For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again... Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
................2 Corinthians 5:14-21
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
................1 Corinthians 15:35-58
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The long and short of it.... |
God the Father
Consider Genesis. It was written by Moses at God's direction for an audience of people who would change dramatically across three dimensions—mind, time and culture. How educated was the first audience for Genesis, and the Bible itself for that matter? At the time of Genesis' writing it was composed for an audience of largely illiterate slaves. Over time it would need to be accessible, understandable and applicable by the lowliest, illiterate peasant who heard it read to the masses to the most educated king who made policy based on its wisdom. Written over three thousand years before Christ, how would the book be received in Jesus' time, not only by the Jews but by the Gentiles (everyone else in the world) ? For most of the thousands of years that Genesis and the Bible have existed, its audience (and by that I mean the masses, not the few who control its distribution) has been uneducated, illiterate, superstitious. How would detailed scientific text have been received? God was challenged with the problem that His explanation had to be meaningful without being baffling. The message was written at one point in time and space, but it had to be portable enough to span time (4 thousand years), space (starting in the desert and spreading out around the world), and culture (having meaning that could be grasped by any world view that heard it). If you go after the Genesis account with a ruler and microscope with the aim of proving or disproving the creation account based on physics or chemistry or biology or any other tools we use to measure dirt, you will be frustrated and must only come away cynical (or sadly even feeling superior), but if that is your aim, then you are missing the point. Genesis does not explain the mystery of our presence here on Earth (the laws of how it happened), but rather its purpose is to give meaning and context to that existence (the logic of why it happened). Reality can testify to itself—it is there, we can touch it, taste it, experiment with it, define it. Only God can testify to Himself. The Genesis account is not a book of mechanics, but of motives, of logic and why.
So why did it all happen? What was God's motive? It's impossible to know the mind of God, but let's take a step back and spin up some hypotheticals based on Genesis.
The story of Genesis states that all started with one man and one woman, and from them all the peoples of the Earth find their origin. Let's look at this literally for a moment. What if Adam and Eve were the prototypes for all of humanity. What if there were human-like animals before Eden? What if man created in the image of God was a fusion of Soul with an existing but optimized humanoid chassis? What if there were human-like animals before Adam and Eve who looked like us, but were perhaps more primitive, less refined, two-legged animals, prior to Eden? And what if God took that form, or that design, and optimized it when he infused it with soul? What if the “likeness of God” part of our creation is really the Soul, our Spirit, placed within this new, optimized, perfected bipedal design? Perhaps it was not the Earth itself that came into existence roughly 10,000 years ago, but perhaps this was the moment when God created divine man on a much older physical stage? Perhaps this is the moment within the 5 billion year physical history of the life on Earth when God started His family.
Whatever the mechanics, Genesis is clear in expressing God's motive of creating a being in His own image, of creating children He could call His in a way that He didn't do with dogs and monkeys and banana slugs. He created family, a real family, so He could truly be a father and not only a creator of gas clouds and tigers. The relationship of architect and artist to His design and masterpiece is not a passive one. God apparently did not want to merely enjoy His creation, to sit back and watch butterflies and rainbows, He wanted kinship with it. God wanted children, and in the making of us He bestowed within mankind the faculties that make us divine, that makes us different from all other matter and order of life that came before. Unlike tree frogs, we have the potential to be like God Himself, all knowing, all powerful children of the Father Creator, if we could only grow up. We were raw material that God Himself was teaching as a father instructs his beloved children. At the core of our design was the ability of exert will freely, beyond our father's will or consciousness. This was the central element that made us like our father. We were not bound by the mechanical laws of the created order, as was matter, nor were we bound by the laws of instinct, as was the rest of life within creation, but we had within us the ability to rise to the level of God, for we were made in His image, and we alone were gifted with this divine potential.
Like all children, Adam and Eve started out rather clueless and gullible. Before the fall we were truly innocent, and what was robbed from us was not eternal life or immediate access to God, these were higher ends. What was robbed from us was a gradual coming to consciousness at the tender instruction by God Himself, being taught the scope and meaning of the universe gradually, progressively, as a father teaches his child the mysteries and meaning of the world around them. Just because we were told not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil doesn't mean it was intended that we would never eat from that three, that we would never know this wisdom. What was robbed from us was the chance to grow under the steady hand of a loving Father. You see this still going on today, in fact all across history—children stolen from their parents and sold into slavery before they have the chance to grow enough to learn of their inherent freedom. What is robbed is more than the body, it is their potential.
