Who is this Jesus?
That is the eternal question to which there is no easy answer. Sometimes it is easier to think through what He is not to help draw in the focus.
Jesus is:
- not a genie
- not a whisp of air
- not a rich aloof uncle
- not an overbearing angry father
- not some historical figure from a long time ago
- not just a good person
Your best friend.
Jesus will be the best friend you’ll ever have, if you let Him.
He is crazy smart, wildly creative, and impossibly generous. He lives to love and loves to live. He is the lighthouse in the midst of the raging hurricane. He brings healing everywhere He goes. I know, many have a hard time with that, but it is true. The disconnect happens when we line up our plans against His. See, He is also the greatest planner ever. He is always playing the long game. He is after integrity while we are after pleasure. He allows suffering in order to produce character while we would much rather the Matrix version of developing character, having it downloaded into our heads.
Jesus knows us better than we do.
The Bible says he knows every hair on our head and every tear we shed. We can’t fool Him, trick Him, or lie to Him (well we could, but He would know it was a lie). What does He do with all that knowledge of our inner hearts, of our secret thoughts? Does He wait to condemn us? The Bible says, No. Well, at least No for His friends. It says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” “In Christ Jesus” is an odd phrase. Think of Jesus like a submarine. The intense pressure of the ocean bears down on that vessel with such force and yet the men and women in the submarine do not experience it. Jesus protects us from the weight of sin.
We were created by a Perfect Being.
There is much to the story, but all that is truly needed is to understand that we were created by a Perfect Being that we call God. Think of God like three keys on a piano. Each key is a different note but together they make a chord. That chord is God. The three individual keys the Bible would call Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.Well, God is a Perfect Being and He can’t hang around with liars, cheats, addicts, and people that hate Him. In fact, He can’t be around anyone that isn’t Perfect like Him. We were born into a life of sin and the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. If sin was giving out payment for work completed, that payment was death and we all had those wages deposited into our accounts from the beginning. We never had a chance.
He wants to be with us.
Here is God, our Creator, who wants to be with us, but can’t and here we are, living apart from true Life, thinking we are alive, but really we are just dead men walking. The only way we could ever be with Him is if someone looking like us paid the wages for us. So, God came up with the plan. An elaborate, amazing, life saving plan…that includes you. The plan was for Son to come to earth. He would sneak into human skin dressed as a baby. He would be named Jesus. He would live a selfless life showing people how to listen to Father while still on earth. He would teach people how to pray, how to love, how to serve. But ultimately the plan was for Him to page those wages.
You see, the goal of life, according to Jesus, is to get to Father. He says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Why would we want to get to the Father? Remember the part about planning? He says, “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.” Father is the planner. Jesus knows we need access to Father but the only way that happens is if Jesus lays His life down for us. So He did. Jesus was innocent of all crimes and yet was tortured and killed like a common criminal. What no one had accounted for was that He never loses. He remains undefeated. Even death couldn’t beat Him. He came back from the grave. Now some may balk at this idea and for those that do I will provide 3 simple thoughts to investigate:
- People that were not followers of Jesus wrote about Jesus being crucified and then showing up days later
- 10 of his 11 disciples were martyred and who would die for a lie
- The Romans paid the grave guards to lie
Who is this Jesus? He is the one who fights for you more than you could ever imagine. He has been pursuing you throughout time and paved the way for you to join Him.
Jesus simply says, “I’ve done all the work, all you have to do is believe in me. Believe I did it. Believe I paid the price. Believe that I truly have your best interests at heart.” If you trust Him, He will be the best friend you’ll ever have. In fact, He will be better than you could even imagine.
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Have faith in the Father. "Apart from me you can do nothing." - John 15:5
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