Do you ever wonder where we would be without Jesus? I know I would not be a tenth of the person I am today without him and my faith in him So who is Jesus, well, he is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. He is incarnate, which means he took on human flesh, became a person like us in all things but sin and came to this world to save us.
The incarnation is J
esus taking on our humanity. But the Incarnation also gives us a share in his divinity. Jesus’ birth and death gives us a renewed hope and belief that we too, will one day be in heaven. The Incarnation is a foundational belief. It is the basis for believing and understanding Jesus’ mission, which is to save us, the purpose of his church and his eventual second coming.
For thousands of years, God called his people to himself, but they often turned away. So, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption” (Gal 4:4-5).
Jesus is our redeemer. He took on our sins, all the consequences of them and paid our debt to the Father. His Passion and Death, his ultimate sacrifice – saved us from our sins, reconciled us to the Father and opened the gates of heaven
One way in which Jesus was different than us is that He lived a life of total and complete obedience to his Father. In the Garden of Gethsemane when he knew his death was imminent, he prayed for God’s will to be done, not his. His suffering on the cross was real and true and painful. He suffered in his humanity; that suffering was possible because of his divinity.
Jesus rose from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven. He promised his Father would send the Holy Spirit to us to help us, guide us, and empower us. The Spirit forms us in the likeness of Jesus. We live in continual conversion toward God and away from sin.
Jesus reveals the Father to us, for he is visible. His desire is for us to enter into a relationship with him based on our free love for him. Just as God the Father does not force us to love him, neither does Jesus.
Jesus intends for us to become holy and partake of his divine nature. The more we go to Him in prayer and ask for what we need, the more we will receive. We can look at his life as an example, he shows us the way to holiness.
This our challenge is to pray the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
For more information about the Jesus prayer, take a look here.
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