Within the Garden there were two trees from which these children had yet to eat, not just one. There was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and there was the Tree of Eternal Life. Making decisions was part of the design, and the prototypes were tricked into choosing badly before they were ready to make such a choice. We not only disobeyed God (“Do not eat...”), but we were exposed to more than we were ready to deal with. We were stolen away and sold into slavery by another other. Someone older, wiser, aware and with purpose stepped in and tempted, and it was child's play for him. In every sense this intruder was a pedophile, praying on the easiest target with the single aim of doing harm for the pleasing of himself.
So what was God to do? Scrap Adam and Eve and start over? If a child is sexually abused, do the parents put him to death? Our abuse, our bad decision and the resulting fall from grace left God with this choice—destroy His children and start over or roll them out to production and fix the problem later. It may be easy (but expensive) to scrap bad software or poor architectural design, to tear down a house and begin again, but we are not software, we are not mere matter. To throw away beloved children and start over was not an option. So God came up with another plan—He decided to sacrifice Himself to save His children.
God the Messiah
There's a movie that came out a few years back called The Passion of the Christ. I saw it in the theater and it was tough to watch. The Passion is all about the last hours of Jesus Christ on Earth, beginning with Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and ending with Jesus rising in the tomb on Easter morning. The suffering of Jesus portrayed in this movie is some of the most horrible and graphic violence I have ever seen. Jesus was beaten, flogged, humiliated, tortured and murdered in a horribly painful way. Crucifixion is designed not to kill, but to prolong death, to stretch a human body to the thinnest, tightest, tensest strand of agony before the lifeline snaps. The aim is not to kill a criminal, but to strike terror into the witnesses.
The second time I saw this movie was with my brother, Stephen. He was confined to his bed at this point, dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and had invited me to watch it with him. He watched it regularly, viewing the movie 40 times with anyone who would accept his invitation to sit down with him to watch it. I believe Stephen understood this movie in ways that I can never dream of understanding. Whereas I could and still can turn away, get up and leave when a movie, or in some respects my reality, gets too uncomfortable, too graphic, too awful for me to stand, Stephen was completely paralyzed, and even turning away his head required assistance. Several time during the movie he motioned for me to stop the film and we chatted about what was going on and what it meant.
In some kind of strange, awful, heart-breaking way he identified with the silent, suffering Messiah. This thing I was witnessing was unique, fascinating, horrible, terrifying and wonderful all at once. Remove the concept of Messiah from this scenario and it becomes a surreal nightmare—a man in the here-and-now slowly and silently suffering under a random, undeserved and unstoppable terminal illness watching the torture and execution of another man suffering under an undeserved and absolutely brutal abuse and murder. But when you view Jesus as Messiah, and the death He is suffering is on our behalf, suddenly the fear of suffering and death lessens. Jesus looks at us out of His suffering and He says, This suffering, my children, is not for you.
God uses the most painfully obvious lessons to get across the most basic points. Stephen was not the only terminal patient in that room watching the suffering of the Christ, I am also. The thirty or more people who agreed to watch the movie with him were all no less terminal. Every mortal is terminal, it's just that the time frames of our dying are less defined for most of us. And whereas Stephen's silence was due to paralysis, we all suffer under a similar paralysis—the silent ignorance of entitlement and complacency.
Messiah is unique in all of history and the world. There are other stories within other religions of gods coming to the Earth, of gods intervening on behalf of those they love, even of gods making sacrifices for their believers, but no-where is the specific work of the Messiah defined as it is in Judaism and fulfilled as it is in Christianity. Simply stated, the Messiah is the one who shall deliver His people from the consequence of their action by sacrificing Himself in their place, delivering them from the sentence of separation and death. If you murdered someone and were sentenced to death, a Messiah would step in and take the death penalty for you so you might go free. If you are dying of ALS, the Messiah steps in and clears the slate for you, and by His suffering demonstrates His love and commitment, by His suffering gives meaning and context to the pain and suffering of the here-and-now, and by His suffering guarantees that your path to God is unobstructed. Stephen was dying visibly, and his path was clear and inarguable. I am dying imperceptibly, but my path is no less obvious. It's the same for you, for all of us. We are separate from God, and something must be done to close that separation.
When God rolled out humanity, it was unique in all of creation, but terribly, fatally flawed. It was the order of our assembly that made us unrepairable. If God had the chance to teach us some wisdom before we were exposed to good and evil, and then to eternal life, none of this corruption and pain in our world would have happened. We know good and evil, but how difficult it is for us to tell them apart. This fallen world in which we live is the College of Choice, the University of Wisdom, the place in which we act on our surroundings in both wise and foolish ways, and from this action we learn the wisdom that God was cut off from teaching us directly. Wisdom and knowledge are great, but how do you bridge that gap of separation? How do you get back with this new found wisdom? Someone has to pay the toll to cross that bridge back to eternity, but the toll is too high, and the paying of it leaves nothing to bring home. There is only one answer, someone must pay the toll who can stand the high price and still remain, and that someone is not any of us. The only one who could do such a thing (not once, but for everyone) is God Himself.
