Who is Jesus?    

The answer to that question involves our understanding of God.  Many have chosen to think of a distant god that is everywhere.  But if God is everywhere, then there is nowhere He can be found. God becomes abstract, like a force or a feeling. In times of trouble, it is very hard to find that sort of a god. Like moments of joy, such a god slips quickly through our fingers. 

It is harder to say that God became one of us. This means that God is close. To say it in the way the 16th century reformer Martin Luther: He is so near that He cannot be any nearer. 

This is who Jesus is. God near us. Not far away, ignorant of our existence. Not just watching from afar. Not distant, aloof from our suffering. But near, in the flesh, available and present and distributed to His people every day, every week, all our lives. Christ Jesus is the God who is near. 

Jesus, the God-man, makes us think differently about God. God has come into our world. He is not up there somewhere — we are unsure where. He has come into our world through natural birth, been washed and diapered. 

He has cried and felt cold, pain and joy. He drank wine. He worked, sweated, grew tired, slept. He has eaten, been annoyed, felt the sting of rejection and ridicule. God has become one of us. God has done all these things, and all these things have happened to God.

Jesus is God near us. 

The God who is near, Jesus, will not be pushed far away. He becomes one of us to be most near us in every part of our lives. He is like us and, therefore, knows us. Although God is no sinner, He takes our sins on Himself and dies for them on a cross. In that moment, God is the most sinful of us all. God dies in our flesh, His flesh. He is come in our flesh to save those who have flesh, those who suffer from their flesh and those who sin in their flesh. He does this because of His compassion for those who are like Him.

God is a great lover of sinners. That’s Jesus.