The Purpose For Christ's Coming - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, December 20th. What's in a name? When it comes to Jesus, the answer is a lot. Today, you can learn about the names given to Jesus to help us understand the purpose for His coming. The Bible says that God sent forth His only begotten Son in order to die for your sins and my sins, but is that the only reason Jesus Christ came? If somebody should ask you, for what purpose did Jesus Christ come into the world?

What would you say? Do you understand how deep and broad and wide the love of God is toward all of us? When you and I begin to understand all the purposes that God had in mind for giving us His Son, somehow our level of love begins to rise. So the title of this message is The Purpose for Christ's Coming. So I want you to turn, if you will, to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, and in this fifth chapter, we have the first purpose that God had in mind in sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world. Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount has been talking about our relationship to Him, and then He comes to this matter of the law, and He says in verse 17, Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Jesus said one of the purposes for which He came was to fulfill the law and the prophets.

Now what did He mean by that? When He refers to the law, what is He referring to when He speaks of the law here? Well, the law had two parts. There was, first of all, the moral law of God, which you and I call the Ten Commandments. And the moral law of God is God's unchanging standard for regulating the conduct of men and women. The second part of the law is what the Bible calls the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law is the entire system, legislative system, both judicial and ceremonial, which God gave to the nation of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness before they ever went to the Promised Land.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the law of God. Now, the law of Moses does not apply to the Gentiles. The moral law of God applies to every man. Jesus said He came not to abolish the law, but rather to fulfill it, that is to complete it, to bring it to its fulfillment.

What did He mean by that and how would He bring that to pass? He said not only to fulfill the law, but also the prophets, which means that all the prophets, the major prophets, the minor prophets, and all the way back to men like Joshua, Gideon and those former prophets who led the people of Israel, God used them in marvelous ways, oftentimes to predict, to prophesy future events. Jesus said, I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets, not to abolish it. Now, how would the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ fulfill this moral law and this ceremonial, judicial, ecclesiastical kind of law, the law of Moses?

How would He do that? He fulfilled the law by personal obedience to the law. If you recall in Galatians chapter 4, as the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is described here, notice what the Bible says. For when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. He came born under the law. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the law.

That is, He didn't break the law. He came to fulfill it, He said. Secondly, the Lord Jesus Christ came fulfilling the law by fulfilling the signs and the predictions of the Old Testament given about the coming of the Messiah and prophesied by the prophets, for example. In the Old Testament system, which God gave to the nation of Israel of all the sacrifices, the Lord Jesus Christ was the completion, the fulfillment, and the final sacrifice ever to be sacrificed. He was, as John the Baptist identified Him, as the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sin of the world. Those predictions by the prophets of a coming Messiah who would be born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, those predictions of the coming of the Messiah, the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ is a fulfillment of those.

So Jesus came fulfilling those symbols, those pictures, those signs that were given in the Old Testament. A third way He fulfilled that law was by dying on the cross. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. The curse of sin is death. The penalty for sin is death, violating the law, rebelling against God. The Bible says the Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfill, that is to complete, and to pay the penalty for all the sin of all mankind. If Jesus Christ had not come to pay that penalty, we would have had to pay our own penalty because all of us have sinned against Him.

But there's a fourth reason. When the Lord Jesus Christ came, He did not abolish the law. He completed and fulfilled that Mosaic law. But for those of us who are under the law of Christ, those of us who received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ came to amplify and enlarge upon and to explain more fully even the moral law of God.

A simple example of that would be this. The law says, Thou shall not commit adultery. They refer to the act. Jesus says, I say to you that if a man or woman looks with lust upon another, they have committed the act of adultery. So Jesus took the law of God, the moral law of God, and expanded, elaborated upon it, and brought it to its ultimate completion. That is, He explained into the fullest the meaning of the law of God. So the night the Lord Jesus Christ was born, more happened than just simply a child being born. This was the coming and the completion of the fulfillment of the law of God given by Moses to the nation of Israel there wandering in the wilderness.

Now remember this. The Ten Commandments was not given in order to save us. But Paul says as a schoolmaster to instruct us in our helpless and futile condition that any of us could ever live up to the law because if we could live up to the law, we could be saved by works that he says, No flesh shall be justified by the works of the law, but it is by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that we've been saved. Therefore, the first purpose of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was to fulfill the law, which leads us to the second one. If you'll turn to John chapter 17, in the fifth verse of the seventeenth chapter, he's praying to the Father now. He says, And now, glorify thou me together with thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I manifested, I revealed thy name, that is, I reveal your true nature to the men whom you've given me out of this world. Verse 25 of the same chapter, O righteous Father, although the world has not known thee, yet I have known thee, and these have known that thou didst send me, and I have made thy name known to them, and will make it known. The second purpose for which Jesus Christ came was to reveal the Father. He came to reveal the true nature of God the Father to mankind. Now, when we talk about revealing the Father, I want you to turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter 1. Paul describing and unveiling for us who is this Christ.

What is God like? Verse 15 of the first chapter of Colossians says, And he, that is, Christ, is the image, that is, the living reflection of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. That is, he says the Lord Jesus Christ is the image. He is the walking, living image, the reflection, the full likeness and reflection of God. It was very important to God that you and I understand who he is, that we understand what he's like, that we understand his nature, that he's not merely a God of wrath, not merely a God of mercy and love and kindness, but he is a God of mercy and love and kindness, holiness and justice and wrath. Jesus Christ came to reveal the true nature of God, and he says that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Look, if you will, in verse 19.

