I’m sure most of you have seen the “He Gets Us” ads on billboards or on television or on the reader board at an athletic event. One of the ads was even aired (for a mere $7 million!) during the recent Super Bowl showing people from apparently opposing identity groups washing one another’s feet.  If you check out their website, you will see that the whole emphasis is on the unconditional love that Jesus has because, having also become man, He understands us.  And, it is true–He does. Heb. 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” Earlier, the author of Hebrews wrote, regarding Christ taking on human flesh: “…For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:14-18).  And, the Psalmist David wrote: “And He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust” (Psa. 103:14). 

     So, yes, “He gets us.” He knows our weaknesses and failures and still loves us with His unconditional, no-strings-attached love.  But He more than gets us. He died for us so that we wouldn’t have to remain in our sinful state, ruled by the desires of our old flesh and under the condemnation of sin. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Ro. 5:8). That was the main reason God the Son came to earth and took on human flesh. True, it enabled Him to relate to our humanness (except for the sin nature), and it allowed God to reveal Himself to us in human form that we might know what God is like (Jn. 1:14,18; 14:7-9; Heb. 1:1-3).   But ultimately, Jesus came to earth not just so He could better understand us, but to die and pay the penalty of sin so that we wouldn’t have to stay the way we are. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk. 19:10).  He came that “we might have life, and might have it abundantly” (Jn. 10:10). 

     Jesus took on human flesh so that He could die in our place as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29).  Jesus didn’t die to keep us in our sin; He died to deliver us from our sin!. Yes, Jesus loves us the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us the way we are!  “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I Jn. 4:9,10). 

      God’s plan isn’t just for Jesus to understand us in our sinful condition, but that we, through His death, burial and resurrection, be delivered from the bondage of sin and have a whole new life (and future) in Christ.  The Apostle Paul wrote: “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (II Cor. 5:17).  In His first Letter to the Corinthian believers, Paul wrote: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, not thieves, nor covetous,, nor drunkards, nor revilers nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (I Cor. 6:9-11).    When the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus by a group of Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus stooped down and wrote something in the dust on the ground and then told the men, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Whatever He wrote convicted them, for they filed out, leaving Jesus alone with the woman.  He said to her, “Woman, where are they?” Did no one condemn you?…Neither do I condemn you; go your way. From now on sin no more” (Jn. 8:7-11).  Jesus didn’t just “get her,” He forgave her and gave her opportunity for a whole new life.

     It’s great to have someone who “gets us” and shows us love, no matter our condition or world view, but what we really need is Someone who can offer us a new life. That’s what Jesus came to do. To accomplish it, however, He not only walked among us so He could empathize with our needs, but He laid down His life to pay for our sins and to redeem us and to reconcile us to God.  You see, “He (God the Father) made Him who knew no sin (Jesus, God the Son), to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (II Cor. 5:21).  Jesus not only gets us, He gave Himself for us, so that by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, we could have eternal life, so that we could turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan (and sin) to God, in order that we might receive forgiveness of sins and receive an inheritance with Christ in eternity (Acts 26:18; Ro.8:16,17). Praise God, He more than just “gets us”!

Forever His, 

Pastor Dave