Chapter 22: His Mission

We have seen the Lord Jesus come to earth, and we have watched His works. Now we must ask the deepest question of all: what was His mission? Why did He come? Why did God become man? Yes, He healed the sick; He performed miracles; He cast out evil spirits; He discerned the hearts of men and prophesied; He revealed the Word—God as Father, and Himself as the bread of life, the great I AM. But behind all of these lay one great purpose. The miracles and the teaching were signs and windows; they were not the sum of why He came. To find His true mission, let us listen to what Scripture itself says about why He came.

• “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

• “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

• “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).

• “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

• “That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

• “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

• “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth” (Mark 1:38).

• “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15).

• “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (John 18:37).

• “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17).

• “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4–5).

Gather these together, and the shape of His mission becomes clear. He came:

• to save us;

• to give us life;

• to preach the truth to us;

• to destroy the works of the devil; and

• to make us sons of God.

And all of these may be gathered into one word: reconciliation. Jesus’ great mission was to reconcile men to God—to Himself—through His Word, His suffering, His death, and His resurrection. He died for you and for me, so that we might be reconciled to God and enjoy fellowship with Him as our Father. Everything else—the healings, the teaching, the miracles—served this one end.

The Cost of Our Reconciliation

How could this reconciliation be accomplished? Not cheaply. The whole of this book has traced a single tragedy—the separation that entered the world in Eden, when sin drove a barrier between a holy God and the people He loved. That barrier could not simply be wished away, for God is just as well as merciful; He “will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:7), and yet He longs to forgive. The only way that mercy and justice could meet was for the penalty of sin to be fully paid—and for it to be paid by One who could stand in our place. This is why the eternal Son took “flesh and blood”: so that by His death He might do what no sacrifice of bulls and goats ever could (Hebrews 2:14).

The New Testament describes this saving work from several angles, each one true and each one precious. Christ died as our substitute, bearing in our place the punishment our sins deserved—“the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). He gave His life as a ransom, a price paid to set captives free (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6). And He came as a conqueror, to “destroy the works of the devil” and to break the power of him who held the power of death (1 John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14; Colossians 2:15). These are not competing explanations but facets of one diamond: on the cross, our penalty was paid, our ransom was given, and our enemy was defeated, all at once.²⁵³

Notice, too, the phrase Paul uses: “when the fulness of the time was come” (Galatians 4:4). The coming of Christ was not an afterthought or an emergency measure. It was the appointed hour, prepared from eternity and set in motion at exactly the right moment in history—when Rome had made the roads, when Greek had made a common tongue, when the longing of the nations had ripened. God is never late. At the fullness of time, He sent forth His Son.

And the goal of it all is stated in that same verse: “that we might receive the adoption of sons.” This is the wonder toward which the whole mission moves. He did not come merely to acquit us as a judge acquits a prisoner and sends him away; He came to bring us home as a Father brings home a child. Reconciliation is not a cold legal transaction—it is the restoring of a family. The Son became a man so that men might become sons; He entered our estrangement so that we might enter His fellowship. That is why He came. That is the mission. And to accomplish it, He set His face toward suffering.