© 2022 Don Pinson | [Download]
(Link not working? Right-click and select “Save As”.)
During the Christmas season, much is said and sung about Jesus coming to earth. Many love the warm, gentle thoughts of a little Baby being born and having His birth announced by angels. But how many actually ever ask the question: Why did Jesus come? We can only answer that from the Bible. Because, even though there is historical evidence that Jesus did live in Palestine in the first century, the only revelation to be found concerning why He came, is to be found in the Bible.
Jesus, Himself, declared His reason for coming in Luke 19:10; there He stated,
“…the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
But what does lost mean? To understand that, we must first understand why God made man in the first place.
God said concerning the creation of man:
“…Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion…over all the earth…”
It was God’s intent that we should “look, live, and rule” in this earth just as He does in heaven and in earth. To do this God, Himself, would have to come to live inside us, and through us, look like Himself, live like Himself, and rule like Himself. So God gave us a choice as to whether we would let Him come to live in and through us in this world. We chose to refuse His life’s entrance into us; and chose instead to try to live independently of Him. Not that we can totally do that since we are dependent on Him for the rain and the sunshine from which we gain our very physical sustenance. However, we tried it our own way. The Bible, in Romans 5:12, records our decision in our first father, Adam,
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
The word “sin” means to “miss the mark”; so as to not become what we were created to be. Thus, we were lost to God’s purposes. This is why Jesus had to become a man.
For thirty-three years Jesus demonstrated how a human being could be filled with God’s Spirit, and thus, live as God had intended all men to live. That is, His Spirit flowing through us, looking like God, living like God, and ruling like God in this world. Jesus then went to the cross and there died as the sacrifice for our sin so that God could legally forgive us for rebelling against Him in the Garden of Eden in our first father, Adam. Then Jesus went into death and chose on the third day to come out of death, being raised from the dead by God’s Holy Spirit! Thus, He broke satan’s dominion over us, and then came to live in believers’ human bodies, demonstrating through the early believers that God, the Holy Spirit, could live His life through other humans. This resurrection life of Christ in the early Christians revealed what God intended us to be all along. The power and wisdom in which they lived was not theirs, but belonged to the Christ living in them by His Holy Spirit. The Apostle, Paul, identified this when he wrote,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
This is why American Founding Father, John Quincy Adams, stated:
“The Bible carries with it the history of the creation, the fall and redemption of man, and discloses to him, in the infant born at Bethlehem, the Legislator and Saviour of the world.”
(Adams, John Quincy. February 27, 1844, as a U.S. Congressman. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 4.)
Remember, Jesus died to get us into God. He rose again to get God into us (Colossians 1:27)!
Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.