Taken from an interview with John Piper  ( Presented in 6 main points.  Today, Point 6, final point)

6. God rescues undeserving people. 

Why? Why this so-called incarnation of God? Because all of God’s human creatures had failed to worship and love God and obey God as we ought. We deserve to be punished. God would be perfectly just to punish us all in hell because of our failure and our rebellion. But in the fullness of his God-like love, he planned a way before the foundation of the world — he is not only just, but he is merciful — to intrude himself into the world to rescue his own creatures, who deserve punishment, from his punishment. He rescues us from his own wrath by his own mercy. The Son of God becomes human and is punished in our place. Here’s how the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament Scriptures, the Jewish Scriptures, put it: 

He was pierced for our transgressions;
     he was crushed for our iniquities. . . .
All we like sheep have gone astray;
     we have turned — every one — to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
     the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5–6) 

The New Testament puts it like this: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Whoever believes, whoever trusts, whoever receives, whoever treasures Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, Jesus becomes his substitute, bears God’s punishment, provides God’s righteousness, secures eternal joy in fellowship with God. 

All That God Is for You 

So, who is God? He’s the Creator, Sustainer, Governor, and Judge of the universe. And in his justice and mercy, he devised a way, from all eternity, for sinners like us to be forgiven and to be adopted into his eternal family as the children of God and as a kind of bride for his Son, Jesus Christ, so that by sharing the joy God has in himself, our joy in him would show the fullness of his own glory. 

I invite you, I urge you, to embrace Jesus and all that God is for you in him. Jesus is who God is. 

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.