The Life of Christ

In the four hundred years between Malachi and John the Baptist no prophet spoke, yet God ruled the empires as Daniel foretold, kept His people and His Word, and prepared the world for the coming of His Son.

Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem in the days of Herod, as God had promised, and everything around His birth shows who He is, God with us, and why He came, to save His people from their sins.

John the Baptist prepared the way, the sinless Jesus was baptized to fulfil all righteousness and was declared the Father's beloved Son, and in the wilderness He overcame the devil with the Word of God, standing where Adam fell.

The Sermon on the Mount is the King's own picture of the people who belong to Him: it exposes the heart, sends the sinner to Christ for a righteousness he cannot produce, and shows the believer how to live by grace.

A parable is a story from ordinary life laid beside a spiritual truth. Jesus used parables to teach those willing to hear and to answer those who had hardened themselves, and we read them by their setting and His own explanations, not as a secret code.

Jesus' miracles were signs of who He is, works of compassion, and a foretaste of His kingdom. They happened as the Gospels say, they were written that we might believe, and God still answers prayer and heals as He wills, though He has not promised healing in this life.

In John's Gospel Jesus says I am with seven pictures of what He is to us, and at the height of one argument with no picture at all: Before Abraham was, I am. His hearers understood that He was claiming to be God, and every person must decide what to do with Him.

Jesus chose twelve ordinary men to be with Him, taught them, sent them, corrected them, and kept them through their failures, and in doing so He showed His church how disciples are made.

Jesus came to His own, and most of the nation's leaders refused Him. From Caesarea Philippi on He told His disciples He must die, and He set His face toward Jerusalem. No one took His life from Him, and all of us put Him there.

In His last week Jesus entered Jerusalem as its King, cleansed the temple, told of His return, gave His church the Lord's Supper, and surrendered to the Father's will in Gethsemane.

Though no fault was found in Him, Jesus was condemned by the council and by Pilate, was crucified, spoke seven times from the cross, and gave up His life in the place of sinners, finishing the work His Father gave Him.

After His burial Jesus rose bodily on the third day, showed Himself alive to His followers for forty days, restored Peter, sent His disciples to the nations, and was taken up into heaven.