Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: To be the propitiation for our sins and the saviour of the world.
For those are the reasons that we’re told he was sent by the Father in 1 John 4:10 and 1 John 4:14.
I forget which footballer it was whose name was used when, as a lad in my primary school playground, I used to hear the refrain: ‘Jesus saves, but ‘the 1970’s equivalent of Messi’ scores from the rebound’.
Whilst this is not, perhaps, the greatest example of schoolboy humour, it does nonetheless serve to raise the question of what it is that Jesus saves us from. And the rather uncomfortable answer to that question is, I’m afraid, God’s wrath.
Because whilst God is undoubtedly a God of love, he is at the same time one who, because he is holy and righteous, is justly angry at sin. As I’m sure you’ll agree he should be when it comes to child abuse, violent crime and the horrible atrocities of war – which suggests that we only feel uncomfortable with the idea of God’s judgement when that judgement threatens to fall on us.
But if we make the cut off for what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour at a level that we ourselves manage to achieve, then we will have no right to object if others make it at a different level, one that allows behaviours that we might consider to be beyond the pale. For who are we to say that our subjective assessment of what is right and wrong is any better than anyone else’s?
And so the only logical solution is to accept that God, being holy, is the only one who gets to define what is right and wrong. And having done so we need to trust that, as the judge of the whole earth, he will always do what is just. [Genesis 18:25]
And this is where, as I may have mentioned before, the good news comes in. Because, despite all of us having sinned and, therefore, fallen short of God’s glory [Romans 3:23], rather than punishing us in the way his justice demands, God has acted so that he can forgive our sin and declare us not guilty. And this is not because we have somehow earned his mercy – because we haven’t. Rather it is because of his grace, his unmerited kindness, that led him to lovingly send Jesus to bare the punishment that we all so rightly deserved.
Because 1 John 4:10 tells us that Jesus was sent by God to be the propitiation for our sin. And what that big Bible word ‘propitiation’ means is that Jesus, when he died on the cross, did so in our place. And, in so doing, he absorbed all of God’s entirely appropriate anger at what we ourselves have done wrong. And that is how the God who justifies the ungodly [Romans 4:5], remains just and righteous even as he spares us from the wrath that would otherwise have rightly fallen on us.
God’s wrath, therefore, has not then been merely restrained by Jesus, or deflected by him, only for it to rear us and be poured out on us again at some later date. Rather, for we who believe, God’s wrath at our sin has been spent, satisfying God’s need for justice by being completely poured out on Jesus instead. As such, it cannot ever fall on us in the future because it would be unjust for God to punish us for something that Christ has already received the punishment for himself. And that’s why, in his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul can confidently assert that ‘there is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ [Romans 8:1].
And it is this amazingly good news, the result of a frankly astonishing act of love, that stands at the centre of all that scripture teaches. And it is this ‘gospel’ that is summarised in what some have suggested are the most important verses in the Bible, Romans 3:21-26 – verses which conclude with words that declare God to be both just, and the justifier, of the one who has faith in Jesus.
But it’s not just those who put their trust in Christ who are saved. As the saviour of the world, Jesus is also all about restoring the whole of the created order. It too ‘will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Romans 8:21]
Because, just as we are given a new start, so too will creation will be rebooted as well. Because, appropriately discontent with a world that is broken and spiralling into decay, we who believe are invited to be part of the new heaven and new earth that will one day be revealed – a new creation that, as I may also have mentioned before, ‘every tear will be wiped away and death will be no more…for the former things will have passed away’. [Revelation 21:4]
That’s what it means for Jesus to be the saviour of the world. And as the propitiation for our sins, that’s what he guaranteed when he came to earth on that first Christmas Day.
To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 23 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here.
Some musings 