TLDR:Jesus is fully God and fully human, both being true without any mixture or compromise of either nature. This is a driving truth in teaching about Jesus, setting up the critical teaching of Jesus being the perfect substitute for our sin.
The name Jesus doesn’t appear in the Bible until the New Testament (although Joshua, basically the Hebrew version of that name, does).1 Because of this, some people think that Jesus didn’t exist until he was born in Bethlehem around 6–5 BC. But that’s not correct. Jesus is the Son of God, which means he’s fully God, and that means he’s eternal. This is the important point the apostle John wanted to make as he opened his Gospel account: “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word [Jesus] was with God, and the Word [Jesus] was fully God” (John 1:1, NET). The manger in Bethlehem wasn’t where Jesus came into being; it was where the eternal Son of God, wrapped in human flesh, came into the world.
As we teach children about Jesus, a field of theology called Christology, we need to be sure to keep Jesus being both fully God and fully humanat the front of our minds. There’s a mystery to it, for sure. The idea of God becoming human and being limited as a person is a head-scratcher. But it’s critical that we help our kids understand that Jesus is, always has been, and always will be fully God, and then two thousand years ago, he became fully human. If we remove or reduce either, we don’t teach who Jesus really is. He isn’t God who is kind of a human; neither is he a human who is kind of God. He’s the God-man. One hundred percent God; one hundred percent human. We might not be able to understand how both these truths fit together (a doctrine called the hypostatic union), but our job is to teach that they both are true.
But there’s another critical truth about Jesus to proclaim to our kids: why he became human in the first place. We find the answer in 2 Corinthians:
God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NET)
Human sin has earned human death. This is why the sacrifice of bulls and goats went on and on without end. An infinite amount of bull and goat blood could not provide the eternal covering for even a single sinful person. And this is why the Son of God took on flesh, becoming fully human, so that He could take our sin debt upon Himself on the cross to cover it for good.
This is why the Son of God came to earth as a baby. Jesus lived about thirty years without sinning even once so that he would be the perfect substitute for us. In doing so, Jesus also provides a picture of what it looks like to be the perfect human—to live as the perfect image of God. Our children have been made in God’s image, and Jesus shows them what it looks like to live that out. The same is true of us, of course. In the end, as we teach our kids about Jesus, we don’t just target how they can experience new life in him, but we also target how they can live new life through him.
If you are looking for a resource to help you grow as a theologian and to help you teach your children theology, Faith Foundations is for you.These ninety-nine devotions use an ancient tool called a catechism to teach the core doctrines of the faith. Each devotion features a Bible reading, a devotion, several engaging questions, a Jesus connection, and a suggested family activity. Faith Foundations is now available for purchase.
The first two paragraphs of this blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎
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