Why did Jesus Christ came to earth ?

Around AD 90, the apostle John, who was already old, wrote his own account of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The Gospel according to John was written twenty to thirty years after the other three Gospels, and the story begins in a very different way. The Gospel according to Mark begins with the ministry of Jesus; those of Matthew and Luke with the events surrounding His birth. John’s starts with a different approach. John begins by quoting these well-known words from the Bible: “In the beginning. He uses the first words of the book of Genesis. 

He raises the fact that at the beginning, the Word was already there! and the Word was with God the Father, and the Word was also God. John affirms that the Word was the very instrument of Creation, and that nothing was done without Its participation. Then John emphasizes the origin of Jesus Christ: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (verse 14). John wants his readers to understand who Jesus of Nazareth really was. Jesus was not just a prophet or a good man. He was the very Son of God, the eternal Word that was made flesh. He was already present in the beginning with the Father, with whom He shared incredible power and glory. 

However – and this is the crucial point – the Word has given up all its power and glory to come to earth and live as a mere human being. Under the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word was born as a human being. He grew up and worked as a carpenter before beginning His ministry. The Apostle Paul emphasizes that Christ stripped Himself of the great glory and power He shared with the Father, and that He came to earth in the form of a servant (Philippians 2: 6-8). He voluntarily submitted to the limits of the flesh; He lived among men for thirty-three and a half years before suffering the most horrible death ever imagined. 

Why did He abandon everything in order to become a human being? What was the true purpose of His first Advent? To understand why it was necessary for Jesus Christ to do all this, we will examine in this article The seven distinct purposes for which He came to earth. 

1. Christ came to condemn sin in the flesh

In Romans 8:3, Paul explains that Christ accomplished all things by coming into the flesh, without sinning: “God condemned sin in the flesh. Jesus Christ did not come to play just a role! He suffered, He was tempted! He was flesh and blood, as we are, you and me. However – and this is the difference – while being flesh and blood, Jesus Christ fully relied on the power of the Father to obey Him in all things and to fulfill His will. He said that He could do nothing of Himself (John 5: 30), and that it was the Father, who dwell in Him, did the works. It is only through the power of the Father that we can conquer and triumph over sin. 

Jesus Christ has come to give us a perfect example of the life we must follow (1 Peter 2:21). He lived as a human being, made of flesh and blood, subject to all temptations and trials, and He triumphed over sin every time. He condemned sin in the flesh, showing us that obedience to God is perfectly possible for one who relies on the power of the Father to attain that obedience. Jesus demonstrated by His personal example that a submissive and obedient life is really possible. 

2. Christ came as the Lamb of God 

John the Baptist testified about Jesus Christ after Christ’s baptism by calling Him “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29)! At that time, people were very familiar with lambs. At each Easter season, the families chose a young lamb on the tenth day of the first month, and kept it until the fourteenth day, to slaughter it and eat it during the Passover meal. Every morning and evening, in the temple, a lamb was slain and offered on the altar for morning and evening sacrifice. All these millions of lambs, offered for nearly fifteen centuries since Moses, meant something. Or, more precisely, they symbolized someone. 

In 1 Corinthians 5: 7, Paul explains that Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. And in Hebrews he tells us that the blood of animals can not really erase sin, but rather as a reminder. Jesus Christ grants us redemption, not with the blood of animals, but with His own blood, which He has shed for us. From the beginning, the Creator explained to our first parents that the penalty of sin is death. Divine justice requires that this fine be paid. But if the righteousness of God demands payment, His infinite love manifests itself in the fact that He offered Himself to pay for us. 

Christ has not only come to give us a perfect example. He has come to pay the price of all our sins. Let’s go back to the episode of the Garden of Eden, when God killed animals to clothe our first parents: He told them that the woman would give birth with pain, but that she would crush the serpent’s head. Then He began to reveal to them His plan of salvation. In giving a ram to Abraham to take the place of his beloved son, Isaac, God taught him the necessity of a substitution sacrifice. He revealed it again in the context of the first Passover in Egypt, when the angels of destruction (Psalm 78: 49) passed over the houses that were under the blood of the lamb. Jesus Christ, who existed eternally as the Word, became flesh to be able to die and be our Savior. He came like the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the whole world! 

3. Christ came as the second Adam

When God placed the first man in the garden, He gave him dominion, or the government. Adam had to exercise the government of God on this earth, but he failed. Instead of faithfully following God’s instructions, he submitted unconsciously to his wife, who had given up the struggle to Satan. Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15: 45-47: “So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 

In 1 John 2: 16-17, the Apostle John explains: “16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.  

The basis of the system of this world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are the three things that Satan summoned when he seduced Eve – and Adam, through him. In Genesis 3, we learn that when Satan drew Eve’s attention to the forbidden fruit, she saw that it was “good to eat” (covetousness of the flesh), “pleasing to the sight” (covetousness to the eyes), and “precious to open the mind” (pride of life). It was on this basis that Adam and Eve succumbed to sin; it was these criteria that became the foundation of this world civilization. 

Immediately after John the Baptist’s baptism of Christ, and before beginning His public ministry, Jesus withdrew to a wilderness to confront Satan (Mark 1: 9-13). He prepared for this confrontation by fasting for forty days. How did Satan try to seduce him? Using the same arguments he had used with our first parents! He appealed to the lust of the flesh, trying to persuade Jesus to turn stones into bread. He appealed to the lust of the eyes, taking Christ to a high mountain, and showing Him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory – and Satan offered to give everything to Christ, if only He bowed before him. Satan placed Christ on the top of the temple, and He challenged Him to jump down and be carried away by the angels. “If you are the Son of God,” Satan challenged, “go ahead and jump. It was a call to the pride of life. Most people “ride on their spurs” when someone challenges them to prove that they are what they say they are (Matthew 4: 1-6). 

