Why did Jesus Christ come?
The historian Luke records the declaratory statement of the angel to the shepherds in Luke 2:10-11: "'Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.'"
The word savior literally means "rescuer." So why did Jesus come? Jesus came to give you salvation. He came to rescue you.
It is important to realize this salvation, this rescue, has individual and corporate implications. Let us look at this rescue, this salvation, in a three-step, time progressional perspective.
First, Jesus came to give you salvation (rescue) from an old style of life — an END.
Jesus came to help people with a past put that past behind them. Salvation is rescue from the past. You can't do this on your own. You need a Savior. What is for certain about the past?
Jesus rescues you from your bondage to past sin.
The fact is that none of us is perfect. All of us have sinned. The Bible tells us that there is no way in which we can atone for our own sins. We need a Savior. God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ to die for your and my sins. If we repent of sin, confess our need, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all iniquity. The Bible uses a most graphic description when it declares, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."
Jesus also rescues you from a meaningless existence.
Meaningless is the human predicament, isn't it? Is there anything more empty than trivial cocktail-hour chatter? Oh, it is nice at times, in a laid-back situation that has no pressure. Some people spend all their lives flitting around to such non-pressured situations, talking about shopping, golf scores, and the escalation of housing prices. All topics of some importance, but not of ultimate significance. How easy it is to anesthetize ourselves to the deeper significant issues of life, living trivial, surface existences that, at the end of the day, leave us empty.
And Jesus rescues you from successes of the past.
Many of us look back to days in which, on human terms, we would be perceived to be more successful than we are at this moment. Our athletic prowess fades. Our earning capacities are diminished. Our physical bodies age. Our minds are not as sharp as they used to be. And the list goes on.
Jesus came to rescue you from an old style of life. He wants to bring to an end your and my bondage to past sin. He wants to bring to an end our meaningless existence. He wants to bring to an end our preoccupation with a backward look to the successes of yesteryear.
Second, Jesus came to give you salvation (rescue) to a new life now — a NEW BEGINNING.
Salvation is rescue to be all you were created to be in the now.
You can't do this on your own. You need a Savior.
This is where the Gospel of Jesus Christ becomes so exciting.
The Apostle Paul declared to fast-living, bogged-down sinners with meaningless first-century existences, struggling with success issues, that they could have a new beginning in life. He put it in these words: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). He wrote that to people living in that very materialistic coastal city named Corinth, with pressures on them so similar to those on us today.
