Together in Christ: 'God Revealed!' — John 1:18

Do you want to know what God is like? Look at Who Jesus was and what He did in His ministry and how He did it. Jesus is not only our window into understanding God, but He is also - as Paul told the Colossians - "the visible image of the invisible God." ^[1] In the epistle to the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit built on these understandings to describe Jesus in these words:

The Son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. ^[2]

Jesus is eternally important for many reasons. He created all things in our universe, and by His word of authority, the cosmos holds itself together and functions according to predictable and practical laws. ^[3] He was the "once for all time" sacrifice for our sins. ^[4] Jesus' resurrection from the dead ensured our resurrection from the dead, ^[5] and Jesus is the One Who poured the Holy Spirit upon us to cleanse us and adopt us into God's family - first at Pentecost and then on each one of us when we became followers of Jesus. ^[6] We could list other reasons Jesus is eternally important, because there are many! However, the main reason Jesus is eternally important to us this time of year is that Jesus was Immanuel, God with us in human flesh. ^[7] As John declared in His beautiful prologue:

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.
. . .
No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father's heart. He has revealed God to us. ^[8]

What that means, dear friend in Christ, is that God loved each of us so much that even though we couldn't be righteous enough, good enough, or powerful enough to come to Him in glory, He came to us as a lowly child. ^[9] He was born of a woman and put on mortal, human flesh to bring immortality and life to us. ^[10] God loves you and me so much and longs to give us "infinitely more than we might ask or think," ^[11] both in this life and in the life to come with Jesus in glory. ^[12] So, as you think of Jesus today, be humbled and overjoyed that Your Father in heaven loves you with His everlasting love and sent Jesus to earth to show us what His love means in our world of mortal, flesh and blood, reality!