Why Jesus Came Pt. 1
Sermon Application
Recently we were blessed to focus on the reasons for why Jesus came into the world. And if we were asked why He came, we would probably reply with something similar to Paul’s words:
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”
1 Timothy 1:15
While this is certainly true, there are numerous other reasons given throughout the Bible!
Application to the doctrine of redemption:
The Bible tells us that “the Son of man came…to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45). Some might suppose that the word “many” implies that Jesus only died for some sinners. But this cannot be the case, for we read elsewhere that He “gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6). A ransom, in the Scriptural sense of the word, is “the price paid for procuring the pardon of sins and the redemption of the sinner from punishment” (Websters Dictionary 1828). The Greek word “lutron” is a Scripturally loaded term which signifies a “substitute who satisfied God’s righteous demands and paid a price so that the guilty can go free.”
This ransom therefore, was not paid to the devil as some wrongly suppose but to the justice of God. Furthermore, it was not the payment of a cosmic bribe, but a legal transaction. This ransom was infinitely costly, for it was paid for in blood─the blood of Jesus Christ the Righteous (Rev. 5:9; Act. 20:28; 1 Pet. 1:18-19). This was a ransom which no one but God could pay!
Let us never grow weary of looking into this inexhaustible salvation!
Application to man’s fallen nature:
In the account of Zacchaeus, Jesus gives us one of the primary reasons of His first coming: “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). This reminds us that it is God who initiates salvation and not man. In the third chapter of Romans, we read that “there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:11). This is a universal statement which, according to the context, applies to both “Jews and Gentiles [i.e. non-Jews]” (Rom. 3:9)─which encompasses “all the world” (Rom. 3:19). When Paul states that “none seek after God,” he does so in explaining that men “are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9). This is significant because it shows that no heart “under sin” can be of itself a God-seeking heart.
Application to self-esteem:
The vast majority of people who are lost are not aware of their lostness. Most of them believe that they are fairly good, especially considering the fact that they are “only human.” In this way, they prove the truth of the Bible which says, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9).
The same kind of prideful deception can also happen to Christians as they entertain self-aggrandizing thoughts. Jesus warns us that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” (Matt. 15:19)─which may be good thoughts about ourselves which tickle our ears while they defile our souls with pride (2 Cor. 10:12).
The world tells us that we should keep ourselves happy by inflating our self-esteem─by believing how good, how special, how capable, and how unstoppable we are. This is truly “not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16). The same worldliness is often cloaked with a veneer of Christian lingo and sold to Christians (Mal. 2:17; Ezek. 13:19, 12:24; 1 Thess. 2:5).
We must always guard our hearts and be careful “not to think of [ourselves] more highly than [we] ought to think; but to think soberly” (Rom. 12:3; note the progression in Paul: 1 Cor. 15:9; Eph. 3:8; 1 Tim. 1:15).