached as raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12), the one through whom God reconciled the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), the Son into whose fellowship God calls (1 Corinthians 1:9), the one whose day is coming (1 Corinthians 1:8), and the one who says of his own work, "My Father is still working, so I am working, too" (John 5:17). Every other name in this collection is read toward him.