“If you want to re-encounter Christ’s Passion Week with fresh passion for him, you must read Jim Essian’s careful, incisive, gospel-rich examination of Christ’s passion for you.”
— Jared C. Wilson, Author
Jesus For You
He Became Like You So You Could Become Like Him
Buy the Book
Jesus For You is available now. Purchase or get a free sample today by downloading below.
Jesus Knows What It Means To Be You
When you’re tired you can go to Jesus because he knows exhaustion. When your soul is troubled you can go to Jesus because he knows what it’s like to have a troubled soul. When you’ve been betrayed you can go to Jesus because he knows the heart punch of betrayal. You can trust him; he knows.
He became like you.
Jesus is fully God and fully human. He didn’t just come to save you for heaven’s riches, but to sympathize and help you with earth’s sorrows. He became like you so you could become like him.
The answer to our sin and brokenness is meeting God where he met us.
____________
Every religion and belief system and philosophy and way of life is the same. Each one has humanity at the center of the universe, laboring to be religious enough, moral enough, good enough, smart enough, or successful enough to get to God (or enlightenment, or happiness, or the American Dream).
The famous are our prophets.
The gospel message is self-actualization, self-achieve- ment, self-dependence.
The mystery is finding yourself.
The sin is not.
This religion of self might be cloaked in Baptist language or Hindu karma or an American spirituality that eats, prays, and loves itself to our best life now, but it’s all the same. And it’s exhausting.
Only biblical Christianity has God at the center of the universe, pursuing us in his grace and love. We can’t get to God, so God comes to us.
I want us to take a peek at Jesus’s last couple of days, those leading up to his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and ask some important questions:
What is God like?
And how was he like that in our place?
And how can we now be like him because he was like us?
This is the gospel. Jesus for you.