Becoming Like Jesus: Who Is God?Sample

The Grace of the Son

There is so much that could be said about Jesus, the Son of God. In fact, John, one of His disciples, commented that if all Jesus said and did was written down, the whole world would not have room enough for the books that would be written. This same gospel writer opens his account with this description: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14 NIV

The Word, the Son of God, who eternally exists with God and is God, came full of grace and truth.

Jesus is full of grace and truth. Which reveals so much about His character. Full means whole or complete. There’s nothing missing or broken. Grace is the unmerited favor of God, His complete goodness directed towards us even though we do not deserve it. And truth is that which is consistent with reality or the original. Jesus came to give us a complete, whole representation of the very real favor of God towards us. He could do this unlike anyone else could even hope to try to because He is consistent with the Original and is, in fact, the Original. It is in Jesus that the fullness of God’s favor was revealed to the world.

There’s a line in a song that says, “Only heaven knows just how far You’ll go to say you love us.”

This song is echoing the radical idea that the Apostle Paul communicates in one of his letters: “[Jesus]Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Philippians 2:6-8 NIV

It’s hard to even begin to grasp what it’s like to give up heaven to come to earth. To strip oneself of glory and become a nobody for the sake of everybody. Jesus came to reveal the fullness of God to humanity, but we didn’t recognize Him.

Spoiler alert: It’s like that moment in Spider-Man where Peter Parker walks into the coffee shop and sees His girlfriend and best friend and they have no idea who he is. He’s still Spider-Man. He’s still Peter. But he willfully chose to give up who he was in relation to them in order to save the world. He never stopped being Spider-Man or Peter Parker. But there was part of his identity that he set aside for the sake of others.

It’s a flawed analogy, well, because Jesus isn’t Spider-Man, but maybe it can help paint a picture of the gravity of what Jesus gave up to become grace to us.

Instead of seeing Jesus for all that He was and all that He is, the people saw him as a radical and revolutionary who needed to be silenced. So Jesus, humbly and graciously, gave the people what they wanted. He allowed Himself to be crucified as a criminal on a Roman cross. And every step of the way He continued to put on display the goodness of God to all who were watching.

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” Matthew 27:39-40 NIV

What they failed to realize was that it was the ultimate display of who Jesus was that He did not come down, even though He could have.

And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” - Mark 15:39 NIV

Don’t miss this. Jesus died so graciously that even one of the men who carried out His death saw Him for who He really is: the Son of God in human form.

And now Jesus, resurrected and victorious, sits on a throne—a throne called grace: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16 NIV

This is Jesus. Full of grace and truth. Reigning on a throne of grace. And inviting us to be saved by His grace. To know grace is to know Jesus and to show grace is to show the world the face of God.