Six of the Reasons Why God Became Flesh

SIX REASONS GOD BECAME MAN

When Moody went to preach in Scotland he preached for an hour about Jesus one evening. One the way to where he was staying he lamented to the Scotchman with whom he was staying that he had not been able to say all that he wanted about Christ. The Scotchman turned to him after listening for a while to Moody complain and said, “You didn’t expect to tell it all in an hour did you. It would take all eternity to tell about Jesus!”

That explains my title. There are certainly more than six reasons but I only have a certain amount of time, so I want to suggest six reasons to you why God became man and leave the rest for you to search for in the Scriptures for yourself.

A. He became a man so that Israel could have a Messiah (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 4:16-22; Romans 15:7-12).

Mark Reed says “Eating lunch at a small café, I saw a sparrow hop through the open door and peck at the crumbs near my table. When the crumbs were gone, the sparrow hopped to the window ledge, spread its wings, and took flight. Brief flight. It crashed against the window pane and fell to the floor. The bird quickly recovered and tried again. Crash. And again. Crash. I got up and attempted to shoo the sparrow out the door but the closer I got the harder it threw itself against the pane. I nudged it with my hand. That sent the sparrow fluttering along the ledge, hammering its beak at the glass. Finally, I reached out and gently caught the bird, folding my fingers around its wings and body. It weighed almost nothing. I thought of how powerless and vulnerable the sparrow must have felt. At the door I released it, and the sparrow sailed away. As I did with the sparrow, God takes us captive only to set us free” (Leadership, Winter 1994).

B. He became a man so that He could declare (reveal) the Father to us (John 1:14-18).

John points out earlier that Jesus came to his own but his own did not receive him. The end of chapter 3 tells us why. Men were in darkness and loved being in darkness because their deeds were evil.

It is not unusual for people to misunderstand outsiders and Jesus was certainly an outsider. Hiebert in Anthropological Insights for Missionaries tells how “In another part of the world, the missionaries took along a cat as a pet for their children. Unknowingly, they went to a tribe where the only people to keep cats were witches. The locals believed that at night the witches left their bodies and entered the cats, in order to prowl through the huts stealing the souls of the villager. The next morning, those whose souls had been stolen felt lethargic and weak…When the people saw the family cat, they concluded that the missionaries were witches. It did not help when the missionary man got up to preach and said that they had come to gather souls! Nor did it help when the missionary woman washed her hair in the river, and the villagers saw the foam from her shampoo bubble out of her head. Since they had never see soap, they were certain the bubbles were the souls that the missionaries had stolen.”

C. He became a man in order to serve as our access to the Father (Hebrews 4:14-5:10).

Jesus not only came to bring the Father to us, he also came to give us access to the Father. We know that He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” Hebrews tells us that he had to become a man for that to happen. We needed a priest, someone who could go to God for us and provide a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus as man became our High Priest and provided the sacrifice that makes it possible for us to have access to God.

D. He became a man in order to show us how to live our life’s calling (1 Peter 2:21-25).

The liberals like Jesus as example but they think that by following his example we can become righteous. Popular Christianity tells us to ask ourselves WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do”) but this often means is be nice to one another and don’t condemn others. Peter gives us, however, a totality different concept. He says live in a wicked world without complaint against those who hate you. Live as Jesus died because He died so that you and I might live righteously in and before a wicked world.

E. He became a man in order to be exalted above all things (Philippians 2:5-11).

George Truett in his sermon “What If Christ Had Not Come” tells of Napoleon after “it looked like that amazingly brilliant soldier was finished. But in March 1815, barely a year later, he went back to France. He had kept close watch on events transpiring in Europe while he was away and… was aware…of his own personal power and influence over his follow-countrymen…The Emperor sent an army out to capture Napoleon, who alighted from his carriage and advanced toward the army without any army of his own…one lone man against whom an army was sent. He went toward the army quietly, confidently; and when he was near enough, he opened his coat that the bullets of the enemy might reach his heart if they chose to fire. Napoleon quietly said, ‘Frenchman, it is your emperor.’ And they went wild. They kissed his hand, they fell at his feet, they picked him up and carried him on their shoulders, and they shouted until the heavens were filled with shouts: ‘…Long lives the emperor!’

F. He became a man so that He could give His body for us (Luke 22:19; Hebrews 1:9; John 15:13; Romans 5:8). This is why we celebrate the Lord’s Table. God the Son did not pretend to have a body. He didn’t possess another being as demons sometimes do. He didn’t just influence a man through spiritual power. God became man and that included having a body, a body which he sacrificed and it was a sacrifice that made possible the fulfilling of all the purposes for which Jesus was born.