Why Did He Come?
Jesus came for more than you might think.
Last time on the blog I wrote about what I was up to and what the next posts would be about. One way to summarize what that topic is calling it the Big Story of the Bible; another way to highlight that story would be to call it The Purpose of Jesus.
You’re probably like, isn’t that story a specific one within a few books called the New Testament? Well, yes and no. Those events recorded for us in the Gospel accounts are the fulfillment of promises made by Yahweh (God throughout) through Christ Jesus. But I’ve been doing some research lately about that glorious account and I’ve learned something: the Gospel’s full picture is even more grand than I’d ever hoped.
For instance, most boil-downs of the Gospel focus on Jesus making it possible for humans to be forgiven of their sins against God, the guarantee of eternal life through his Life and in some way the world going to hell in a hand-basket (more so than now) just before Jesus brings history to a close. And while the core element of a loving God wanting to right the wrongs of this world is in-tact, there’s so much more to the story that amplifies the multi-faceted, complex, absolutely world-shattering work of the God-Man Jesus of Nazareth.
The words of Jesus are our blueprint for this journey. Almost everything he says is a hyperlink to past events found within his Bible, The Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament).
I find this to be a challenging undertaking, but well worth the adventure. I warn you it won’t be totally linear and I’m going to be working on the threads that can loop us around as cleanly as possible. What I can say is that the truth of Scripture will shine all the brighter and hopefully we come away with more joy, awe and expectation in the Great One.
Jesus came to solve separate but deeply related problems: human and spiritual rebellion. We’ll end up talking about worship, images, death, love and almost everything in-between. Next time we’ll look into the book of Genesis where we’ll find the beginning of this Epic.
*As we move along, I’ll provide links to the future posts here and most likely turn this post into a hub.