By: Pastor Ty Houghtaling

In the Gospel of John we read, “…Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29b).  The words were uttered by John the Baptist a prophet of God born for the singular purpose of pointing the nation of Israel to the promised Messiah.  In contemporary urban language John might have said something like this, “look here, He, the guy coming our way, He’s Him!”.  Have you heard the sports commentators use the expression “he’s him”?  They are saying that the person they are talking about is a special athlete.

Every now and again someone might claim that they read a book, and it changed their lives.  Someone might confess that they met a person, and that meeting completely altered their existence.  On occasion a person might point out a significant moment in their lives when they became a whole different person all together.  It’s not unusual for these kinds of stories to fill blogs, self-help books, and television/political personalities monologues.  Sometimes they even say the person they met was Jesus, the book the read was the Bible, and the event that changed them forever was the moment they became a Christian.

I don’t think it is possible to count the number of songs written about Jesus.  I don’t think we could come up with an accurate accounting for the number of books written about Him.  There is likely no way to know how many people over the last 2000 years have experienced a life changing moment in time because of the “He’s Him” discovery.

When John the Baptist basically said, “He’s Him”, he was saying Jesus is the one, the only one, the forever one, the one who makes all things new, the one who fulfills all the promises of God from the very beginning, God’s one perfect gift to all humanity.  John wasn’t saying Jesus was one of many, nor was he saying Jesus was just another one with talent or something special to offer.  John was saying Jesus was the only one who make this broken world right again.  John was saying, “He’s Him!”.

Global survey data suggests that there exists 50 million Christians in the world today.  I am one of them.  He changed my life, and I know that one day when I breath my last breath, I will go to Heaven to be with Him forever.  For me, He’s Him.  He can be the one for you too.  Read John’s Gospel, the fourth book of the New Testament, and ask God to show you who Jesus really is.

Ty Houghtaling is the Pastor at the First Baptist Church in Artesia.