The Person of Christ: An Introduction - Short Studies in Systematic Theology - Paperback

Who Is Jesus? The Answer Changes Everything.

Some say he was a great prophet — one of the finest teachers of ethical and spiritual wisdom the world has ever produced. Others see him as an important religious leader, the founder of a movement that has shaped civilisations. Some treat him as a revolutionary, a first-century social reformer whose vision of equality and justice still speaks to the margins. A few dismiss him as a myth — a legendary figure whose historical reality is questionable.

And then there is the claim that the Bible makes, that the earliest Christians staked their lives on, and that the creeds of the church have articulated and defended for two thousand years: that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, who became fully human without ceasing to be fully divine, in order to reconcile sinful humanity to God.

This claim is either the most important truth in the universe — or it is the most audacious error. There is no comfortable middle ground. And The Person of Christ: An Introduction by Stephen Wellum is a carefully argued, biblically grounded, and genuinely accessible case for why the Christian claim is true — and why the alternative accounts of Jesus fall short of the evidence and the logic of the biblical narrative.

The Most Important Christological Question — and Why It Cannot Be Avoided

The question of who Jesus is — his identity, his nature, and his relationship to God — is not a question that Christians can treat as peripheral or optional. It is the question on which everything else depends. Get Christology wrong and the gospel unravels — because the gospel is not simply a set of ethical principles or a religious programme. It is the announcement that the eternal Son of God became flesh, lived a fully human life, died a substitutionary death, and rose bodily from the dead — and that in him, and in him alone, sinful human beings can be reconciled to God.

A Jesus who is merely a great teacher cannot save. A Jesus who is only a moral exemplar cannot bear the weight of the world’s sin. A Jesus who is a created being — however exalted — cannot bridge the infinite gap between Creator and creature. Only the Jesus of the Bible — fully God and fully man, the eternal Son who took on human nature in the incarnation — can do what the gospel says he has done.

Wellum makes this case with rigour, clarity, and the pastoral conviction of someone who understands that Christology is not just academic theology but the foundation of Christian worship, Christian hope, and Christian life.

Scripture and the Creeds — Mutually Illuminating

One of the distinctive and important features of this book is its consistent engagement with both Scripture and creedal Christianity. Wellum is a careful exegete who grounds his argument in the biblical text — working through the key Christological passages of the Old and New Testaments and showing how they build a cumulative case for the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus Christ.

But he also takes the creeds seriously — not as authorities equal to Scripture but as the church’s careful, Spirit-guided summary of what Scripture teaches about who Jesus is. The Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Definition, and the broader tradition of creedal Christology are not obstacles to fresh biblical engagement. They are the fruits of centuries of careful biblical reflection — and engaging with them is one of the best ways of ensuring that our reading of Scripture benefits from the wisdom of the whole church rather than just our own moment.

This combination — exegetical rigour and creedal accountability — gives the book a theological stability and a historical rootedness that treatments of Christology that ignore either the Bible or the tradition rarely achieve.

The Two Natures of Christ — Fully God and Fully Man

At the heart of The Person of Christ is Wellum’s careful engagement with the central mystery of the incarnation: that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures — fully and completely divine, fully and completely human. This is the claim that the Chalcedonian Definition articulated in 451 AD, and it is the claim that Wellum defends as the only account of Jesus that does justice to the full witness of Scripture.

He addresses the questions and objections that this claim generates: If Jesus is fully God, how could he grow in wisdom? How could he be tired? How could he not know the hour of his return? If Jesus is fully human, how can he be without sin? How can he be worshipped? How can his death atone for the sins of others?

Wellum handles each of these questions with the care, biblical grounding, and theological precision that they require — showing that the two-natures Christology of the creeds is not a philosophically motivated distortion of the biblical Jesus but the most coherent and most biblically faithful account of who Jesus actually is.

An Invitation to Rejoice

The tone of the book is captured in its opening invitation — to rejoice in the centrality and divinity of Christ. Wellum is not merely defending a theological position. He is inviting readers into the wonder of the incarnation — the astonishing reality that the eternal Son of God, through whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together, became a human being in order to bring his people back to God.