For it was the Father's good pleasure to do what? For all the fullness to dwell in him. That is, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in the person of Jesus Christ. Go, if you will, to the second chapter of Colossians and look at these two verses. Paul said here, For in him that is in Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. If you want an accurate picture of God, you look at Jesus. Listen, in him that is in Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in him that is in Christ you have been made complete, and he is the head over all rule and authority. And so the second primary purpose for which Jesus came was to reveal to us the Father, what he's like.

And what you and I really know about God, we know from listening to, reading and experiencing the person of Jesus Christ. He said, You avoid me, you avoid the Father. He that cometh the Father must also come through me. No man cometh to the Father but by me. It is impossible to understand or to know God apart from Jesus Christ. Now listen to me carefully. My friend, the truth is you will never understand life until you understand who Jesus is.

Your life is going to be full of questions. In fact, how do you explain life after death apart from Jesus? How do you explain your meaning and purpose in life apart from Christ?

That is, the truth is all of life is explained in the person of Jesus Christ. How do you explain forgiveness except through Christ? How do you explain any amount of hope except through Christ?

How do we talk about a resurrection except through Christ? How do we talk about answered prayer except through Christ? How do we get our needs met except through Christ?

My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus our Lord. All of life is to be explained in relationship to Christ so that my friend, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, if you have shunned him all of these years, rejected him and abolished him out of your life, I'm going to tell you, your life has one tremendous gap. That is, listen, the one link that puts life together is the person of Jesus Christ. All of life is to be explained in him.

All of life is to be found in him and all of purpose is to be found in a relationship to Christ. God came into this world in the living form, bodily form, a reflection, a revelation of the reality of God and the reason for, listen, the reason for those miracles was not simply to heal people or to resurrect them from the dead but to bear witness of the reality of the person of Jesus Christ that he was God in the flesh. Now, Jesus Christ was and is the great I Am because he was and is God. The second reason, the second purpose for which Jesus Christ came was to reveal the Father.

My friend, Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father and apart from knowing Christ, you cannot know God. There's a third purpose for which he came and that is to testify to the truth. If you'll just turn over one page there in John chapter 18. John chapter 18, Jesus is standing before Pilate and Pilate is asking him questions and he's answering and it's interesting what the Lord Jesus Christ says to Pilate. He's asking him about being a king and so verse 37 says, Pilate therefore said to him, so you're a king, a question mark, so you're a king.

Jesus answered, you say correctly that I am a king. Now listen to this, what Jesus said, for this I have been born. For this I have come into the world.

What is that? To bear witness to the truth. He came to give competence to the testimony of what God's view is about man's hopeless sinful condition and God's provision for his salvation. He said, I came to bear witness to the truth. What is the truth? The truth is that men without Christ are lost and the truth is there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. The truth is every man is hopelessly and helplessly lost apart from Christ.

The birthday of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Christmas Eve, the birth of Jesus Christ is God fulfilling a need in the heart of man. Man is helplessly and hopelessly lost without the truth. And what is the truth?

Man's hopeless and helpless condition but a marvelous and eternal provision through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I have come to bear witness of this truth. What did Jesus say? He said, complete this verse, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No man comes to the Father but by me. Look if you will in John chapter three for a moment. In the third chapter of John, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. And Nicodemus, of course, is not quite understanding what Jesus meant when he talked about being born again and a new life.

And so in the process, Nicodemus is asking him, how can these things be? And Jesus said to him, are you a teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Verse 11, verily, verily, I say to you, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen and you do not receive our witness. Here's what Jesus was saying. He says, Nicodemus, I'm telling you the truth.

Now listen, he says, I'm telling you what I have seen and what I've heard. Jesus came to reveal to us what he had seen and what he had heard. Turn, if you will, to John chapter eight for a moment. You'll recall in this eighth chapter of John when Jesus is explaining who he is and defending himself. Jesus therefore said, when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he.

And I do nothing on my own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father, past tense, taught me. I've come to bear witness to the truth. Now, what is the purpose of this? He says, I've come to bear witness to the truth, the truth of man's helpless condition and the truth of God's marvelous, adequate provision.

What is the result of that? Look, if you will, back again in John chapter eight and notice, if you will, verse 32. He says, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

He says, I want to speak those things the Father taught me. He says, I came to bear witness of the truth, to testify of the truth and the truth I'm sharing with you. The nature of that truth is it will set you free from the penalty of sin. It will set you free from the burden of sin.

It will unshackle you and release you from the prison house of sin. He says, for this purpose, I was born for this purpose. I came into the world in order that you may be set free as you receive the liberating truth of the gospel.

That's the reason Jesus said he came. He came to set men free. You recall in Luke chapter four, when he stood in the synagogue that morning to read the scriptures, listen to what he said. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Verse 18, because he had anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, set free those who are downtrodden, proclaim the acceptable favorable year of the Lord. Everything he's doing is providing release and liberty for those who are in bondage to sin. That is, God is a liberating, freeing God. And Jesus says, I came to bear witness of this truth and the truth to which I share with you. He says, this truth will set you free from the penalty and the burden of sin. Thank you for listening to The Purpose for Christ's Coming. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.