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by Charlie Wolcott

The center part of the Gospel is Jesus Christ. While God the Father is the author of this epic story called the Gospel, Jesus is the hero, the lead actor, the one who comes to save the day. Last week, I wrote about the fall of man and what sin did. The rest of the Old Testament is two-fold: it showcases the history of Israel along with their continual depravity in sin, but it is filled with images and snapshots of the Messiah, both what He would do and be like and also what He would overcome. One key reason the Jews missed Jesus when He came was that all of their previous deliverers were physical deliverers against physical enemies. They missed Jesus because He would not deliver Israel from Rome…but from a far greater enemy and oppressor, sin itself.

There are 300+ prophecies that describe the Messiah, and Jesus fulfilled every single one of them. I do not have the time or space to go through them here other than to just hit a couple of major passages. Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 are among the most famous passages that detail the death of Jesus.

Isaiah 53 is more about Jesus not being a superstar, a model, or a glorious figure. He was not a good-looking guy. And that’s a severe problem missed by all attempts to put Jesus on film. They focus on His glory and His deity, but when they focus on His humanity, they give Him this “shampoo model” form who never learned hardships or difficulties or ever worked a day in His life. That is one thing that The Chosen series does better than others, however, even there, they still give the character some of that “shampoo model” look. So it’s never going to be perfect, and we simply need to understand that Jesus wasn’t good-looking.

Psalm 22 was written 1000 years before Jesus came about and describes crucifixion – a Roman invention that didn’t exist until 50 years before Jesus’ time on earth. When comparing Psalm 22 to the crucifixion, we see almost a literal word-for-word description of what took place when Jesus was hung on the cross, including the very statements that were made by both Jesus and His enemies in mocking Him.

Everything in Scripture points to Jesus, from the opening creation statements to the closing of all time in Revelation. Jesus is at the center, through His role as the hero of the story, the true knight in shining armor, whose armor has indeed seen battle. Central to the story are His birth, life, death, and resurrection. Jesus could not be any ordinary person. He had to be fully human and fully God at the same time, which is called the hypostatic union.

In being fully human, Jesus went through life as a normal human being. He went through the normal birthing process, though His miraculous conception was definitely not normal. He grew up with human parents and human siblings, and He had your standard human needs including food, sleep, water, family connections, emotions, air, etc. He ate the same sin-cursed food, breathed the same sin-cursed air, and dealt with sin-cursed people. It is no wonder He longed to have alone time with His Father.

But Jesus was also fully divine – fully God. He did not lay down His identity when He became a human. He was without sin. While He lived in a human capacity, He also had that connection to God through the Holy Spirit that gave Him knowledge no one else could or would ever get. He could read people’s hearts and minds. He could outthink them all. He knew the future, who would betray Him, and how everything would play out. He performed miracles upon will and even refrained from doing some just to win a few converts. Every time He had the window to make Himself popular, He would give a message that would squelch it. And the biggest thing of all, Jesus raised from the dead.

Jesus came to deal with sin. By being fully human, Jesus was able to perfectly represent man before God, therefore being the true and ultimate High Priest. Being the perfect man who had no sin to atone for Himself, Jesus could do what no other man or high priest could do: offer Himself as the necessary substitution that had been taught all along throughout Scripture. But Jesus had to be fully divine, fully God, to be able to do that because God is infinite with omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. As a mere perfect man, Jesus would only be able to cover for one person. Adam was able to do that with Eve, and that is what he should have done. But for Jesus to cover for the sins of the whole world, of all who would believe, He had to be fully God and be the true prophet of God, representing God to man. By being fully God, Jesus was able to take the infinite wrath of God upon Himself. It wasn’t the Roman crucifixion that dealt with our sin; the crucifixion itself was merely the instrument of death to be used to help identify Jesus as the Messiah. The real dealing with sin was God pouring out His judgment upon Jesus, and Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns, the physical symbol of sin, died on that cross. With His final breath, He declared: “It is finished!”

When Jesus died, the great and final sacrifice was made. The righteous justice upon sin was met. The forgiveness for sin that all the Old Testament saints had been longing for had been accomplished. The salvation they were faithfully waiting for but did not see with their own eyes had arrived. And while Jesus did say “It is finished!” there was one final thing to do for salvation to be realized: the resurrection. The death on the cross paid the penalty of sin, but it only settled the debt. It does not restore, fix, or bring new life. The resurrection would do that, and it is because we worship a RISEN Savior that we can know and understand the fullness of Christ, which we’ll look at more next week.

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