The Cell Leaders got into some important theology a couple of weeks ago at their monthly meeting. I thought you all might like to hear some bits that would help you participate in the ongoing dialogue.
During Lent, we focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the central days in history that change everything and change us. But sometimes our understanding of what Jesus is doing on the cross is a bit hazy. Our lack of clarity isn’t that surprising, since there are a lot of ways to look at what He’s doing, and God’s ways are a bit beyond explaining succinctly. It takes prayer, study and dialogue to see by faith. At our meeting we helped various explanations of the crucifixion “make friends.” They don’t really need to compete. I suggested that the following approach might provide a “tent” in which al the major explanations based on the revelation in the Bible might live in harmony. See what you think.
On the cross God is doing battle to defeat sin, death, hell and the devil (the “powers”). God is rescuing us. Jesus Christ entered into human misery and wickedness to liberate us from them. That’s good news. The work of Jesus on the cross is not so much the application of a rational or systematic theory as it is the source of good news. When we share the communion meal and remember the Lord’s death, we connect with a story about God’s victory over the powers and humanity’s liberation from bondage. We are part of an ongoing story of showing up the powers for who they are through acts of forgiveness and selfless love.
Some key scripture about this includes:
Colossians 2:13-15 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
2 Corinthians 5:4-5 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
When Jesus dies, evil does all it can and God does all God can. God takes all the evil from political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual angles all rolled into one, rides it into destruction and despair, exhausts its power and rises from the victory to let loose new creation, new covenant, freedom, forgiveness, and hope. This is the story written in the gospels, not the theory written in the gospels.
God’s plan to rescue the world from evil was not a secret from people with eyes to see. In Isaiah’s prophecy the wisdom flowered into a very graphic description of the Suffering Servant who was to come. Jesus is that Servant, who was destined to bear evil, sin, and sickness. He was wounded by it; he absorbed it. As Paul says: in Jesus, death is swallowed up in victory; through our relationship with Jesus, our mortality is swallowed up by life.
At the last Supper Jesus tells his disciples how the messianic battle is going to be won – by losing it. On the cross, God turns the other cheek and loves His enemies. On the cross, God brings in the kingdom; the future enters the present. Through the work of Jesus we learn that the ultimate enemy is not Rome or some other earthly power, but the evil behind the human arrogance and violence. On the cross God rescues His people from evil itself and from the oppression and collusion that enslaves them. Like the Jewish Temple tried to be, Jesus actually is the place where heaven and earth meet; He is the place where God’s future and the present meet; He is the place where God celebrates the kingdom’s triumph over the kingdoms of this world by refusing to join in their spiral of self-absorption and violence.
Through the work of Jesus, the Creator takes responsibility for what has happened in creation. Jesus bears the weight on his shoulders and forgives it. When we pray “deliver us from evil,” a central means to that end is forgiveness. When we forgive, we release others from the burden of our anger and its consequences. When we forgive, we also release ourselves from the burden of what they did to us and the bitterness that will cripple us and poison the relationship. What exhausts and defeats evil is God’s implacable forgiveness. Desmond Tutu wrote a book called “No Future without Forgiveness” – this is true for Philadelphia, true for us, and true for God. As He is dying, God forgives his killers; He releases the world from guilt and He releases himself from the burden of wrath toward a world gone wrong. It isn’t that evil is over, but the future has entered the present, so creation can go forward as redeemed humans (always the God-ordained stewards of the planet) can reflect His image, heal, restore and put the world right under God’s rule.
As we go through Holy Week next week, there will be ample opportunity to enter the story – the fulcral story of Jesus and our own story of relating to Him and entering our own suffering servanthood. God bless us with the presence of the future and a deep realization of our freedom and forgiveness.
Rod - Thanks for this harmonious tent. I’m remembering our Lord’s final days like the days of wedding preparations. In John 19 he’s the bridegroom dressed in kingly robes (verse 5) and marching down the aisle carrying his cross. He’s God married to us on the cross before witnesses and with the two for whom it was prepared on his right and on his left (verse 18). In the ceremony his family is present (verse 25) and he tells them that a new family has been formed (verse 26-27). For all of us who hear his commitment to us, we’re married into God’s family through Jesus (Rev 19:17). I can’t imagine how any marriage relationship can survive without the forgiveness and selfless love that you talked about, thank God he is present to offer those very things to us who are in all seriousness married to Christ.