Do You Rescue Like Jesus Does?

This topic was split because of it's length.

Why did Jesus come into the world? What was the goal of his mission?

Lots of words are used to describe Jesus and what he came to do. But the one I want you to think about is Jesus coming to be a rescuer. Nearly every hero is involved in some type of rescue, and these rescues fall into two main types: rescue by escape and rescue by transformation.

Rescue by escape involves saving people from a bad or dangerous place to a place of safety. It's like a fireman that saves the child from a burning building. The fireman has rescued the child from taking him from the burning building.

Rescue by transformation involves changing peoples’ surroundings from bad or dangerous to good or safe. This rescue doesn’t involve physically taking people from a bad place to a good place—they end up being rescued, but they're still in the same place. This is like Batman trying to clean up Gotham City by striking fear into criminals. Batman hopes to rescue the city by transforming it into a better place. When we look around at the world we live in, I think we would all agree that there's a great need for us to be rescued (injustice, hatred, greed, racism, war, violence, environmental disasters, gossip, etc.).

Christians know Jesus is our rescuer, but which kind of rescue has he come to make? Is it rescue by escape—meaning he has primarily come to rescue us away from a dangerous place (earth) to somewhere safe (heaven)? Or is it rescue by transformation—meaning Jesus has come to rescue us by driving out the baddies (the devil and all types of evil) and transforming the world into a good and safe place so we can live again in peace?

Continuing reading in Part 2.