Read: John 3:16-21
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17 ESV)
Most of us have seen them, read them, or played them. So many works of fiction revolve around the idea of saving, either our world or one imagined, from some cataclysmic force. There is something somewhere inside us that deeply connects with the idea of this world needing to be saved.
In truth, that is exactly what Jesus came to do. Humankind had derailed this creation from the perfection of God's course for the world. Jesus came to fix it. By our inherited sense of wickedness we had fallen out of right standing with our Heavenly Father and joined a rebellion. The sentence was death as a wage for our sin, but God enacted another plan. A plan set in motion before its necessity ever became a reality.
Jesus stepped out of the eternal into finite history as a man. The Light, Word, and Son of God made flesh. While he had every right, and all authority, to pronounce incredible judgement upon humanity, he instead worked, lived, and was persecuted under amazing grace. He who knew no sin, took our sin. He who knew no death, took our death. He returned to us forgiveness, mercy, and life. In short, Jesus saved the world.