Jesus Christ rejected all temptations of Satan. He defeated Satan, and He did what the first Adam did not do: He obeyed God!  

Jesus Christ came as the second Adam, and He qualified to replace Satan as the ruler of this earth. 

4. Christ came to reveal the Father

Many Jews in Jesus’ day claimed to be religious. However, Jesus makes us understand that, despite all that religious leaders said about God, they did not really know Him. In John 1:18 we read, “No one has ever seen God; God, the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, is the one who made him known. Luke reports the statement of Jesus in Luke 10:22, where he explains that no one really knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals Him. Jesus Christ came into a world that was spiritually in darkness, to make the Father known.

How could He do such a thing? First, Christ declared to those who listened to Him that He did not come to seek and do His own will, but to fully fulfill the Father’s will (John 6: 38). He did not come to speak of His own substance, nor to seek His personal interest. He came to report the words of the Father, and to do the works that the Father asked Him to do.

Jesus Christ was in every respect like the Father; those who succeeded in knowing Him were able to know in Christ, to know the Father as well as the Son. The night before His crucifixion, He explained to Philip that those who knew Him really also knew the Father (John 14: 7). The invisible God has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. We can know His character, His attitude and His approach.

5. Christ came as the Messenger of the Covenant

The last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, had a vision of events that would occur several centuries after his own time, and he prophesied the return of the Messiah. ” “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. “(Malachi 3: 1). One of the purposes for which the Messiah was to come was to deliver a message directly from God the Father!

Mark begins the story of his Gospel by quoting this passage from the Scriptures: ” The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah,[a] the Son of God,[b] 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way””Mark 1: 1-2. John the Baptist came to preach a message of repentance, and to show Him who would come after him, and who would be greater than him. In verse 14, Mark explains: “After John was delivered, Jesus went into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God. John the Baptist was the messenger to prepare the way of the Lord. When the way was prepared, Jesus made His appearance as the Messenger of the Covenant.

Jesus Christ came to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God: the Message of the New Covenant. This message reveals how we can truly know God, obtain complete forgiveness of our sins, and receive the nature of God through His Holy Spirit who writes His law in our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8: 10-12). This Gospel explains what the Kingdom of God really is, and how we can inherit this Kingdom. Jesus came to the earth to deliver a message directly from the Father: the Good News of the Kingdom of God, in which you and I can enter as children and heirs!

6. Christ came to build His Church

Christ did not come only to reveal the Father and to deliver His message to humanity; He has also come to establish His Church. In Matthew 16:18 He told Peter and the other apostles that He would build His Church, and and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. The Rock on which the Church was built is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the cornerstone of the spiritual temple of God, as Paul explains in Ephesians 2:20. The Greek word translated “church” (Ekklisía) refers to a group or assembly, although this word literally means “called out of”. Originally, God called people out of this world to enter into a special relationship with Him, the Creator (Genesis 12: 1).

How did Jesus prepare the building of His Church? He first called out disciples, and He chose twelve which He ordained as apostles. He trained them for three and a half years; He then sent them to proclaim the same message that He Himself proclaimed, baptize those who would respond to this message with faith and repentance, and teach all the things He had taught them (Matthew 28: 19-20).

The Church built by Jesus would still exist at the end of time; she is the body by which He works. The Church is the bride that Jesus will marry on His return, and whose members will rule and reign with Him in the Eternal World of Tomorrow. We, as the people of God in the last days, represent today the continuity of the Church that Jesus built.

7. Christ came “to usher captives”

Ephesians 4: 8 describes a seventh reason why Jesus Christ came to earth: “When He ascended into the heights, He took away captives, and gave gifts to men.” The same Jesus Christ who descended into the house of the dead came out three days and three nights later. Forty days after His resurrection, He ascended to heaven to be with the Father again. Why ? Ephesians 4:10 explains, “He who descended is the same who ascended above all heavens to fulfill all things. When Jesus walked on the earth as a human being, He could only be in one place at a given moment. Now, by the Holy Spirit, He can help, guide and dwell in all converted Christians at the same time.

The night before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples that it was good for them to go away. It was only by going so that He could send them the Comforter – the Holy Spirit – to guide and strengthen them (John 16: 7). It is through the power of the Spirit that Christ can fulfill all things (Ephesians 4:10).

Death is the ultimate captivity, the prison from which no one can escape by his own means. Death is the direct consequence of sin; in fact, it is through sin that death entered the world (Romans 5:12). As the apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15: 56-57: “The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! The night before His death, Jesus told His disciples that “the prince of the world is coming. He has nothing in me “(John 14: 30). Death and the abode of the dead have no power or hold over Christ. When He ascended to heaven, Christ brought captives. Through His victory, all who are in Hades will hear His voice one day and they will come out of it (John 5: 28-29).

Jesus Christ triumphed over death, and now He places spiritual gifts at our disposal to enable us to overcome sin and death. We should never take our Savior for granted, but rather be deeply grateful for all that He has done, for all that He does, and for all that He will do for you and for me.

“All praises to our Lord Saviour Jesus Christ“