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Love Wins
Brian Mashburn
December 21, 2008
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Why Did My Savior Come To Earth?
When Matthew writes his version of Christ coming to the earth through a human baby, he starts by saying, "This is how the birth of Jesus came about" (Mt 1:18). He goes on with the familiar story that, combined with some details from Luke, has become the object of countless pictures, children's books and nativity scenes.
John the revealer pulls back the veil of this physical world and lets us peer into the spiritual one in Revelation 12:4 where he records a very different version of the Christmas story. He says that "[an enormous red dragon's] tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born."
You know why this story is told and retold, don't you? Why it was so disruptive to the spiritual world, so opposed by evil, right? Why this story is still affecting both the spiritual and the physical world to this very day?
The secret is in the name Immanuel...which means "God with us." The story of Jesus is the story of God coming to be with us. Here on Earth. On our life's terms.
The question, that is large enough to span the ages, but personal enough to need to be answered by every individual who will live, is this one...
Why?
Why did God come here? Why did he leave Heaven? What was so important to God that it demanded such a humble and extreme act from Him?
Why did Jesus come to earth?
If you will ask this, he will answer. He did, several times, about 30 years after the original nativity scene. And he explained in a dozen different ways, so that maybe, just maybe, we will grasp the beauty of it and the life available to us in it. And if we will hear him, we will find in his answer the secret of happiness, of life to the full.
"The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mk 10:25)