Why Jesus Came: The Purpose of the Incarnation

Servants of Grace
Nate Weis
December 2025

Why did Jesus come? At Christmas, this is the most important question we could ask. As Christians, we celebrate the glorious truth of the Incarnation, that the Son of God took on a human nature as truly God and truly man. But why was this necessary? I want to give you four reasons why Jesus came to earth at Christmas.

To Fulfill God’s Promises

From the very beginning of Scripture, God promised to redeem His creation that had fallen into sin. From the first promise of the gospel in Genesis 3:15 to the final words of Malachi, the Old Testament is overflowing with promises about the coming Savior. In the Incarnation, Jesus fulfilled these promises.

• He is the seed of the woman who crushed the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).
• He is the offspring of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).
• He is David’s greater son who will reign over an everlasting kingdom (2nd Samuel 7:16).
• He is the Prophet greater than Moses who perfectly reveals the heart of the Father (Deuteronomy 18:15-18).
• He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (Exodus 12:1-13, John 1:29).

At Christmas, we celebrate that God fulfilled His promise to enter our dark world to save us. God promised to redeem the world, and God always keeps His promises. We can trust Him to do the same in our lives today.

To Reveal God’s Character

As One who is both God and man, Jesus is the perfect revelation of what God is like. He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He is “the exact imprint of God’s nature” (Hebrews 1:3). When Phillip asked to see the Father, Jesus replies by saying, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is the perfect expression of what God is like because He is God incarnate. If you want to know what our God is like, look to Jesus. He is full of grace and truth (John 1:14). He is meek and lowly toward His people, filled with compassion (Matthew 11:28-30). At the same time, He is also a mighty warrior who one day will judge His enemies and rule the nations with a lot of iron. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:11-16). In all of this, Jesus is the perfect revelation of what God is like and came at Christmas to reveal Himself to us.

In this way, the Incarnation brings clarity to a confused world. We live in a world where many people are trying to figure out what God is like on their own. Like the famous clip from the movie Talladega Nights, we are all trying to decide what we want “my Jesus” to be like. But in the Incarnation, Jesus perfectly and definitively reveals to us who God is. He cuts through the confusion of our culture and gives us the clarity we so desperately need.

To Identify with Us

At Christmas, Jesus came to be our Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23). This is the glory of the Incarnation that God the Son took on a human nature. Think about how glorious this is. In His infinite love, God did not merely give us a path to follow or a set of rules to keep so that we could know him. Rather, God became one of us.

This should be an incredible source of comfort for us. Hebrews 4:14-16 shows us that Jesus, as our Great High Priest, has been tempted as every way that we have, yet without sin. In addition to temptation, our God knows what it’s like to be:

• Hungry (Matthew 4:2).
• Thirsty (John 4:7).
• Tired (Mark 4:38).
• Homeless (Luke 9:58).
• To weep at the funeral of a friend (John 11:35).
• To be betrayed by a friend (Matthew 26:49-50).
• To be rejected by his family (John 7:5).

This reminds me of my favorite scene in my favorite part of The Magician’s Nephew, the first book in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. In it, the main character, Digory, is distressed that his mother is deathly ill. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Narnia world, Aslan is the Christ figure. I wanted to read to you the following conversation between Digory and Aslan.

“But please, please-won’t you-can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’ (Digory)

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great.”

In the Incarnation, God became one of us, and He feels our pain even more than we do, yet without sin. God the Son came to perfectly identify with us as our sinless substitute.

To Save us from our Sins

The ultimate reason that Jesus came at Christmas was for our salvation. After all, it’s what His name means. The angel told Joseph, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The baby in the manger was the Lamb of God who was born to pay for the sins of His people. Jesus would eventually be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. He would take all of our iniquities upon Himself (Isaiah 53:4-6). This is the message of Christmas that we desperately need to hear. Our sin is what made Christmas necessary. God the Son came into the world to save us from the mess that we’d gotten ourselves into. As the carol O Holy Night says, “long lay the world in sin and error pining.” He came to rescue a world lost in sin, groaning under the weight of the curse.

We get a hint of this in the Christmas story in Matthew 2. When the wise men come to King Herod, they ask him, “where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2). You see, there are only 2 chapters in Matthew where Jesus is called “King of the Jews.” In Matthew 2:2, and later in Matthew 27. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, “And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37). He was born to be the King of the Jews, yet His coronation would not come in a palace but on a cross. So, this Christmas, let’s remember what Jesus came to do. He came as a sacrifice to pay for our sins on the cross. The greatest Christmas gift ever given was not placed under a tree but nailed to one.

May the Lord fill our hearts with wonder this Christmas as His people reflect on the purpose of the Incarnation. Jesus came to this earth to fulfill God’s promises, to reveal God’s character, to identify with us, and to save us from our sins. May we worship Him with everything within us as we celebrate the glory of the Word made flesh (John 1:14).

Citation: C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: Including an Essay on Writing (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1982), 83.

For more from our Advent series, please visit:
Christ Our Light and Hope: Reflections for Advent