"For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16
What is your answer to this question? We are naturally curious what could possibly motivate God to send his Son Jesus when we grasp the magnitude of our sin against him. We become even more amazed as we realize Jesus lived the perfect obedience we should have lived, died for our sins, and rose to defeat sin, death, and the devil. In addition, we were adopted into his family and were given the Holy Spirit to live within us!
Is there a reason why God sent Jesus? We didn’t deserve it because of anything lovely we did. The Bible clearly explains why. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:6-8 that Christ died for the ungodly while we were still weak, at the exact moment when the time was right. The truth is, one won’t dare to die for a righteous person —though perhaps for a good person — but God shows us how much he cares by sending his son Jesus to die for us when we were still sinners.” That’s what makes God’s love so stunning because it’s directed at us when we’re sinners rebelling against him.
Also, God said that Israel wasn’t any better than the nations around them when he chose them: “It wasn’t because you had more numbers than any other people that the Lord chose you and loved you, since you were the fewest of all peoples; it was because he loved you and he kept his oath to your fathers” (Deut 7:7-8). It is for this reason that God loves his people, that he chose to make a covenant with them in order to show his love for them. We are loved by God because of the nature of His love, not because of anything we have done in order to earn this love.
As far as I know, this is the closest the Bible comes to providing a direct answer to the question, “Why did God send Jesus?” But we can also derive some inferences from other biblical truths in order to answer this question. As the highest priority of God is to display his glory, he created human beings in his image, so that they would be able to reflect that glory (Gen 1:26-31). We are all guilty of sin and we fail to reflect God’s glory in our lives as we should, because of our sin (Romans 3:23). As a result, God sent his son Jesus to be the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation (Col 1:15) in order to fulfill his purpose. It is through Jesus’ life of perfectobedience, his sacrificial death on the cross for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead that He begins to restore us to the fullness of who we are in God. It is important to note that the apostle Paul captures this idea well when he writes, “For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”. It is then important to realize that those whom he predestined were also called, and those whom he called were also justified, and those whom he justified were also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30).
Also, God said that Israel wasn’t any better than the nations around them when he chose them: “It wasn’t because you had more numbers than any other people that the Lord chose you and loved you, since you were the fewest of all peoples; it was because he loved you and he kept his oath to your fathers” (Deut 7:7-8). It is for this reason that God loves his people, that he chose to make a covenant with them in order to show his love for them. We are loved by God because of the nature of His love, not because of anything we have done in order to earn this love.
As far as I know, this is the closest the Bible comes to providing a direct answer to the question, “Why did God send Jesus?” But we can also derive some inferences from other biblical truths in order to answer this question. As the highest priority of God is to display his glory, he created human beings in his image, so that they would be able to reflect that glory (Gen 1:26-31). We are all guilty of sin and we fail to reflect God’s glory in our lives as we should, because of our sin (Romans 3:23). As a result, God sent his son Jesus to be the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation (Col 1:15) in order to fulfill his purpose. It is through Jesus’ life of perfectobedience, his sacrificial death on the cross for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead that He begins to restore us to the fullness of who we are in God. It is important to note that the apostle Paul captures this idea well when he writes, “For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”. It is then important to realize that those whom he predestined were also called, and those whom he called were also justified, and those whom he justified were also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30).
It stands to reason that God’s love for us is somehow rooted in our identity as those who bear his image at some level. God is working to restore the radiance of his own glory in and through us, by sending his son Jesus to die for our sins in order to atone for our sins. I think the apostle John captures the true essence of this reality well when he writes: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and it’s true.” (John 3:16). It is because of his lack of knowing the world that we do not know him that the world does not know us either. The fact that we are God’s children now, and that we will be like him when he appears, is the only assurance that we have, but when he appears, we will see him as he is. As a result of this hope, everyone who hopes in him purifies themselves as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).