Over the years I've had lots of discussions with people who are not Christians and do not believe in the fundamentals of Christianity for various reasons. Some people can't fathom how God can die. And how can God be both the Father and His Own Son at the same time? How can He be both in Heaven and on Earth, in both places at once? If He is God then He is God, and this Jesus must be some other God. If Jesus is the son and Mary is His mother, then Mary must also be a God, and if she is a God, then how is the Christian Heaven different from the pagan Greek heaven, or any of the pantheistic religions of the world? And why would God be born of a woman in the first place? What's this virgin birth stuff? Isn't it more likely that Mary was an adulterer and Jesus is then a... And why, of all people in the world, would God pick the Jews?
The main stumbling block of all the dissenting questions above is the human context. From within our temporal snow globe I can only conceive of a father and a son as being different, separate but related entities. From my point of view I am trapped within the material constructs I use to process reality. I have a father and I am a father, but we two fathers are not the same being. But what of a being who exists in another, different reality? And what if this reality is based on a completely different set of rules? How can I understand such a being using the constructs I have? I can't. And how could such a being exist in this reality? My options are to try to understand the rules of the other reality, or to use analogies based on this reality to try to understand what the other reality is like. Ok, here is the short answer: Messiah is the saving function of God, and Jesus is the Messiah reference to God. This is kind of odd, but let's use an analogy from computer programming to better understand how this works.
In the C++ computer language, a reference is a data type whose value refers directly to another value stored elsewhere in the computer memory. When a reference is initialized, the value of the original data is stored in the reference as a constant with the memory address of the original data point in its definition, and after initialization a reference can never be set to reference any other variable. In other words, the reference is both the original data and independent of the original data at the same time. So let's say that X = God and MessiahX = X. Does this mean that MessiahX = God? Yes, but it means much more. It means that MessiahX has all the characteristics and attributes of X while at the same time being separate and different. You can do things to MessiahX while X is not affected. You can reference the value of X and push it out to the memory location of MessiahX, but it does not go back the other way. Therefore, things can be done to MessiahX while X is still unchanged, even though both have the same value. It results in two entities having the same value, and yet being separate. In this way X and its reference MessiahX can be the same value and yet remain different, related entities. So it all looks something like this
- X = God;
& MessiahX = X;
MessiahX = God;
A = B
B = C
C = A
Side Note: It is fascinating to watch how computer programming comes up with such neat ideas. The computerverse is in many ways our imitation of the creativity of our Father.
So why would God do this? To fix the mess we are in. If a man breaks his leg and it sets crooked, the leg must be re-broken to be set properly. The murder of the Messiah was the resetting of a broken humanity, and only one as powerful and complete as God could dare do such a thing. Messiah is how he did it.
But why a Jewish Messiah? If God decided to enter the world in human form as a Messiah reference to Himself, then He would need to be born of a woman somewhere in history. This woman is a human being derived from and existing within this reality, so the mother of a human born Messiah must be born of another mother and father, who are also born of parents, who are born of parents, who are also born of parents, etc. backwards to the first birth. That means that, when God decided to be born as a Messiah reference at some point in history to fix the mess we are in, he also decided on a bloodline from which to be born, and to do so He selected a human female from whom He could be born, which means He needed to select a family blood line (since the female is descended from other humans) somewhere in the world at some point in history. Hindsight is 20/20, foresight is prophesy. In order to select Mary, God needed to first select a bloodline, and this started with Adam and Eve, was perpetuated with Noah and firmly established with the friendship and covenant between God and Abraham. When God approached Abram, there were no Jews, there was no Israel, there was only God and Abram, soon to be Abraham, God's friend. From Abraham came the chosen people. Chosen for what? MessiahX.
From our point of view, the history, culture and genealogies of the Middle East look like a massive black cloud of swirling intermarriages, complex familial/political ties (allies and enemies) and volatile religious differences, but from God's point of view there is a lightning bolt of clarity flashing through the maelstrom from Adam and Eve straight to Joseph and Mary. From Adam to Noah is ten generations. From Noah to Abraham is ten generations. There are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile of the Jews in Babylon, and fourteen generations from Babylon to Jesus—that’s 62 generations all of one straight family line from creation to salvation.
