4 Issues Jesus Got here to Do

1. Expose Misunderstanding and Disobedience

A central a part of who Jesus is and due to this fact what we’re to consider is present in Jesus’s educating about what he got here to do. He got here to do various issues.

Jesus clearly got here to disclose misunderstanding and disobedience among the many Jewish folks and their leaders. One fascinating strategy to see that is to look at the three Sabbaths talked about within the ebook of John. Jesus recurrently attended synagogue on the Sabbath, and generally he took his flip as an grownup male by studying from the scroll. However past that, he uncovered misunderstanding and disobedience by appearing opposite to what his non secular friends required for Sabbath observance.

In John 5:18, the Jews charged Jesus with making himself equal with God. However did you additionally discover the opposite cost within the line above that: “breaking the Sabbath”? What prompted this cost? Jesus had seen a person who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years mendacity on his mat and mentioned to him, “‘Rise up! Decide up your mat and stroll.’ Directly the person was cured; he picked up his mat and walked” (John 5:8–9a). The story continues: “The day on which this occurred was a Sabbath, and so the Jews mentioned to the person who had been healed, ‘It’s the Sabbath; the regulation forbids you to hold your mat’” (John 5:9b-10). Actually, it was Jesus they have been after: “So, as a result of Jesus was doing this stuff on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him” (John 5:16). Certainly, the Jews have been good at remembering the smaller legal guidelines and reminding others of these legal guidelines, however that they had forgotten why the regulation had been given within the first place. Jesus referred to as additional consideration to their misuse of the regulation when he mentioned,

I did one miracle, and you’re all astonished. But, as a result of Moses gave you circumcision (although really it didn’t come from Moses, however from the patriarchs), you circumcise a baby on the Sabbath. Now if a baby might be circumcised on the Sabbath in order that the regulation of Moses might not be damaged, why are you indignant with me for therapeutic the entire man on the Sabbath? (John 7:21–23)

The second Sabbath is talked about in chapter 9, the place a person born blind receives his sight from Jesus:

Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the person’s eyes was a Sabbath. Subsequently the Pharisees additionally requested him how he had obtained his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the person replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
A few of the Pharisees mentioned, “This man isn’t from God, for he doesn’t preserve the Sabbath.” (John 9:14–16)

Once more, the Pharisees missed the purpose of the Sabbath. I feel Jesus intentionally picked the Sabbath as a chance to reveal their hypocrisy and jolt them out of their self-righteousness. Jesus didn’t come to assist anybody sustain the pretence of holiness and love; he got here to deliver the true factor.

John’s third point out of the Sabbath particularly demonstrates what a sham the folks’s understanding of the day had develop into. In chapter 19 he writes,

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the following day was to be a particular Sabbath. As a result of the Jews didn’t need the our bodies left on the crosses in the course of the Sabbath, they requested Pilate to have the legs damaged and the our bodies taken down. (John 19:31)

Do you see the irony on this? The chief clergymen have been so conscious of the regulation’s obligations, they actually dogged Jesus to loss of life for therapeutic on the Sabbath. So conscious have been they that they cleaned up after the homicide that they had dedicated to keep away from ceremonial uncleanness on the Sabbath.

2. Present a Sacrifice for the Salvation of Sinners

Extra basically, Jesus got here to avoid wasting sinners. As he mentioned, “I didn’t come to evaluate the world, however to reserve it” (John 12:47). And he got here to avoid wasting the world by appearing as God’s provision for his or her sins. He advised the Pharisee Nicodemus,

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Simply as Moses lifted up the snake within the desert, so the Son of Man should be lifted up, that everybody who believes in him might have everlasting life.
For God so liked the world that he gave his one and solely Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish however have everlasting life. (John 3:14–16; cf. John 8:28; John 12:32)

Simply because the bronze snake was God’s provision for Israelites bitten by toxic serpents (Numbers 21), Jesus got here as God’s provision for the salvation of sinners.

Jesus is the Passover sacrifice, who was killed within the stead of sinful human beings.

How, particularly, does God’s provision in Christ save sinful humanity? John the Baptist factors towards the reply close to the start of the Gospel: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus is the Passover sacrifice, who was killed within the stead of sinful human beings. Jesus then says in chapter 6, “I inform you the reality, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have any life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and I’ll elevate him up on the final day” (John 6:53–54). Jesus didn’t intend for his disciples to seize his arm and start to chew on him. Quite, he supposed for his blood to be shed and his physique to be damaged when he was lifted up on the cross. And sinners should put their confidence, their religion, in his substitutionary sacrifice.

3. Deliver Mild into the World

By way of his life, loss of life, and resurrection, Jesus got here to shed gentle upon God, man, and God’s plan of salvation (John 1:4–9). As John says, “That is the decision: gentle has come into the world . . . whoever lives by the reality comes into the sunshine, in order that it might be seen plainly that what he has achieved has been achieved via God” (John 3:19, 21). Jesus himself mentioned to the crowds in Jerusalem, “I’ve come into the world as a light-weight, in order that nobody who believes in me ought to keep in darkness” (John 12:46; additionally John 8:12; John 9:5, and so on.).

4. Be Glorified by the Father

And the way did this gentle current itself? By the glory of the Father shining upon the Son. John writes, “We’ve seen his glory, the glory of the One and Solely, who got here from the Father, stuffed with grace and reality” (John 1:14). And Jesus clearly mentioned his glory got here straight from the Father: “My Father, whom you declare as your God, is the one who glorifies me.”¹

Curiously, all through John’s Gospel the reader is advised that Jesus’s time had “not but come” (John 2:4; John 7:6, 8, 30; John 8:20). What is supposed by this isn’t fully clear at first, besides that it’s given as the explanation for why nobody might seize or stone him. The good dividing level within the Gospel is available in Jesus’s final week, when he entered Jerusalem and introduced that his time had come:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. . . . Now my coronary heart is troubled, and what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it was for this very cause I got here to this hour. Father, glorify your title! (John 12:23, 27–28; additionally, John 17:1)

The time that had come was the time of his glorification, and his glorification, we be taught, occurred on the cross! On the similar second, Jesus gave all glory to the Father: “Father, glorify your title!” Jesus the Son was in a novel place to deliver glory to God the Father, by effecting the Father’s merciful salvation and exhibiting the Father’s excellent love.

So John writes with an impressive simplicity, “Jesus knew that the time had come for him to go away this world and go to the Father. Having liked his personal who have been on the planet, he now confirmed them the complete extent of his love” (John 13:1).

That is what we’re to consider: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who got here into the world to reveal disobedience, present a sacrifice for sins, deliver gentle to the world, and be glorified by the Father. In so doing he in flip gave glory to the Father.

This text is customized from The Message of the New Testomony: Guarantees Saved by Mark Dever.

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