Who Is Jesus
The short answer
The question "who is Jesus?" can be answered in two ways, and the New Testament insists on both. The first answer is personal and theological: Jesus is not one topic among many in Christian faith but its living center. The letter to the Hebrews is a sustained meditation on exactly this. Its author returns again and again to who Jesus was and is, and to what he accomplished through his death and the new life that followed. For Hebrews, you cannot separate Jesus' identity from his achievement — the person and the work belong together, and everything else in the faith flows from them.
The second answer is historical: Jesus is the goal of Israel's long story. Matthew opens his Gospel with what looks, at first glance, like a dry family tree — "the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ" (Matthew 1:1). But the list is carefully built. Matthew arranges the names into three groups of fourteen, which can also be seen as six groups of seven. Seven was a powerful symbolic number, and a birth arriving at the start of the seventh seven signals a climax. Jesus is not simply one more name in the line running from Abraham through David; he is the point the whole line was heading toward, the arrival Israel had awaited for two thousand years.
Put the two answers together and a full picture emerges. Who was Jesus? The long-expected culmination of Israel's history, born into a real family with a traceable past. Who is Jesus? The one whose death and resurrection stand at the heart of Christian faith, the figure no genuine version of that faith can treat as an afterthought. The New Testament's opening genealogy and one of its most theologically rich letters both point the same direction: toward him.
What scholars say
In these two passages, N. T. Wright answers the question of who Jesus is from both directions: Hebrews shows a writer endlessly absorbed in Jesus' identity and what his death and new life achieved, while Matthew's carefully arranged genealogy presents Jesus as the climax of Israel's two-thousand-year wait.
“Some Christians face the danger of forgetting just how central and vital Jesus himself was and is to every aspect of Christian faith . It is possible to get so wrapped up in theological technicalities or practical details that Jesus comes into the equation, if at all, almost as an afterthought. Hebrews ought to provide a strong antidote to any such tendencies. This writer can’t get enough of thinking through who Jesus was and is and what he achieved in his death and in the new life that emerged the other side. That alone is worth a good deal of pondering. When we then look at the details of the picture and realize the way in which he has brought to perfection, and so to a stop, the long line of earlier priests, pondering turns to gratitude, and gratitude to assurance and hope.”
“But that’s what Matthew does, on Jesus’ behalf. And, as though to emphasize that Jesus isn’t just one member in an ongoing family, but actually the goal of the whole list, he arranges the genealogy into three groups of 14 names – or, perhaps we should say, into six groups of seven names. The number seven was and is one of the most powerful symbolic numbers, and to be born at the beginning of the seventh seven in the sequence is clearly to be the climax of the whole list. This birth, Matthew is saying, is what Israel has been waiting for two thousand years.”
What it means for you
It is surprisingly easy to be busy with religious things — debates, routines, practical details — while Jesus himself drifts to the edge of the picture. Hebrews works against that drift by refusing to stop thinking about who he is and what he did. A simple practice follows: when faith feels abstract or mechanical, return to the person at the center and let the pondering do its work.
Matthew's genealogy adds a quieter encouragement. God's purposes unfolded through many ordinary generations before reaching their climax. If your own waiting feels long, this list of names suggests that slow stretches of history can still be leading somewhere.
In context
Matthew's genealogy opens the entire New Testament, tracing Jesus' family line from Abraham through David to the exile and beyond, before the birth narrative begins later in chapter 1. Its structure of fourteens is deliberate, framing Jesus as the destination of Israel's history rather than a footnote to it. Hebrews, meanwhile, is an extended argument about Jesus' identity and work, comparing him to angels, to Moses, and to the long succession of priests — a succession the letter presents him as bringing to completion.