Hi Adam,
God was someone who led Israel for thousands of years, think of what he did with Moses. Yes, one could argue, ‘but Jesus walked on water and healed the sick’. But Moses also turned water into blood, and a stick into a snake (through God). My statement being, there were many religious people in that time that did very ‘magical’ things.
Why did God have to send a piece of Himself to Earth? Why not a purely human Messiah, why send down his own son?
Enchanted by Judaism, Cape Town
Jesus didn’t earn his place as Messiah by performing stunts or miracles. Jesus was sent from the Father to be the Messiah, it was announced before his birth (Matthew 1:21) and confirmed during his life by John the Baptist (John 1:29).
But, Jesus was a human Messiah. He was born of a human woman. He just wasn’t born of a human father. But he was flesh and blood like all of us. Though the Bible says he is God, it emphatically claims he is also a man. He needed to be born of a woman to die in our place. He needed to be born of God to be perfect and avoid the hereditary guilt of sin passed down from Adam (Romans 5).
To understand the importance of Jesus, we need to understand the importance of blood for atonement. Atonement is the act of us being restored to oneness with God—the forgiveness of our sins. From Genesis, we see that there is no atonement for sin without the shedding of blood; God kills animals and uses their skin to cover over Adam’s shame (Genesis 3:21). We see the patriarchs use animal sacrifice to worship God (Genesis 8:20-21, etc). In the law, animal sacrifice, and the use of blood is codified as the means by which forgiveness should be sought (Leviticus 17:11).
In the New Testament we see this was all a foreshadowing of the sacrifice Jesus would make for the sins of the whole world (Hebrews 9:11-18). The sacrifices of the old covenant had to be repeated again and again, to secure atonement for the people. However, by means of his own blood, Jesus secured eternal atonement. In Christ Jesus, God was making provision for all men for all time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam is an Englishman living abroad, who knows this earth is not his home. Married with two children and a leader in his local church, Adam is a musician, artist, writer and teacher.
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