Below are a few different views about who Jesus Christ was. Which one(s) do you consider are correct?
1. Jesus Christ was just a mythical figure
Although part of the Bible story, virtually all modern scholars studying antiquity claim that Jesus did exist historically. Most of them agree that Jesus was a Galilean, Jewish rabbi who preached his message orally, and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
2. Jesus Christ was founder of some sort of religious tradition
Most people think of him as an eminent religious leader pointing to the significance of spiritual as opposed to material things.
For instance with regards to what Buddhism calls attachment, and what the Jewish tradition refers to as coveting, Jesus said:
"For what is a person profited, if he shall gain depends upon but lose his soul?"
This is similar to the teachings of the leaders of other religions:
"You utilize all of your vital energy on external things and need replacing your spirit" (Chuang Tzu, a Taoist sage)
"It is difficult for a person laden with riches to climb the steep path that contributes to bliss." (The Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam)
Actually, Jesus Christ was a creator of a restoration movement within Judaism. Only after his death, did town his followers formed eventually became the Christian church.
3. Jesus Christ was an excellent man
He's been viewed as a religious ascetic holy man and thus a symbol of perfect goodness and virtue. A function model we can aspire to copy a course in miracles . In washing the feet of others he revealed his humility, he showed care for the sick, and he asked for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying him.
"Jesus Christ. I mean, not merely was He the maximum human being to ever walk the planet earth, He's everything that I want to strive for. He's everything that anyone should ever want to strive for." (Sam Bradford, American football player)
4. Jesus Christ was a good moral teacher
The sayings related to Jesus, e.g. those known as Sermon on the Mount, are related to forgiveness and compassion. They have been seen to really have a healing quality directed not merely for some particular disease or misfortune but to the vital core of the average person, focusing because they on love and humility as opposed to demand and penalty.
"We must live our lives like Christ was coming this afternoon." (Jimmy Carter, ex-President USA)
5. Jesus Christ was God's messenger and prophet
This is actually the idea that Jesus was Divinely inspired, differing from the wisdom of other men, not in kind, but only in degree. For instance Muslims considered Jesus to be one of God's important prophets chosen to spread God's message.
If he indeed was a prophet a number of his parables of judgment make uncomfortable reading about our destiny. The wheat was to be stored but the weeds were to be burned, the foolish virgins were to be excluded from the wedding banquet, the worthless servant who buried his talent was to be thrown outside to the darkness.
"Those that meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everybody who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everybody is happy, but everyone is shocked." (Peter Kreeft, author of Jesus-Shock)
6. Jesus Christ was a miracle maker
The chance of supernatural events is accepted by those who believe Jesus, like various other Bible figures such as for instance Elisha and Peter, surely could use what they see as God's omnipotent power. For instance he is believed to cause and endless choice of fish to be caught, create a storm cease, and turn water into wine at a wedding. Whether seeing these stories as literally true or merely symbolic, Christian authors view them as works of love and mercy, performed showing compassion for sinful and suffering humanity.
7. Jesus Christ was a manifestation of God
Those after the Bahá'I faith see Jesus as serving together of several manifestations of God reflecting God's qualities and attributes and possessing simultaneous qualities of humanity and divinity.
Some Hindus consider Jesus to be an appearance or manifestation of the Supreme Being and mention similarities between Krishna and Jesus' teachings. Some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, regard Jesus as a bodhisattva (i.e. a being with enlightenment motivated by great compassion) who dedicated his life to the welfare of people.
8. Jesus Christ could be the Son of God
In his time the religious authorities in Judea asked for his death because they didn't believe in his claim to function as Son of God which they saw as a good blasphemy.
Likewise today Muslims do not believe Jesus was the son of God. Islamic texts emphasise a strict notion of monotheism forbidding the association of partners with God which will be idolatry.
Nevertheless the cornerstone of the Christian faith has been a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. At once Christians ask how could a divine Jesus have now been an ignorant baby who had to understand slowly by way of experience and instruction, as all children do? How could Jesus have prayed to his Father like to a different?
Today mainstream Christians respond by believing that Jesus was the Son of God. They mention that this is his own claim about himself. They believe of him as another person of the divine trinity alongside God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Their idea of atonement by the sacrifice of the cross could be impossible aside from the thought of the Son as a person distinct from the Father.
9. Jesus Christ is God himself
This is actually the view that, although as to his body Jesus Christ was a person like others, nevertheless his inner character was infinite and divine. According to this view, he was the main one God himself, in human form, who came at a place ever as the infant child of Mary to develop and learn in the world, experience the natural side of life, overcome its allurements, and thus cause all evil influences in the world to be curtailed.
Quite simply he wasn't the Son of God in the sense of another Divine person. He saw himself this way because unless he felt aside from his own self as God, he couldn't have seen temptation. And so he wasn't conscious of his full identity even though praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and trial, and when dying in agony nailed to the cross when he cried out to ask why God had forsaken him.
As a medical psychologist, Stephen Russell-Lacy has specialised in cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, working for many years with adults suffering distress and disturbance.