What Was Jesus' Purpose in Coming to Earth?
By Marsha Iddings
Acts 3:26 "To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities."
Why did Jesus come to earth? Did He come to be a good example for us to follow? Was He here simply as a teacher or prophet? Was He simply a good person? Was He here to work His way back to God? Did He come to make the way for us to find happiness? Did He come to bring us temporal blessings in return for obeying His commands?
These are all things that various people and religions teach about Jesus, but none of them are the answer to why Jesus came.
According to the verse above, Jesus was sent "to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities".
Verse 19 of Acts 3 says it this way, "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord," The blessings that come with repentance and turning away from our sins is to have our sins blotted out and to receive times of refreshing from the Lord's presence in our life.
Matthew 1:21 says what Jesus' purpose was quite clearly, "And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins."
The theme all through the Bible is man's sinfulness against the back-drop of God's holiness. It's all about man's inability to make himself acceptable to God through his own works and merit. Clearly, man needs to be saved from his own sinfulness if he is to be in a right relationship to God and that is what Jesus came to do when he came to earth and died on the cross and shed His blood for us.
The purpose for Jesus' coming to earth is also stated in 1 Timothy 1:15 "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Any individual or church that says Christ came for any other reason is teaching a false gospel.
What gospel do you believe?
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