INDEX FOR THIS SECTION

1. WHY ARE CHRISTIANS SO FIXATED ON JESUS?
2. SUMMARY OF WHAT WE WILL SHOW ABOUT JESUS
3. JESUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

WHY ARE CHRISTIANS SO FIXATED ON JESUS?
God exists today in three persons; the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Bible teaches that God has always existed in this form as three persons. He is timeless, he has always existed and will always exist. Of course this includes Jesus. Jesus has always existed as God and will always exist as God, Rev 22:13, John 8:58, John 17:24. At some time before the creation of the universe the Father decided to give his son a gift. This gift was a bride, metaphorically speaking, Eph 5:22-33, Rev 19:7-9, Rom 7:1-4. This gift was an eternal companion, which we refer to as mankind, Col 1:16, John 17:6, 2 Cor 5:1-5. See the model,the church as the bride of Christ (Jewish wedding customs), for details about this gift. The Father laid out the plans for the gift and then had the Son do the actual creating himself, Prov 8:30-36, John 1:1-5, Heb 1:1-3, Col 1:15-18. A marriage is based on two way love. Because of this God’s plan for the gift included a selection algorithm, an algorithm that would involve selecting only those members of mankind who loved Jesus as his bride. The whole message of the Bible relates to the selection of this gift. This is God’s plan for the ages, and it all revolves around the selection of the companion or bride for Jesus. Col 1:16 says that we were created by Jesus and for Jesus. 2 Cor 5:1-10 says that we were created to live in heaven with Jesus in our glorified bodies.
This is basically the reason that Christians are so firm in their belief in and defense of Jesus as God. We are all seeking to be a part of the eternal companion that Jesus is in the process of selecting. The details of this are presented in the area of this site called God’s Plan for Man. Check this out if you have not already done so. The remainder of this section deals with the presentation of Jesus and his gospel in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments.

SUMMARY OF WHAT WE WILL SHOW ABOUT JESUS
In this section we will attempt to show that the Bible presents the following things regarding Jesus:

Jesus was, is and will always be God
Jesus was God of the Jews in the Old Testament
Jesus was author of the Old Testament
Jesus was the “Holy One” in both the Old and New Testaments
Jesus is and has always been the only way to heaven
Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, the word and the light
Jesus was both man and God in his incarnation
Man was created as a gift to Jesus from the Father.

JESUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Most of us know who Jesus is and was, but let me summarize a few key points about Jesus and his purpose in coming to earth to live as a man for a few years.

The coming of Jesus to earth was prophesied throughout the Old Testament in over 300 instances. Every one was completely fulfilled. Many details of Jesus’ life and ministry were prophesized. He was to come to earth two different times, first as a suffering servant who was to save mankind from his sin and enable man to once again be fit to enter the presence of God in heaven, and second as a conquering king who would save Israel and mankind from certain complete destruction and who would set up a peaceful kingdom on earth for 1000 years.

Just as prophesied, Jesus came to earth as a man, born of a virgin. There were many different astronomical signs in the night skies for about five years preceding Jesus birth. The Persian kingmakers, called wise men, had learned about these signs and their meaning from Daniel during his earlier exile in Babylon. During his exile in Babylon Daniel had gained favor with the king to the extent that he in essence became the prime minister and was placed in charge of the king’s wise men. About 525 years after Daniel’s death these miraculous signs began appearing in the night skies and the wise men knew of their significance. They traveled to Israel and may have appeared shortly after the birth of Jesus. The Roman king, Herod, was shocked by the appearance of the kingmakers looking for the one who was to be called the “King of the Jews.” Since prophecy indicated that Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem, Herod had all babies in Bethlehem who were under two years of age killed. Jesus’ parents were warned in a dream about what was to happen and were told by an angel to flee to Egypt. They did so and after Herod’s death they returned to Israel and set up residence in Nazareth.

We know very little about Jesus’ life until he became 30 years old. In the culture of Israel, a man could not become a rabbi until he reached the age of 30. Jesus had gained the qualifications to be a rabbi or teacher so at age 30 he began his ministry on earth. For the next 3 ½ years he went around the area of Galilee teaching man about himself and the kingdom of God. His headquarters were in the city of Capernaum. Jesus chose a small band of twelve men to be his assistants in presenting his message to mankind. As Jesus traveled about he performed many astounding miracles to prove that he was sent by God the Father, and that in fact he himself was God. The Jews of the day were under the control of the Roman Empire and had in fact been under the control of various empires for over 600 years. They longed for freedom and were looking for the long prophesied Messiah who they thought would free them from their bondage to Rome. However they misinterpreted Jesus message as well as the prophesies about the messiah. Jesus had indeed come to free them from bondage, but it was their bondage to the law and to sin and not from the Roman Empire. The Messiah would one day come to free them from earthly bondage, but that was still thousands of years in the future.

Again, to the dismay of the Jews, Jesus had come to earth to implement a new covenant with man. He told them that there would be no more long lists of do’s and don’ts. Man had been trying to work his way to heaven for thousands of years.

Unfortunately for man, God’s requirement for entry into heaven is perfection. Man had proven that he was incapable of living this type of life. Jesus explained this to the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus came to the earth as a man to walk a mile in man’s shoes, so to speak, and live the perfect life for man. He would be our substitute. He would do for us what we had proven that we could not do for ourselves. Then at the end of his perfect earthly life he would be sacrificed as the perfect “Lamb” to cover all of our sins, past, present and future. He would be the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all man, done “once for all.” He would be a sin offering for us. He would nail the law to a cross for us. He would bail us out of a certain “eternal jail” by paying a ransom for us, buying our pardon for sins by sacrificing himself for us on the cross. Now because of Jesus buying our pardon, God looks at us and sees us as innocent, even though we are really guilty. This is a “free gift” from God, and thus it is by the grace of God that we are saved and not because of anything that we have done. God now looks at us and sees us as perfect and fit for living eternally with him and his Son in heaven if we accept and follow his Son, Jesus. Thank you God!!!!!!! This describes the new covenant. Just as the old covenant was all about sin, being forgiven for sin, and reaching a state of perfection so that man could go to heaven to be with God eternally, so is the new covenant all about the same thing. Unfortunately, the Jews in large part rejected Jesus and his New Covenant.