In the early 90s ad, the aged Apostle John wrote his personal account of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. He wrote between two and three decades after the other gospel accounts were written. When he wrote, he chose to begin the story in quite a different manner than the three earlier writers. While Mark began with Jesus’ ministry and Matthew and Luke started with the events surrounding His birth, John started at a different point entirely. He began by quoting what are perhaps the best-known words in the Bible: “In the beginning….” John made this opening to the book of Genesis the opening to His gospel account.
The point that he wished to make was that when the beginning occurred, the Word was already there! He was with God the Father and He was also God. In fact, John asserts, He was the very instrument of creation and nothing was made without His involvement. After John stressed the origin of Jesus Christ, he then proceeded to point out that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (v. 14). It was John’s desire that his readers clearly understand who Jesus of Nazareth really was. He was not simply a prophet or a good man; rather, He was the very Son of God, the eternal Word made flesh. In the beginning He was already present, along with the Father, and shared incredible power and glory.
However—and here is the crucial point—the Word gave up all of that power and glory and came to earth to live as a human being. Known as Jesus of Nazareth, He was born as a helpless human infant, grew and developed into manhood, then began His ministry. The Apostle Paul emphasized that Christ emptied Himself of that great glory and power that He shared with the Father and came to earth in the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6–8). Voluntarily taking upon Himself the limitations of human flesh, He lived life among men for thirty-three and a half years, then suffered one of the most horrible deaths ever devised by man.
Why? Why did He give up so much to become human? What was the real purpose of His first coming? To help us more fully understand why it was necessary for Jesus Christ to do what He did, this article will examine seven distinct purposes for which He came to Earth.
Christ Came to Condemn Sin in the Flesh
One of the doctrines of Antichrist, as Dr. Meredith has clearly explained, is the idea that Jesus Christ was not really in the flesh as you and I are in the flesh. However, Scripture makes quite clear that “in all things He had to be made like His brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). In verse 16, Paul explains that Christ did not take upon Himself the nature of angels, but rather that of the seed of Abraham (cf., KJV). As The Expositor’s Bible Commentary explains regarding this verse: “He did not descend to the level of angels and become one of them. He descended to the level of mankind and became a Jew” (vol. 12, p. 29). “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same” (v. 14). He also suffered, being tempted (v. 18). In fact, He was tempted in all points that we are, yet He was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Why did Christ go through a human life, subject to frailty and temptation?
Paul explained in Romans 8:3 what Christ accomplished by coming in the likeness of sinful flesh: “He condemned sin in the flesh.” Jesus Christ did not come just playing a part! He suffered, being tempted! He was flesh and blood, just like you and I are flesh and blood. However—and here is the difference—as a flesh and blood human being, Jesus Christ totally relied on the power of the Father to obey God completely and to accomplish His will. He said that of Himself He could do nothing (John 5:30), that the Father dwelling in Him accomplished the works (John 14:10). It is only when we rely on the Father’s power that we can overcome, and can triumph over sin.
Jesus Christ came to set us a perfect example of life that we are to follow (1 Peter 2:21). He lived life as a flesh and blood human being, subject to all our temptations and tests, and triumphed over sin every time. He condemned sin in the flesh, showing that obedience to God really is possible to the extent that one relies on the Father’s power to achieve that obedience. Jesus showed by His personal example that a yielded, obedient life really is possible.
Christ Came as the Lamb of God
John the Baptist bore witness of Jesus Christ following His baptism by pointing Him out as “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)! The people of that day were very familiar with lambs. Every Passover season, families selected a young lamb on the tenth day of the first month and kept it until the fourteenth, to slaughter and eat as part of the Passover meal. Every morning and every evening in the temple, a lamb was slain and offered upon the altar for the morning and evening sacrifice. All of those millions of lambs, which had been offered in nearly 15 centuries since Moses, pointed to something. Or, more precisely, they pointed toward someone.
Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that Christ is our Passover, sacrificed for us. Additionally, he pointed out in Hebrews that the blood of animals cannot really take away sin, but rather serves as a reminder. Jesus Christ offers us redemption, not through the blood of animals, but rather through His own blood, which He poured out for us. From the very beginning, the Creator had explained to our first parents that the penalty for sin is death. That penalty must be paid, for God’s justice demands it. However, while God’s justice demanded payment, His great love caused Him to offer to pay it Himself on our behalf.
Christ came not only to set us a perfect example; He also came to pay the price for all our sins. Going back to the incident in the Garden of Eden when God covered our first parents by slaughtering animals to make them clothing, He told them of the Seed of Woman who would ultimately crush the head of the serpent. Thus, He began revealing His plan of salvation. Providing a ram for Abraham to take the place of his beloved son Isaac, God taught him about the need for a substitutionary sacrifice. He revealed it anew in the context of the first Passover in Egypt, when angels of destruction (Psalm 78:49) passed over those homes that were under the blood of the lamb. Jesus Christ, the One who had eternally pre-existed as the Word, became flesh so that He might die and be our Savior. He came as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the whole world!
Christ Came as the Second Adam
When God placed the first man in the Garden, He gave Him dominion, or rulership. Adam was to exercise the government of God on this earth. However, Adam very quickly failed in this endeavor. He unwisely submitted to his wife, who had yielded to Satan, rather than faithfully upholding God’s instructions. Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 15:45–47: “And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.” Jesus Christ came as the second Adam, to do what the first Adam had failed to do: qualify to replace Satan as the ruler of this earth.
The Apostle John explained in 1 John 2:16–17: “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” The basis of this whole worldly system is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are the very things to which Satan appealed when he seduced Eve, and Adam through her. From Genesis 3, we learn that when Satan called Eve’s attention to the forbidden fruit, she saw that it was “good for food” (lust of the flesh), “pleasant to the eyes” (lust of the eyes), and “desirable to make one wise” (pride of life). It was on this basis that Adam and Eve succumbed to sin and these criteria have provided the basis of building this world’s civilization.
