God Comes to Our Rescue

A little over two-thousand years ago it happened. God, the Creator of the universe, came into our broken world. God became a man, a living, breathing human being. His name is Jesus. The Bible makes a shocking claim about this man. It says, “He’s the image of the invisible God, for by Him all things in heaven and earth were created…” (Colossians 1:15-16).

In Jesus we meet God face-to-face. He lived among us. He healed our sickness. He gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf. He condemned injustice, cared for the poor and brought hope to the broken-hearted. He even raised the dead.

Everything Jesus said and did left the fingerprints of God’s love and goodness on the human race.

The mercy and compassion of Jesus revealed to us the true identity of God, but we did not recognize him. Instead we rejected him. In our pride we accused him and found him guilty, worthy of death.

We decided to crucify him. We turned away from him, shook our fist in his face and said, we don’t need you. We condemned him, spat upon him, and shamed him. Finally we nailed him to a cross and watched him die.

The significance of the crucifixion of Jesus can only be fully understood when you realize that it was God himself suffering as a human being on that cross—Jesus with nails in his hands and feet. God himself stripped naked for our sin. God humiliated and tormented for our shame. His body broken. His blood poured out for our guilt. Suffering alone on that cross. God himself allowed the human agony of death, the terrible penalty of our sin to fall upon him instead of us.

Why? So that through Jesus the mercy and forgiveness of God could be poured out on everyone who believes. This is how God demonstrates his love. He never abandoned us. This is how far God was willing to go so that you and I may be forgiven and completely restored in our relationship with him.

But the story of Jesus doesn’t end with his death. On the third day after Jesus died and was buried, the followers of Jesus became eyewitnesses to the most important event in human history—the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. At first, they were frightened. Then Jesus said: “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:38-39 NASB).

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