“Jesus is like the lifeguard who pulls you out of the rip at the beach, rescuing you from danger.”
“Jesus is like the parachute instructor who used his body to cushion the impact for his student, giving His life for yours.”
“Jesus is like the Son of the King who vouches for you, so that you can be adopted into His family.”
All of these illustrations are fine for helping our people understand the person and work of Christ – they use categories that are familiar (rescue, substitution, advocacy) to help us grasp what Jesus has done for us.
Jesus exceeds
At the same time, though, I’ve been challenged recently in my preaching to go further than simply saying Jesus is like something in our world. I call this principle ‘Jesus exceeds’ – it’s the truth that, while Jesus might be like certain things in our world, He is also better than all of those things.
I want to help my people see that there is no one else like Jesus, that Jesus is unique. His ministry, whether on earth or now at the Father’s right hand, is unparalleled in its power and blessings for us. Scripture itself testifies to how much Jesus exceeds our earthly understandings and categories – The Bible speaks of “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Eph 1:19); His love “surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19); He is “able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think…” (Eph 3:20).
We have many inspiring and uplifting examples of human love, wisdom, and power – but even those are cheap and weak compared to Jesus! “…the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Cor 1:25).
Raising the stakes
We can give our people a bit more of a sense of this by raising the stakes in our illustrations – helping people see that they are dealing not just with earthly realities, but spiritual ones.
“Jesus is like the lifeguard who pulls you out of the rip at the beach… but Jesus does even more than save your life from drowning. He saves our souls from the eternal pain of death and hell.”
“Jesus is like that parachute instructor who cushioned the impact for us, but Jesus did even more than that. He didn’t do it for a friend, or even for a stranger – He did it for His enemies, people who’d sinned against Him and rejected Him to His face.”
“Jesus is like the Son of the King who vouches for you… but He doesn’t just take us into a royal human family. He brings us into fellowship with the God of the whole universe, who can offer us so many more blessings than an earthly king.”
Our sin exceeds
The converse of this is true as well – if Jesus exceeds any earthly parallel to His ministry, then our sin, and the consequences of our sin, also exceed any earthly parallel:
“Sin is like disobeying your parents who love you… but it’s even worse than that, because our parents sometimes get things wrong. We’re disobeying the God who’s never been anything but good and loving to us, who gave us life and all the good things we have.”
“God designed us, He knows how we work best, and He gave us the Bible as our instruction manual to life. Sin is like us throwing out that instruction manual and writing our own… but when we throw out the manual, we’re not just broken machines. We are rebels headed for death and hell.”
Sin was summed up by Mark Thompson of Moore College as ‘cosmic treason.’ It’s that cosmic element that we need to get across to our people, helping them see the exceedingly wicked nature of our sin, so that they can grasp the exceedingly gracious gift of Jesus Christ for us.