If I were to ask you this question,
“Why did Jesus come to earth?”…your answer would most probably be…”To save us from our sin…”Your answer would be correct but…far short of the many reasons for His coming.
Included in Jesus’ commission to save sinners, a variety of spinoffs of His coming emerge….
A. He came to reveal the Father.
“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.”
John 17:6 NIV
Jesus’ life on earth, as a perfect human, was God’s way of showing us what He is really like… in a way that we can understand.
God’s people, the Jews, had developed a distorted idea of God after centuries of disobedience and rebellion, and the consequences…war, enemy occupation, and exile. God had become, to them, a strict disciplinarian who had punished them for every infringement of His law. The truth of His love had been buried under a mountain of rules, regulations, and rituals in an effort to protect them from His wrath.
Jesus, in His humanity, was God with a face.
“If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?”
John 14:7-9 NLT
Jesus showed us, not only the nature and character of the Father, but also the Father’s glory…the “weight”…the meaning, significance, implications, of who He is. He summed up the core of the Father in one sentence…
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 NIV
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.”
Hebrews 1:1-2 NIV
B. Jesus came to “fulfil” the law.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish (to throw down or overthrow) the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil (accomplish or make complete) them.”
Matthew 5:17 NIV
God’s law…His instructions for living in covenant with Him…had become a burdensome duty…not a delight, as it was for David…
“The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”
Psalms 19:7-8 NIV
…and a way of life to follow…
“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”
Psalms 119:105 NIV
Jesus was not only the only man who perfectly obeyed the law to the letter and in the spirit of what it meant…He was also the Word of God in person.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14 NIV
…a perfect reflection of who God really is, in human form.
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”
Hebrews 1:3 NIV
Jesus is the embodiment of everything God said….as Creator and as God’s voice to the world.
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.”
Hebrews 1:1-2 NIV
C. Jesus came to be our high priest and the mediator between the Father and the human race.
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.”
Hebrews 4:14 NIV
“For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,”
1 Timothy 2:5
Why do we need a high priest and a mediator like us?
We need a person like us…a real man… to stand in our place and represent us to God. We can never approach a holy God without a qualified human being to speak for us. Jesus is the only human being who, by His sinless life and sacrificial death, is able to represent us to the Father.
“For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Hebrews 2:16-18 NIV
Jesus came…so that we, through Him, can approach the Father without fear…
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”
Hebrews 10:19-22 NIV
Among the many other reasons for Jesus’ coming, let me mention one more…
D. Jesus came to make us the sons and daughters of His family.
Jesus is the blueprint…the prototype…of a perfect human. God created us in His image. The image was spoiled through sin but…through His sacrificial and substitutionary death, He made it possible for His image to be restored in us.
Jesus became our elder brother. We are His family.
“In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
Hebrews 2:10-11, 14-15 NIV
“And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.””
2 Corinthians 6:18 NIV
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!