Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C.

His earthly parents were Joseph and Mary.

Scripture has it that Jesus was conceived inside Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is God. By the very nature of this narrative, Joseph was the legal and not the biological father of Jesus.

Christian tradition holds the belief that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity consists of God the Father, who is the first person, God the Son, who is Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. As such, there are three persons in one God.

At the time of Jesus’s birth, the Jews were waiting for the coming of their king, whom they believed was a descendant of King David. The coming of their king was prophesied by their prophets from one generation to another for centuries.

At the time of Jesus, too, the Jews were under the rule of the Roman empire. The representative of the Roman empire was Pontius Pilate, the administrator who was to hand Jesus over to the religious Jewish authorities who demanded that Jesus be crucified for claiming to be God. There were two dominant religious groups: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Joseph, the legal father of Jesus, was a descendant of King David.

Some events that occurred before and after the birth of Christ were quite supernatural as well as inspiring, as described in the Bible. One supernatural event was the appearance of an angel of God to Mary who told her that she will conceive a child and give birth to God’s Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. The angel also told her that Elizabeth, who was Mary’s cousin and childless, was pregnant because of God’s will. Another event was the conversation Joseph had with an angel in his dream wherein he was advised to take Mary as his wife because the child Mary was carrying was God’s Son. Joseph took Mary as his wife.

A third supernatural event happened just when Christ was born. An angel appeared to some shepherds in the field one night and informed them about the good news of great joy that their savior had been born on that day. This supernatural event was followed by another one when a host of angels suddenly appeared, giving glory to God. And then, there was this visit of the three magi or kings from the east because the celestial signal of a star made them aware that a king was born.

These events are often recalled during the Christmas season and they have been (and have continued to be) the subjects of all forms of human expressions.

Very little is known about the life of Jesus. It is an established fact that Joseph, who was Jesus’s father, was a carpenter who taught the trade to Jesus. One incident indicates Jesus had a high IQ. This incident happened during the time when Jesus got into a kind of intellectual discussion with some Jewish teachers while his parents were busy looking for him since Jesus got separated from them during a Passover festival. 

Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist – who was Elizabeth’s son – and from that time on, Jesus began his ministry as a preacher and healer. This was the public life of Jesus, which lasted for about a year or about three years. It was during this time that he preached about God and the good news that salvation was at hand. The teachings of Christ included the beatitudes, a set of guidelines on social justice and of moral values for those who desire the kingdom of God. Mercy and forgiveness, as Jesus demonstrated while hanging on a cross, were essential to human living and eternal life. Two other teachings of Christ that, clearly, were a game-changer were the teaching on not to worry because it added nothing to one’s longevity and the teaching on loving and praying for enemies since God gives rain to good and bad people alike. Love was at the heart of Jesus’s teachings, and it was this concept that forever changed the world, and it continues to have a profound effect on human existence.

During his public life, Jesus performed a lot of miracles. He turned water into wine in a wedding party. He multiplied a few pieces of bread and fish to enable him to feed thousands of people. He healed the blind, the deaf, the mute and the incurables. He enabled lame people to walk again and raised dead Lazarus to life. He even walked on water and commanded a storm to stop.

All of these disturbed greatly the religious authorities of his time. However, for the religious authorities, the most disturbing aspect of all was that the people were beginning to accept the idea that Jesus was the promised king of God for the Jews. Jesus, himself, claimed that he was the Son of God. And it was for this reason that the authorities were able to condemn Jesus to the cross because Caesar was their king.

Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead three days after he was buried during 30 A.D. or 33 A.D, and altered the course of history forever.

His story was quite unlike the story of any other individual human person.