In our alphabet series, ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith’, tonight we looked at ‘J is for Jesus.’ Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, the pioneer and perfecter of faith’ (Heb 12:2), the ‘Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End’ (Rev 22:13), is the common thread running throughout the whole of the Bible.
Recently I’ve been making a lot of chutney, and I have no hesitation at all in saying that the essential ingredients in making chutney are vinegar and sugar. I’ve made a lot of tomato-based chutneys (tomato & apple, tomato & courgette, tomato & chilli and green tomato), but tomatoes are not an essential ingredient of chutney. The acidity of vinegar prevents growth of bacteria, moulds and yeasts, and sugar acts as a setting agent and a preservative, and it’s these two ingredients which give chutney such a long shelf life and make it very useful if we want to use fruit or vegetables which would otherwise go off quickly. In the same way, there are many peripheral things connected with Christianity, but without Jesus, we would have no faith. He is the essential ingredient to our faith!
Jesus is God’s Messiah, His ‘anointed one’, His ‘Christ’, His rescue package, sent from the throne of heaven by God the Father to walk among the darkness of earth. John 1 claims that Jesus is the eternal Word, God himself, who created everything that exists, and says that in time He became flesh and dwelt among us. Philippians 2:6 makes it clear that he is God (‘being in very nature God’), and that he set aside the use of some of his attributes to take on the form of the human, and die for the sins of the world. Titus 2:13 equates Jesus with God. Romans 9:5 describes him as God, who is blessed forever. In other ways, Jesus is also God. Heb 1:3 describes Him in this way: ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.’
At the same time, the Bible affirms that Jesus is also fully human. Only God is strong enough, holy enough, pure enough to save us. But God cannot die. Therefore, Jesus had to take on human flesh and become like us so that He could save us and live up to the meaning of His name (Jesus means ‘Yahweh is salvation.’) Jesus took on our humanity so that He could offer Himself as a pure, spotless sacrifice for sin and once and for all bring us back into the relationship with God for which we were created. Jesus ‘as to his earthly life was a descendant of David’ (Rom 1:3). Heb 2:14 tells us Jesus shared in our humanity, and in the rest of that chapter, we see that He Himself suffered as a son and can help us when we are tempted (see also Heb 4:15).
Jesus, by living life perfectly, by fulfilling the law perfectly, by offering himself willingly (‘I have come to do Your will, O God’ Heb 10:7), could not be touched by the demands of the law or by the enemy himself. Hebrews 10:14 sums it up in this way: ‘by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.’ Jesus, come to save us from our sins, accomplished that through His death on the cross and because that sacrifice was acceptable to a holy God, He rose again from the dead on the third day, never more to die again, living always and interceding for us! (Heb 7:25) As the hymn says, ‘Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’ (‘Man of Sorrows, What A Name’)