The Christ came as our Redeemer—as the One who claims responsibility for our future and raises up an inheritance for us that we never could have achieved for ourselves.

The plan of salvation originated with the Father and was designed to be carried out by the Son, by the power of the Spirit (see Ephesians 1). Though the Christ is the hero of the story, He had to come first as a servant—the Servant of the Most High God, willingly submitted to the authority of the Father, ready to shoulder the heaviest of demands, even if it crushed Him.

Jesus links the rejected stone with the murdered son—the Messiah with the Son of God. Just a few days later, when the Jews, like the vicious vine-growers, crucified Him, He would prove to be both: a “stone of stumbling” to those who reject Him, and yet a “precious value” to the ones who make Him their foundation.

Dropped into the middle of a dark and broken world, sandwiched between hundreds of years of God’s silence and the constant threat of Roman oppression, was a curious sign with a hopeful name: Immanuel.

He is the One who makes right—the One who addresses the void between us and God, who makes the fatal gesture of alliance that we never could have made ourselves, who pays our debt in full. He is the only Restorer of the relationship we forfeited in Eden.