Jones Clan Journal

The last few Christmas seasons have used a slogan to help us to remember Christ at this time. It goes:

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

That is all well and good, but more importantly, just what is the Reason for Jesus? I want to start a list of why we need Jesus, and more importantly, why God thinks we need Jesus. I’m going to start off with a few points. There are many age groups of people reading and adding points to the list, so the complexity of the reasons will range from very simple to possibly complex. These points are not in order of importance.

• Jesus came to earth so that we could know the Father. (Colossians 1:15-22, John 14:6-11)
• You have to go a long ways back to understand this one. First you need to understand that there is a physical and and a spiritual life. And there is a physical and a spiritual death. When man was first created, he was told that if he disobeyed God, he would die. He did disobey God, and he did die. But the death was not immediately physical. Initially, it was a spiritual death, for the first thing that happened was that he was sent out of the Garden and separated from God. Simply put, spiritual death is separation from God. When we are born into this world, we have a physical life, but our spiritual life does not begin until we are united with God the Father, through his son Jesus Christ. It is only through Jesus that we can have union with God. So Jesus overcomes spiritual death.
• Jesus has conquered physical death. Evidence of this comes through his resurrection.
• I hate to admit how long it took me to realize what was being talked about when the angels sang to the shepherds about ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men’. I always thought they were talking about world peace, but history shows that that couldn’t have been the case. What they were talking about was that there could now be peace between God and Man, and there can now be communion with God. (Colossians 1:19-20 . Romans 5:1-2) The added benefit is that because of this peace with God through Christ, true believers also receive a peace that passes all understanding and a love for one another that distinguishes them from others. (Philippians 4:6-7 , Galatians 5:22-23)
• God has many characteristics that we learn about from the Bible. One of those characteristics is justice. When man disobeyed God, he broke a law. Because God is just, he cannot just overlook that injustice, but a payment had to be made to counter it. Man was given the law in the Old Testament to help show that he cannot work his own way out of this dilemna. Only someone who had committed no sin could be offered to compensate for the breaking of the law. Jesus Christ was born of a woman, but did not have the seed of a man. He, alone, did not inherit the sinful nature from his father. Because of his righteousness, he was able to offer himself as a sacrifice for us to bring us back to peace with God the Father. (Hebrews 10:1-25)
• Because Jesus came to earth as a man, he understands all of our problems and temptations. He can empathize with us. (Hebrews 4:15)
• Jesus is our Savior.That means he came to save us from something, but at the same time, he also saves us for something:
  • He saves us from enmity with God so we can be united to God
  • He saves us from sin so we can be righteous
  • He saves us from darkness and brings us into light
  • He saves us from bondage to sin so we can be free to live for God
  • He saves us from death so we can have life
  • He saves us from despair and gives us hope

written by J. Statema

www.gofishguys.com