God Part 2: God, the Son
God also comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son. God lovingly provides for us, but we often reject his care. We prefer to take care of ourselves, to be in charge of ourselves, to be the king of our own castles, and the masters of our own domain, doing what is right in our own eyes. The story of humanity and God is a story of our rejection of God and His care for us. Consequences of life lived on our own terms are more often tragic than beneficial, more often resulting in war and conflict, and dog eat dog, and an eye for an eye, than prosperity and mutual care. Consequences of life lived on our own terms is often a loneliness of our own devising from God and our fellow human beings.
However, because God is loving, He was not content to remain separated from us or from the rest of His creation. He was not content to remain lonely in heaven or let us remain lonely on earth. So God became one of us in the person of His son, Jesus. Jesus is completely God. Jesus is fully human. Jesus in His very person is the reconciliation of God and humanity that God desires. Being who He is, Jesus is uniquely capable of accomplishing the work of reconciling, of bringing back together God and humanity into a loving relationship. Jesus does this by bringing God into the most human, and lonely, and un-God-like part of our existence: death. In the presence of the life of God, death and death’s loneliness cannot exist. Just as light pushes out darkness and darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, the loneliness of death cannot exist in the presence of God. One way to explain how Jesus does His reconciling work is as an exchange. Jesus takes our death and brokenness and guilt from us at the cross. And He gives us His eternal life that death cannot overcome. We get Jesus’s divine life and He gets our mortal death. Jesus’s resurrection from death is the confirmation for Christians that loneliness lost and death has lost its grip on us, that God’s love wins and God and humanity are no longer estranged from one another but reconciled. Jesus’s resurrection reunites each of us with our loving God. Many Christians teach that Jesus’s resurrection will eventually extend to the entire created universe and everything will be reconciled into a loving relationship with God through Him. On that day we will no longer experience loneliness or pain or conflict or sorrow, but only the joy of being completely and perfectly loved -- and the ability to truly love others.