Why Jesus Came
Jesus didn’t come to thin the herd. He didn’t come to recruit “special ops” Christians. His goal was to expand the kingdom, to bring salvation to people who previously were excluded. He came to seek and find the lost, including a large group of folks no one else wanted to invite to the party. Everything about Jesus’ ministry was designed to make salvation and the knowledge of God more accessible.
It started with his incarnation. It included his choice of a backwater place like Galilee to call home, and the motley crew he picked to be his apostles. Nothing about Jesus or his followers was elitist. Everything was common, accessible, and well within the reach of the typical man, woman, or child.
Even at the point of Jesus’ death, the heavenly Father sent a message of accessibility. The moment Jesus died, the temple curtain that had isolated the Holy of Holies from everyone but the high priest (and even he could enter only once a year, on the Day of Atonement) was ripped open from the top down. What had once been a symbol of the barrier between God and sinful people suddenly became a symbol of open access for all.
Consider also the language of the New Testament. It was written in Koine Greek, which means “common” Greek. It was the language of the marketplace, in much the same way that broken or pidgin English is used around the world today. It was hardly the language of the elite, the educated, or even the primary language of the Jews in Jesus’ day. But it was the language everyone understood, Jews and Gentiles alike. So it was the language God chose to use to communicate his message.
Of course, not everyone appreciated Jesus’ making things so accessible. The religious elite of his day had spent centuries erecting a complicated spiritual obstacle course. Their extrabiblical rules, traditions, and strict intellectual requirements ensured that only people with the best pedigree, biggest brains, and greatest dedication would make it through. It’s no surprise that they didn’t take too kindly to Jesus’ offering everyone a shortcut.
The religious elite weren’t opposed to Jesus being a messiah or a king. They were opposed to the kind of people he included in his kingdom. They fought with him because he kept ignoring their definitions of committed spirituality. He refused to let them pick and choose who was going to be invited into the kingdom—and on what basis they would be allowed to come in. So they wrote him off and tried to kill him.
The same thing happens today. People who plead for stricter and stricter standards of discipleship in the name of a purer church are happy to have a Savior—as long as they can decide whom he saves.