How Awesome is Jesus (2025)

How Awesome is Jesus (NIV)

John 1:1–3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Genesis 1:3 “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”

God spoke into being all that is. He created all that is by His Word. That Word is Jesus. Jesus is God as we read in Philippians 2:5–6 “Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;”

We find this spelled out in other terms in John 8:58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” And John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”

Hebrews 1:1–3 says, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

All throughout history Father spoke. He gave insight to the prophets showing bits and pieces of His plan to reconcile us to Himself. In the Old Testament we can read about the things He had to say. Even with the New Testament to help us understand what He was talking about in the Old, we may still find it challenging to see and grasp many things we read.

Father has not left us without help, however. To make His message clear, He has spoken to us in a new, different, and much more complete way. To be sure we would not miss His message, He spoke in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the son of man, is not just a prophet or a teacher, though He certainly does both of those things. Instead, He is the Lord Jesus the Son of God, the exact representation of the nature of the Father. He is a visual manifestation of the glory of God.

So powerful is Jesus, the Word of God, that not only was the world made through Him, but He upholds everything in the universe. This is the very Jesus who came to earth, laid down His life and rose from the dead. Jesus, this Message from God, did these things so that sin would be taken out of the way. Because of sin we could not have a relationship with God. We were incompatible with Him and could not be accepted by Him.

Jesus agreed to give His life to pay the price of the sin that separated us from God. He served the death sentence that was rightly ours. After He had paid that price and taken away the sin of the world, He rose from the dead and sat down right next to God in heaven. When He did that, the message was clear. It is finished! As we read in 2 Peter 1:3, everything needed for life and godliness has been made available. Because of Jesus, John 1:12 tells is that it has become possible for us to become Spirit-born children of God.

The Lord Jesus is the exact representation of the nature of God. When we believe God and trust what He said through Jesus Christ, according to 2 Peter 1:4, we too carry the nature of God. Jesus comes to live in us by His Spirit. We are placed into Him so thoroughly that our lives are hidden in God.

This is the Lord Jesus in whom our faith has been placed. This is the Lord Jesus who lives and loves in us. And the news keeps getting better.

Philippians 2:6–11 “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This does not mean merely that He was like God. Jesus, the man from Nazareth, was in fact God Himself in human flesh. John makes this abundantly clear right at the outset of his beautiful record of the life of Jesus. Listen again to what he says there. John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The Lord Jesus is God in human flesh. He is fully God and fully human. Theologians have a word for this (I bet you are not surprised) they call it the theandric union. That is a fancy way of saying that in Jesus the Anointed One humanity and the divine are amalgamated together as one. We get a picture of this in Numbers 21:9 “So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.” In the same way, when we look in faith to the Godman, the Lord Jesus, we Live.

As it turns out, this amalgamation of God and man is a pretty big deal. Listen to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:21 “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.”

Do you see that? Humankind (in Adam) set out to do things their own way rather than trusting what God said. The way of the world is the same to this day. It is driven by fleshly desires and merit-based righteousness. That is sin; and sin has consequences. Ultimately, sin yields death. Death is the price, the wages if you will, of sin.

Humankind owed those wages but could never pay them. We were all guilty, but serving the sentence would kill us. Nevertheless, it was necessary that a human person pay those wages, serve that sentence, because it was humans who had transgressed. That required a very special human person.

It required Jesus, the only theandric person, the Godman amalgamation of humanity and deity. Only because He was perfect was His death sufficient payment for all the sin of the world across all of time. Only because He was not guilty was He able to give freedom (paid for by serving the death sentence) to us.

The Lord Jesus could have come to earth in glory and power. He could have erased the earth and every single one of us. As the creator of all that is He would have been well within His rights to do so, but instead He humbled Himself, taking on the form of a servant. He pointed this out Himself in Matthew 20:28 “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.””

Jesus took this idea of serving to the ultimate extreme. He became one of us. A created being, born of a woman, born under the Law, as we read in Galatians 4:4. He made Himself obedient.

Obedience often gets misunderstood. Jesus was certainly obedient in the sense in which we most commonly think of obedience. He obeyed the rules. He was without sin (see 2 Corinthians 5:21) and morally flawless. But there is another, often missed, kind of obedience, the obedience of faith.

Jesus put it this way, John 8:28–29 “So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.””

What Jesus said and did while He walked the earth, He said and did by faith in God the Father. His obedience went to the ultimate degree. He laid down His life. He submitted Himself to death, and not just any death, death by crucifixion.

Not only was crucifixion the most horrific form of death at that time, but it involved wood, a tree. The Law of Moses said that anyone hung on a tree was cursed. We find this mentioned in Galatians 3:13–14 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

Notice that here we find out why He did this incredible thing. It was for us! It was so that we would be able to receive the blessing promised to Abraham. It was so that we would receive the Spirit of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Hebrews 12:2 makes it clear as it tells us, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

No wonder then, that God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name.
No wonder then, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow.
No wonder then, that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

We have seen that the Lord Jesus is God. He was with God the Father in the beginning when God the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep. When God spoke into existence all that is, He did it through Jesus, the Word of God. There is not a single solitary thing seen or unseen that was made without Jesus. (see Colossians 1:16)

It gets better still. In Jesus is life. The Lord Jesus is the source of life. Life comes from Him as we read in John 5:26 “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”

The Lord Jesus is the Way.
The Lord Jesus is the Truth.
The Lord Jesus is the Life.

John 1:9–10 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

Jesus is the Light of humanity. Coming into the world, He provided illumination to enlighten everyone to the Truth about the Way to Life eternal. In Ephesians 5:13–14 we’re told that, “everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

Light shows everything that has been hidden in darkness. Light turns the shadow of death into a clear view of still waters and green pastures.

John 1:12–14 “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus gave people the right, the power to become children of God. Without the Lord Jesus no one is able to be born of God. With the Lord Jesus, being born of God becomes possible because Christ Jesus makes people compatible with God by giving them His righteousness. We read about this in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” And further down, in 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This wonderful gift is available to every person who will accept it, by agreeing with God about their sin and their inability to make themselves compatible with God, and trust that the Lord Jesus has done it for them. It does not come about by an exercise of the flesh. Nothing any person can do can make it happen. It comes by trusting God when He says that Jesus has done it on our behalf. Everyone can agree with God about that and Live eternally, or they can continue down the path they are on and get the natural outcome of that choice.

Jesus became a human being and lived with us personally and in the flesh. He did this so that we could all see that there is more to life than striving to meet performance targets. He did it so we could see that pleasing God is not about religiously observing rules, rites, and rituals. Rather, there is a gift waiting for anyone who will receive it. There is an inheritance waiting for everyone who will accept it.

John 1:16–18 “Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”

The gift He has provided comes from His infinite fullness. He has no limits of any kind, and out of Love He graciously offers fullness. He offers abundant life. He offers Love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. (see Galatians 5:22-23)

Grace and truth came through Jesus and He manifested, displayed, declared, made real to us, God the Father. Jesus made God the Father tangible by living among us and showing by the way He lived, the things He did, and the things He said, exactly what God is like and who God is as a person.

John 1:29 “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

The Lord Jesus took away the sin of the world. He took away my sin. He took away your sin. In Jesus, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them.

There is no better news.

Jesus is awesome, and that is the biggest understatement in the history of the world.