Four Aspects of Jesus…

By Michelle Bhandal

Jesus is altogether lovely. As we explore the Scriptures, we get to see more and more of His loveliness, His perfections, and His beauty.

In each of the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — we are given four similar yet different accounts of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. Each is a unique angle and reveals a special aspect of Jesus.

The KingMatthew’s account begins by tracing Jesus’ ancestry to King David and Abraham. God’s promise to both these men was that the promised Messiah would come from among their descendents. In every word and deed recorded, Jesus is portrayed as the majestic fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, and His identity as King is the inevitable conclusion.

The ServantIn Mark’s account, Jesus is portrayed as a Man constantly on the move, serving, ministering and working, instantly responsive to the needs of the people and to the leading of the Spirit. From the start to the end of this book, we see Jesus in the role of the perfect Servant. Even in the last verse of Mark, after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to heaven, He continues the work that He began when He was on earth.

Mark 16:20And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs.
The ManLuke’s account not only traces Jesus’ earthly ancestry all the way back to Adam, the first man, but also tells us of Jesus’ childhood and the lives of his earthly family. In this way, Luke establishes Jesus’ humanity. The moving description of His suffering and temptation to forego the cross in the Garden of Gethsemane shows both His humanity as well as His perfection.

Luke 22:42… “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”
He remained obedient and willing even though He knew the agony He would face — His stress was so intense that He sweated “great drops of blood”. (Luke 22:44)

Jesus lived the only perfect and sinless human life that was and ever will be. He went through every temptation and experienced everything known to mankind so that He could identify with us completely. In this way, He was the perfect substitute for mankind, the perfect sacrifice to redeem us from sin.

GodJesus’ divinity is established from the beginning of John’s account.
John 1:1–3, 14In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John records no genealogy because Jesus as God has no beginning and no end. And this book contains multiple records of Jesus’ “I am” declarations, for example, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), “I am the door” (John 10:9), and “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). This is significant because in Exodus 3:14, God declared His name to Moses as “I am who I am”.


Colours In The Bible…

Nothing in the Bible is insignificant, and even colours are important symbols. In the book of Exodus, God gave Moses very specific instructions concerning the high priests’ garments. They had to contain the four colours purple, red, white and blue. This is important the high priest represents man before God, and these colours have special meanings.


Purple represents Royalty, kingship
Red represents Blood sacrifice; specifically the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God
White represents Purity, sinlessness
Blue represents Divinity

These colours are also reflected in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s different accounts of Jesus

Purple = Jesus as the messiah, the King of the Jews = Matthew
Red = Jesus as the Servant, suffering and dying for u = Mark
White = Jesus as the perfect and sinless Man= Luke
Blue = Jesus as the Son of God = John

So the New Testament reveals the secret that God built into the Old Testament priesthood – that Jesus is the great High Priest. Today, as the Mediator of the new covenant, Jesus is seated at God’s right hand in heaven as our perfect representative.

And because He represents us as perfect before God, we can boldly approach God’s throne of grace!

The Perfect Work of Christ
In Old English, "gospel" means good news. So what is so good about the news in the New Testament?

When Jesus came to earth as a Man, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), He came to fulfil the law of the old covenant and to pay the price for humanity’s transgressions, which have their root in the first Adam. Jesus came to establish the new covenant based on grace.
At the start of His earthly ministry, Jesus revealed this when He entered a synagogue in Nazareth and read the following verses from the book of Isaiah.

Luke 4:18–19The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because he has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Jesus stopped there and closed the scroll, leaving out the last line of Isaiah’s original words: “And the day of vengeance of our God”. (Isaiah 61:2)

He did so because He came to demonstrate God’s grace and lovingkindness, not His wrath and justice. The Bible says that the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came in the person of Jesus. (John 1:17) He did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. (John 3:17)
The glory of Jesus’ finished work is in what took place on the cross of Calvary. Through His pain and suffering, He took upon Himself all our sin, our curse, our sicknesses and diseases. He bore on our behalf the full wrath and judgment of God Almighty.

The Bible tells us that when He took all that for us, He became so hideous and deformed that God in His mercy covered the face of the earth with darkness for three hours to hide Him from sight. Yet Jesus held on until all of God’s fiery judgment for sins had been exhausted.
What Jesus did at the cross affected the divine exchange on our behalf — He took all our blame and was punished in our place, while we take His place. He did not just take away the bad things from us, but also gave us every good thing that He had in His position as the beloved Son of God. Isaiah 53 describes all that Jesus suffered, so that the very opposite might become ours.


The Divine Exchange
At the cross...
Jesus became ugly so that we might have His beauty
Jesus was rejected so that we might be accepted
Jesus suffered pain and sorrow so that we might have joy and be happy
Jesus was despised so that we might be esteemed
Jesus carried all sicknesses and diseases so that we might have healing and health
Jesus suffered anguish and despair so that we might have peace and hope
Jesus was judged and punished so we might be forgiven and justified
Jesus had no one to speak on His behalf so that we might forever have a perfect High Priest who speaks on our behalf in heaven

The moment Jesus had fully paid for our sins and died, God tore the veil in the temple that hid the Holy of Holies from top to bottom. The veil was there to separate sinful man from God, so by tearing it, God demonstrated that there was no longer anything to stop us from coming into His presence.

On the cross, Jesus exhausted God’s wrath and justice. His body was broken and His blood was shed as our substitute and He settled the sin issue with God once and for all. And because Jesus is also God, He was not consumed by the judgment, but instead rose from the dead and sat down at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.

Today, our right standing with and access to God is perfect and complete, because Jesus’ work on the cross is perfect and complete. We come to God based on what Jesus has done, and not what we have or have not done.

Through His sacrifice, Jesus has also made us children of God. Our Father in heaven hears our every prayer and answers our every request because of the finished work of His beloved Son, Christ Jesus.