Jesus’ Purpose on Earth

It’s hard to reconcile, isn’t it?  Jesus is Lord of the universe, yet he was born to a previously unknown commoner in the small village of Bethlehem, unheralded by the high and mighty of the world who never knew he existed.  Jesus grew to manhood in the hills of Galilee in another insignificant village.  Here in Nazareth he worked in Joseph’s carpenter shop for thirty years.  He submitted to baptism and began a ministry of teaching the kingdom of God and serving the poor, the lowly, the disenfranchised, the hurting and the diseased.  He was rejected by the political and religious elite.  He was scourged, and crucified by the power brokers of his day.   

Yet he had heavenly powers to control the weather, walk on water, cast out demons, feed thousands with a boy’s small lunch, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, empower the paralyzed and raise the dead.   He claimed to have come from the Father and would be returning to the Father. He claimed to be before Abraham who had lived two thousand years before him.  Why did he go through such suffering and death?  Why didn’t he come down from the cross and destroy those evil doers who put him there? Why?  Because he came to “seek and to save the lost.”  

If he saved himself he could not save others.  And, if he saved others, he could not save himself.  It was only by the shedding of his blood in a sacrificial death that he could make forgiveness of sins possible for all of us.  “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). “He tasted death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9).  He did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28).   He was born on earth to die so that we could be forgiven.  This is what the angel told Joseph before Jesus was born, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).