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4 Things Jesus Came to Do
1. Expose Misunderstanding and Disobedience
A central part of who Jesus is and therefore what we are to believe is found in Jesus’s teaching about what he came to do. He came to do a number of things.
Jesus clearly came to reveal misunderstanding and disobedience among the Jewish people and their leaders. One interesting way to see this is to examine the three Sabbaths mentioned in the book of John. Jesus regularly attended synagogue on the Sabbath, and sometimes he took his turn as an adult male by reading from the scroll. But beyond that, he exposed misunderstanding and disobedience by acting contrary to what his religious peers required for Sabbath observance.
The Message of the New Testament
Mark Dever
Mark Dever surveys the historical context, organization, and theology of each New Testament book, in light of God’s Old Testament promises. Dever’s message echoes that of the New Testament—one of fulfilled hope.
In John 5:18, the Jews charged Jesus with making himself equal with God. But did you also notice the other charge in the line above that: “breaking the Sabbath”? What prompted this charge? Jesus had seen a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years lying on his mat and said to him, “‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked” (John 5:8–9a). The story continues: “The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat’” (John 5:9b-10). Really, it was Jesus they were after: “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him” (John 5:16). Indeed, the Jews were good at remembering the smaller laws and reminding others of those laws, but they had forgotten why the law had been given in the first place. Jesus called further attention to their misuse of the law when he said,
I did one miracle, and you are all astonished. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath. Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? (John 7:21–23)
The second Sabbath is mentioned in chapter 9, where a man born blind receives his sight from Jesus:
Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” (John 9:14–16)
Again, the Pharisees missed the point of the Sabbath. I think Jesus deliberately picked the Sabbath as an opportunity to expose their hypocrisy and jolt them out of their self-righteousness. Jesus did not come to help anyone keep up the pretence of holiness and love; he came to bring the real thing.
John’s third mention of the Sabbath especially demonstrates what a sham the people’s understanding of the day had become. In chapter 19 he writes,
Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. (John 19:31)
Do you see the irony in this? The chief priests were so mindful of the law’s obligations, they literally dogged Jesus to death for healing on the Sabbath. So mindful were they that they cleaned up after the murder they had committed to avoid ceremonial uncleanness on the Sabbath.
2. Provide a Sacrifice for the Salvation of Sinners
More fundamentally, Jesus came to save sinners. As he said, “I did not come to judge the world, but to save it” (John 12:47). And he came to save the world by acting as God’s provision for their sins. He told the Pharisee Nicodemus,
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14–16; cf. John 8:28; John 12:32)
Just as the bronze snake was God’s provision for Israelites bitten by poisonous serpents (Numbers 21), Jesus came as God’s provision for the salvation of sinners.
Jesus is the Passover sacrifice, who was killed in the stead of sinful human beings.
How, specifically, does God’s provision in Christ save sinful humanity? John the Baptist points toward the answer near the beginning of the Gospel: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus is the Passover sacrifice, who was killed in the stead of sinful human beings. Jesus then says in chapter 6, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:53–54). Jesus did not intend for his disciples to grab his arm and begin to chew on him. Rather, he intended for his blood to be shed and his body to be broken when he was lifted up on the cross. And sinners must put their confidence, their faith, in his substitutionary sacrifice.
3. Bring Light into the World
Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus came to shed light upon God, man, and God’s plan of salvation (John 1:4–9). As John says, “This is the verdict: light has come into the world . . . whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (John 3:19, 21). Jesus himself said to the crowds in Jerusalem, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (John 12:46; also John 8:12; John 9:5, etc.).
4. Be Glorified by the Father
And how did this light present itself? By the glory of the Father shining upon the Son. John writes, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). And Jesus clearly said his glory came directly from the Father: “My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me.”1
Interestingly, throughout John’s Gospel the reader is told that Jesus’s time had “not yet come” (John 2:4; John 7:6, 8, 30; John 8:20). What is meant by this is not entirely clear at first, except that it is given as the reason for why no one could seize or stone him. The great dividing point in the Gospel comes in Jesus’s last week, when he entered Jerusalem and announced that his time had come:
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. . . . Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! (John 12:23, 27–28; also, John 17:1)
The time that had come was the time of his glorification, and his glorification, we learn, happened at the cross! At the same moment, Jesus gave all glory to the Father: “Father, glorify your name!” Jesus the Son was in a unique position to bring glory to God the Father, by effecting the Father’s merciful salvation and showing the Father’s perfect love.
So John writes with a majestic simplicity, “Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love” (John 13:1).
This is what we are to believe: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who came into the world to expose disobedience, provide a sacrifice for sins, bring light to the world, and be glorified by the Father. In so doing he in turn gave glory to the Father.
Notes:
- John 8:54; also John 2:11; John 8:50; John 11:4; John 12:41; John 13:32; 16:14; John 17:4–5, 22, 24.
This article is adapted from The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept by Mark Dever.
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