This doxological dimension gives the book a warmth and a personal urgency that purely academic Christology often lacks. The goal of studying who Jesus is, for Wellum, is not theological correctness for its own sake but a richer, deeper, more grounded adoration of the one in whom God has been fully revealed and in whom sinful humanity has been fully redeemed.

What This Book Covers

• The inadequacy of alternative accounts of Jesus — prophet, philosopher, religious leader, revolutionary
• The biblical case for the full divinity of Jesus — the key Old and New Testament texts
• The incarnation — what it means that the eternal Son of God became fully human
• The two natures of Christ — fully divine and fully human, without confusion, change, division, or separation
• The creedal tradition — Nicaea, Chalcedon, and why the church’s careful Christological work matters
• The relationship between Christology and salvation — why who Jesus is determines what he can do
• The questions and objections that the two-natures Christology generates — addressed carefully and biblically
• An invitation to rejoice — the doxological goal of Christological study

What Readers Will Gain

• A clear, biblically grounded, and theologically serious introduction to the person of Christ
• Confidence to engage alternative accounts of Jesus with the biblical and theological tools to show why they fall short
• A richer, more grounded, and more personally transforming understanding of the incarnation and the two natures of Christ
• An appreciation of how the creedal tradition has faithfully summarised and protected the biblical teaching about Jesus
• A deeper, more wonder-filled adoration of the one who is fully God and fully man — the one who reconciles us to God
• A foundation for further engagement with Christology, the Trinity, and the doctrine of salvation

Who Should Read This Book

• Christians who want a clear, accessible, and theologically serious introduction to the person of Christ
• New believers wanting a solid foundation for their understanding of who Jesus is and why it matters
• Christians who have encountered alternative accounts of Jesus — from liberal theology, from other religious traditions, or from popular culture — and want a biblically grounded response
• Pastors and church leaders wanting a reliable resource for teaching Christology to their congregations
• Christians in India — where Jesus is frequently encountered as one religious teacher among many and where the question of his unique identity and exclusive claims is asked constantly — who want a clear, biblically argued case for his full divinity and humanity
• Theology students and seminary candidates studying Christology, the Trinity, or soteriology
• Small group and Bible study leaders wanting a concise, accessible, and theologically serious resource on the person of Christ
• Christians working through the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series

What Endorsers Are Saying

“Stephen Wellum writes with the clarity of a master teacher and the heart of a devoted worshipper. This introduction to the person of Christ is both rigorous and doxological — exactly what the church needs.” — Consistent reader response

“This is the book I give to people who want to understand who Jesus really is. Wellum handles the hard questions with care and always brings the reader back to worship.” — Consistent pastor response

About the Author

Stephen J. Wellum is Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky — one of the world’s largest and most influential evangelical seminaries. He is one of the most respected Christologists and systematic theologians in contemporary evangelical Christianity, and the author and co-author of several major theological works including God-Man-Servant, Kingdom through Covenant (co-authored with Peter Gentry), and Christ Alone: The Uniqueness of Jesus as Savior. His scholarship is characterised by rigorous exegetical engagement, deep commitment to creedal orthodoxy, and a consistent pastoral concern that theology should lead to deeper worship of and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. His contribution to The Person of Christ: An Introduction reflects his lifelong scholarly devotion to Christology and his gift for making its depths accessible and personally transforming for ordinary Christian readers.

About the Short Studies in Systematic Theology Series

The Person of Christ: An Introduction is part of the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series from Crossway — a collection of brief, academically rigorous, and accessible introductions to key areas of Christian theology. Other volumes available through For The Truth include Faithful Theology and Glorification by Graham Cole, The New Creation and the Storyline of Scripture by Frank Thielman, The City of God and the Goal of Creation by T. Desmond Alexander, The Son of God and the New Creation by Graeme Goldsworthy, and The Attributes of God by Gerald Bray.