Immediately following Christ’s baptism by John, before launching His public ministry, He went away into the wilderness to confront Satan (Mark 1:9–13). He prepared for this confrontation by fasting for 40 days. How did Satan try to seduce Him? By using exactly the same appeals he had made to our first parents! He appealed to the lust of the flesh by trying to persuade Jesus to turn stones into bread. He appealed to the lust of the eyes by taking Christ up on a high mountain and showing Him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory, offering to give them all to Christ if only He would worship Satan. Satan also set Christ on the pinnacle of the temple, and challenged Him to jump off and let the angels catch Him. “If you are the Son of God,” Satan challenged, then go ahead and jump off. This was an appeal to the pride of life. Most of us “get our hackles up” if someone challenges that we are not who we say we are (Matthew 4:1–6).
Jesus Christ rejected all of the temptations that Satan threw at Him. He mastered Satan and did what the first Adam failed to do—He obeyed God! Jesus Christ came as the second Adam and qualified to replace Satan as the ruler of this earth.
Christ Came to Reveal the Father
Many Jews in Jesus’ day claimed to be religious. Yet Jesus made plain that for all of the talk that the religious leaders made about God, they did not really know Him. John recorded in John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Luke recorded Jesus’ statement in Luke 10:22, explaining that no one really knows the Father but the Son and those to whom the Son reveals Him. Jesus Christ came into a spiritually darkened world to make the Father knowable.
How did He do such a thing? First, Christ told His listeners that He did not come to seek and pursue His own will. Rather, He completely sought the Father’s will (cf. John 6:38). Nor did Christ come even to speak His own words or to pursue His own interests and endeavors. He spoke the Father’s words, and did the works that the Father had given Him to do.
Jesus Christ was in every way just like the Father, and those who came to know Him could, through Him, come to know the Father as well. On the night before His crucifixion, He explained to Philip that those who truly knew Him knew the Father as well (cf., John 14:7). The invisible God revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. His character, attitude and approach are knowable to us because He has chosen to make them so.
Christ Came as the Messenger of the Covenant
The last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, looked centuries beyond his own time and foresaw the coming of the Messiah. “Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming says the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 3:1). One of the purposes for which the Messiah would come was to deliver a message directly from God Himself!
Mark began his gospel account by directly quoting from this section of Scripture. Mark 1:1–2 reads: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the Prophets: ‘Behold I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You.’” We are told that John came preaching a message of repentance, and pointing to One, mightier than he, who would come afterward. In verse 14, Mark explained: “Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.” John the Baptist was the messenger to prepare the way for the Lord. When the way was prepared, Jesus made His appearance as the Messenger of the Covenant.
Jesus Christ came to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God—the message of the New Covenant. This message reveals how we can truly come to know God, to have our sins completely removed, and to have God’s very nature put within us, by His Holy Spirit writing His law in our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10–12). This gospel explains what the Kingdom of God truly is, and how we might inherit that Kingdom. Jesus came to Earth to deliver a message directly from the Father—the good news about God’s coming Kingdom, into which you and I can actually enter as children and heirs!
Christ Came to Build His Church
Christ came not only to reveal the Father and to deliver His message to mankind; He also came to establish His Church. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus Christ declared to Peter and the rest of the Apostles that He would build His Church, and that the grave would never swallow it up. The Rock upon which the Church was built was, of course, Jesus Christ Himself. He is the chief cornerstone of God’s spiritual temple, as Paul explained in Ephesians 2:20. The Greek word for “church” (ekklesia) refers to a group or an assembly, though the word itself literally means “called from” or “called out.” From the beginning, God has called individuals out of this world to enter into a special relationship with Him (cf. Genesis 12:1).
How did Jesus Christ prepare to build His Church? First, He called disciples and chose 12 to ordain as Apostles. He trained them for three-and-a-half years, then sent them forth to proclaim the same message that He Himself proclaimed, to baptize those who responded to that message with faith and repentance and to teach all of the things that He Himself had taught (Matthew 28:19–20).
The Church that Jesus built would continue to the end of the age as the body through which He would work. The Church is the bride that He will marry at His return, whose members will rule and reign with Him in tomorrow’s world. We, as God’s people, today represent the latter-day continuation of the Church that Jesus built.
Christ Came to Lead Captivity Captive
Ephesians 4:8 describes a seventh reason for which Jesus Christ came to Earth: “Therefore He says: ‘When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.’” The same Jesus Christ who descended into the grave came out of that grave three days and three nights later. Forty days after His resurrection, He ascended to again be with the Father. Why? Ephesians 4:10 explains: “He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” When Jesus walked the earth as a human being, He could only be in one place at one time. Now, through the Holy Spirit, He can dwell in, help and guide all converted Christians at the same time.
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples that it was to their advantage that He go away. Only in this way could He send the Helper—the Holy Spirit—to guide and strengthen them (John 16:7). It is through the power of the Spirit that Christ is able to fill all things (Ephesians 4:10).
Death is the ultimate captivity, the prison from which no one, by his own power, can escape. Death is the direct consequence of sin; in fact, it was only through sin that death entered into the world (Romans 5:12). As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 15:56–57: “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” On the night before His death, Jesus told His disciples that “the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). Death and the grave had no claim or hold on Christ. When He ascended on high it was to lead captivity captive. Because of His triumph, all who are in the grave shall ultimately hear His voice and come forth (John 5:28–29).
Jesus Christ triumphed over death, and now makes available to us all manner of spiritual gifts, thereby enabling us to overcome sin and death. We should never take our Savior for granted, but rather should be deeply thankful for all He did, does and will do for you and for me.