God Has Come For Us

God Has Come For Us

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation.

Colossians 1:15

WHEN MY KIDS WERE YOUNGER, they wanted a pet. We said no. They begged for a pet. We told them we love other people’s pets.

Finally we caved, but not much. We bought each kid a goldfish. Our son, Dawson, who was five at the time, named his Darth Fishy. Our daughter, Marissa, who was about to turn three, named hers Mackenzie.

We got home, dropped the fish in their tanks, and put the tanks on the shelf. The kids looked at them, looked at us, looked at them, looked at us, and walked away to watch TV. So much for the excitement of having pets.

Later Marissa said, “A fish isn’t a very good pet.” I asked why, and she explained, “Because you can’t really love it, and it doesn’t really love you back.”

“Well,” I tried to encourage her, “you can sort of love it.”

Around that time we started to notice Mackenzie’s tank always had dirtier water than Darth Fishy’s. We couldn’t understand it, until I walked in one day and found Marissa . . . petting her fish. Wanting to show her fish love, turns out she was trying to pet it a few times a day.

Her fish didn’t like it. In fact, her fish would panic and try to get away from the gigantic hand.

I wondered if maybe at night, after we all went to sleep, her fish would get out its diary and write, “It happened again today. It was a normal day, intermittent light, 72 degrees, pink gravel beneath me. I was trying to decide, should I swim towards the surface or bottom, swim right or left, when suddenly it appeared—the shadow. The shadow is always the first sign that it’s coming. Then it arrived, five enormous protruding limbs and a meaty paw trying to crush me. But I will not be destroyed by it! I did everything I could to get away! It did trap me in a corner and touch me, but only for a second. Then from somewhere in the heavens, I heard a thundering noise.”

And the thundering noise was, of course, Marissa yelling, “Daddy, I just petted my fish!”

Resistant to Love

Have you ever thought about what it’s like to be God? The Bible tells us that God is love and created us in love and for love.

But very quickly there was a problem in God’s creation: these humans were resistant to love, and they didn’t do well at loving God back. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t want love, because they did. But much of the time they didn’t recognize it; much of the time they tried to get away from it.

All through the Old Testament we see God trying to share his love with people, and consistently people running from God and rejecting his love. In the last book of the Old Testament God says, “I have always loved you,” then, “But you retort, ‘Really? How have you loved us?’”^a

I can imagine God thinking, How have I loved you? I’ve done everything for you! How else could I love you? What can I do to get you to accept my love?

And it was almost as if God had an idea.^b

God Came for Us

Watching my daughter try to love her fish, I felt so bad for her. She just wanted to show love, but no matter what she did, her fish would not accept it as love. She would try to pet the fish, and it would run away as if Freddy Krueger were after it. There was just no way for Marissa to connect with and communicate love to her fish.

But what if there were some way for Marissa to get in the tank? If she could somehow become a fish, she could show her fish love in a way it could understand. That might actually work.

God’s idea was to get in the tank. To become like the ones he loved, so he could communicate his love.

This is described in the book of John, where Jesus is referred to as “the Word.” The book of John begins by explaining that Jesus was with God and was God from the beginning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”^c

And then God jumped into the tank. “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.”^d Jesus left heaven to come to the world.

Another passage in the Bible describes it this way: “Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. . . . He appeared in human form.”^e

God became one of us. So when we look at Jesus, we see God. Jesus is exactly God and exactly what God is like. The Bible says “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God”^f and “the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”^g

That is kind of ironic, because some people say, “Yeah, I’ve read the Bible, and I like Jesus, but I don’t like the God of the Old Testament.” But they’re actually exactly the same.

So why does there seem to be such a difference?

Well, why was Marissa’s fish scared of her? Why, when Marissa put her hand in to pet her fish, did her fish flee as if its life were in danger? Because Marissa was just too big, too different, too above her fish for her fish to understand her love.

If Marissa could have gone into her tank as a fish and snuggled a little, maybe her fish would have understood her love. Her love wouldn’t be any different; it would just be on a level her fish could understand.

Why did God become one of us? “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.”^h Jesus came because of God’s love and to express God’s love.

Murder in the Fish Degree

Think about this: What if Marissa became a fish and got in the bowl, but her fish didn’t snuggle up and love her back? What if her fish killed her?

That’s exactly what happened to Jesus. He got into our skin, came to the world, and the people he came to love killed him.

But that was part of God’s plan as well.

It was part of God’s plan, because God created us in love and for love. We exist to be in relationship with God. But we’ve all walked away from that relationship, and God had to create a way to bring us back to him. Jesus said, “I am the way.”ⁱ God had to create a bridge to span the gap between us. Jesus is that bridge. God had to do something about the sin that stains us and separates us from a perfectly pure God. The Bible says that Jesus became sin for us and did away with all of our sin on the cross. It was all part of God’s plan, because God created us in love and for love. And Jesus’ coming and dying was the only way we could be in relationship with him.

Now What?

• Read Philippians 2:6-11.
• This passage describes the descent Jesus made from heaven to earth to the cross. What do you find in these verses to be thankful for? What do you find in Jesus that you should emulate?
• Thank God for Jesus. Thank him that Jesus was humble enough to become a human and loved you enough to die for you.