Who Is This Man?Sample

What Was Jesus’ Mission?

Instead of being born in a royal palace with the greatest of fanfare, Jesus entered the world with no dignity. He would have been known as a mamzer, a child whose parents were not married. All languages have a word for mamzer, and all of them are ugly. His cradle was a feeding trough. His nursery mates had four legs. He was wrapped in rags. He was born in a cave, targeted for death, raised on the run.

The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive, not the nobility and aristocratic. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children.

He would die with even less dignity than he had been born: convicted, beaten, bleeding, abandoned, naked, shamed. He had no status. Dignity on the level of a king is the last word you would associate with Jesus.

Yet he came to restore dignity to everyone, not just a chosen few. Jesus would announce the availability of a kingdom different from King Herod’s or the Roman rulers of his day, a kingdom where blessing—of full value and worth with God—was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted. A kingdom not built on the might of armies or the political power of the few and wealthy but on the love of a Father willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so he could be reunited with his children.

When Jesus looked at people, he saw the image of God. He saw this in everyone. It caused him to treat each person with dignity. This was the idea to which that little baby in a manger was heir, which had been given to Israel, which would be clarified and incarnated in his life in a way not seen before.

Every human being is made in the image of God.

And loved by God.