Last Sunday, I had the privilege of hearing Blake Clickner give a sermon on the identity and common misconceptions of the person of Christ Jesus. Christians are commonly challenged with the question, “Who is Christ?”

When I was a child, I easily accepted the idea that there was a good God in heaven who loved me and wanted me to do good things, so as to honor him. I reveled in this idea and walked with God daily. I was a weird kid, in that I constantly thought of God, spoke out loud to him, walked to a nearby church on my own so I could learn more about him, and kissed him goodnight every evening before bed. However, when I knew I had not done what was good in the eyes of God, I was filled with remorse, self doubt, self loathing, and the sense that God loved me a little less. I felt unworthy of his love. As these bad things continued to accumulate, so did my distance from God as my loving Father. Though I thought I was tight with God, I did not understand his Son, Jesus Christ, and this made all the difference in my walk away from faith.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
— John 1:1–5

Jesus was, from the beginning, always present. He was not put in place to clean up our mess. He always existed and always planned to offer salvation, knowing that humanity would need him, because we would willfully choose to reject the goodness that emits from God

He is fully God and fully man. He is fully God, and in him is the light of men. No one can make satisfaction for sin except he who is fully God, yet no one ought to make satisfaction for sin except he who is fully man. The reconciliation of this dilemma is in the divine yet human nature of Christ himself. There is no other answer.

Morality is the expression of the will of God. If it is broken, it can not heal on its own. Broken morality is the very rejection of the laws of logic and the validity of all standards that exist in and emit from the Lord himself. In Christ, we find God’s answer to the reconciliation of what man ought to do with that which only God himself can do.

“If we spoke less about God’s love and more about His holiness, more about His judgment, we should say much more when we did speak of His love.”
— Peter T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
— John 3:16–17

Christ is God’s love.