Hymn: For All My Sin
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:1-4)
Just like how our words reveal our hearts and our minds, Jesus is God’s “Word” as He is the perfect revelation of who God is; by His life and words, we get to know the heart and mind of God. A word is made up of letters, and Jesus is called “Alpha and Omega” (Revelation 1:11), the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This name signifies His deity as we look back into the Old Testament where God calls Himself the first and the last - “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside Me there is no God.” (Isaiah 44:6) It also means that Jesus is the eternal God - He existed before creation and will remain after it ends, encompassing all of time.
God created the world through Jesus; He spoke and the universe came into existence. Jesus is the Creator God and Sustainer of His creation - all things were created through Him, and in Him all things hold together.
Jesus is the incarnate Word - literally meaning, God in human flesh. When God created the world, it was perfect and the first humans He created had a perfect relationship with Him. But Adam, the head of the human race, chose to rebel against the Holy God and sin entered into the world, bringing suffering, sorrow and death. To reconcile us back to Himself and to rescue us from sin and its eternal consequences in hell (God is holy and sin has to be punished in hell), God who is a Spirit, left His glory in heaven and came down to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus fully identified with us from birth to death, yet lived a sinless life so He could be our Perfect Substitute. He willingly died on the cross, where God poured out His holy wrath against our sins upon Him. Because Jesus paid sin’s debt in full and rose again on the third day for our justification, we can be washed clean from every sin by His sinless blood shed on the cross of Calvary. We can be forgiven by the Holy God who now sees us clothed not in our filthy rags of sin, but in the righteous robe of Christ. We can spend eternity with God in heaven after we die here on earth.
Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan to save the human race from the condemnation of sin. Nothing is outside His power; He controls the entire story of creation and its redemption.