A Passion for JesusSample

Every December billions of people pause their lives to celebrate the birth of Jesus. This Jewish carpenter who never wrote a book, never owned a house, never ran for office, never made a fortune, and never traveled the world, continues to capture the world.

Printed Bibles have sold 22% more this year than last year, in the US. Every forty days the YouVersion Bible app is opened one billion times. The most watched and most translated film in history is a 1979 film called JESUS. And one of the top-rated TV shows in the world today is a series based on Jesus’ life.

The great Gospel Patrons of history were compelled to live and give as generously as they did because they knew Jesus deeply and personally. They saw Jesus for who He really is and were gripped with Him. If we hope to become the kind of people God uses to change the world, we too must be gripped by a passion for Jesus.

The place to begin is with Jesus’ own words. Over the next ten days we’ll carefully listen to who Jesus said He was. Each day we’ll consider one claim Jesus made about Himself. What we’ll see is that no one else in history ever made such lofty claims.

The first claim we’ll consider is Jesus claimed he was sinless. The context was a public discourse Jesus was having with the Jewish leaders. Speaking about God, he said in John 8:29 (ESV), “I always do the things that are pleasing to him,” and then he asked them in verse 46, “Which one of you convicts me of sin?”

What a wild question! For all of us there is no end to the evidence of our selfishness, pride, greed, and impatience. We use the familiar phrase “nobody’s perfect” to excuse ourselves, but Jesus never did. He claimed to be perfectly righteous, that his life always pleased God.

This matters because the Bible tells us that 2,000 years ago there was a man just like us, who was also not like us. Jesus had a personality and emotions just like we do. He felt joy and happiness. He got angry. At times Jesus even wept. We also read that Jesus got hungry and thirsty and tired. He felt compassion toward hurting people. Like many of us, Jesus experienced rejection from a best friend and betrayal by another. His family often misunderstood him. Jesus knew pain, grief, and sorrow. He even experienced temptation to sin like we do. The difference is he never gave in.

We are sinful. He was perfect. We love money, pleasure, and ourselves. His life was holy, righteous, and good. He had no secret sins, no hidden past, and nothing to cover up. Nowhere in the life of Jesus do we see that he sinned. Not one lie. Not one selfish motive. Not one lustful look at a woman. Not one ounce of greed in his heart. Not one disrespectful word to his parents. Not once did he seek the praise and glory of men. Jesus claimed to be sinless and nothing in his life contradicted his claim.

If this is true, what will you do?