Why did Jesus come?
Ask that question and answers abound—to live, to love, to die, to teach, to heal, to model, to remind—but the definitive reply was given by our Savior Himself as He stood before Pontius Pilate one Friday morning in the early spring. “For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth”(Jn 18:37).
God appeared on earth as a man to testify to the truth—the truth of Who He is, the truth of who we are, the truth that we are rebels, the truth that He is righteous, the truth that our fall was not final because of His grace, and the truth that He would give all because of His love.
To testify to this truth took a perfect life lived according to God’s righteous Law, showing God’s absolute and shocking holiness, and making Him the only qualified candidate to be our sacrifice.
To testify to this truth took thirty-three years of connection with family, friends, foes, detractors, and disciples. It took touching the leper, walking on water, asking for a drink by a Samaritan well, crying in grief at Lazarus’ tomb. It took days of teaching, nights of praying, and the reality of betrayal and denial by the ones He held most dear.
To testify to this truth took six hours of anguish on a cross—physical pain too harsh for us to fathom and too hard for us to face. It took three hours of separation from His Father—spiritual torture we cannot comprehend, the absolute agony of His soul being ripped away from all that is God and all that is good—a hell with no hope and only horror. Never think for a moment that our sin must not be that big of a deal if Jesus could pay its price in just part of a day, for the eternal God is not bound by the limits of earthly time and the judgment Jesus faced during the darkness was your guilty forever—and mine too.
Why did Jesus come? To testify to the truth.
And it took His very life to tell us.
“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” 2 Corinthians 9:15
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