God the Companion
If you stare at the sun you will go blind. And yet the sun's light fills our world, allows us to see as its energy bounces off matter, filling our eyes with color, feeding us, warming us. If the Earth was a little closer to the sun, the oceans would vaporize, the rocks would crack in the heat, we would die and the Earth would become a blazing furnace. If the Earth was a little farther the oceans would freeze, the plants would die, and the Earth would become a frozen waste.
Moses asked God to look upon Him, to see Him, but God replied that seeing His face would kill Moses. So God allowed Moses to glimpse His back as He passed by (Exodus 33: 18-23). The glory of God is lethal, so how can such energy commune with such weakness and not destroy it? How can fire commune with paper and not destroy it? The Holy Spirit of God is a testimony to gentleness and love. God reaches out to us to commune, to make contact, but He does so as the rays of the sun come to us, at just the right distance, with just the right balance of power and sustenance.
Like light from the sun, God illuminates, He fills the voids between us with peace and compassion, with righteousness and goodness. And like the light of the sun, God's radiance causes the creatures that thrive in the dark to scurry. When you turn on the lights in a house infested with roaches, they scurry wildly for the darkness, and in the blink of an eye it is as if they are not there. The radiance of God has the same effect on all creatures that crave darkness. God's radiance will not penetrate to the dark reaches of human depravity, not because He can't, but because He won't. Just as God the Supreme Being and God the Creator cannot mingle directly with us for fear of burning us to a cinder, God the Messiah and God the Counselor are functions of God that can interact with us to fulfill His purposes.
Like the Earth, humanity exists within three spheres of light. Part of us thrive in the direct glow of God. Part of us live in the long shadows of change, the twilight of decision, some in the dawn of moving towards the light, some in the dusk moving away. And then there are the dwellers of the night. They choose or are born into darkness, living in the kingdom where God will not go. But they matter. How does God reach them? When Jesus ascended into Heaven, His last command was “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” God reaches into the darkness through us. His radiance is reflected down onto the dark kingdom of man through His disciples as the moon reflects the sun's rays into the night. We carry His Spirit within our hearts as we labor in the long night, waiting for the dawn of His coming. This is our work. This is our purpose, to reflect God into the darkness. When we choose God, when we believe the good news, we choose to step out of the shadow into His direct radiance, and in doing so the darkness we carry within us is burned away. When we reject God the eternal night slowly consumes us, like mold in the dark, eating away at the flesh until noting remains but ruin.
At the end of time the darkness will be dissipated. As Revelation 22:3-5 states
- No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
God the Creator, the Supreme Being, is more powerful, more terrible than any human can bear. We cannot come into His presence, we cannot see His face for fear of complete destruction. Yet He loves us, He wants us, He desires us. He came to the Earth as the Messiah to show us His face, the face that is the model of our creation, His image perfected. He showed us Himself as Jesus so we could touch God, so we could listen to God, so we could understand God, and more importantly so God could give us a way to come to Him, to return home. But we are not alone on the long journey back, He is with us now, every day, all day and into the long night, His Spirit apportioned at just the right exposure, not too close, not too far, so we can commune with Him in the here and now, so we can share His warmth with those numbed to the bone in darkness. A time is coming when
- ...the dwelling of God [will be] with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Revelation 22:3-4
The Jews
Who do these Jews think they are, claiming to be God's one and only chosen people?! How dare they hold it over everyone else's heads, how dare they claim that anyone else is not chosen by God? Yup, they are the chosen bloodline. Not only that, but God created the Jewish culture by giving them the Torah and the Law. Not only are the Jews God's chosen people, but their culture is God's greatest work of art. God revealed Himself, His plans, His Laws, His purpose to this nomadic tribe of herders. Salvation didn't come through the greatest of us, the mightiest that humanity had to offer, but rather through the least of us so that God's design might be more clearly known.
But these Jews are so obnoxious about it. “We are God's chosen people!” Who do they think they are? They are the people God chose to try to achieve righteousness through the impossible path of following law, and then failing on that path to teach us all that law is not the way. The Jewish culture created by God is the prototype of what human culture should be, and a testament of how the Jews mutilated it and disobeyed and suffered the consequences throughout their history to teach the painful lesson to all the world that approaching God through culture is impossible. They are the people God chose to be humiliated by their own failings and arrogance by being given the Law and then disobeying it, changing it, adding to it so it cannot be followed by any human alive. They were given the promised Messiah and then betrayed Him, tortured Him and killed Him that He might rise again and triumph over death. They are the people whose existence can be tracked by prophesy, whose suffering and homeless wandering must be made public, known throughout the world, so that the suffering of the Messiah on their behalf can be understood. These are the people God chose as the human medium through which MessiahX could be born, and by that birth be singled out by all other cultures, all other religions, by the very powers of darkness, jealousy, and selfishness as a target for destruction. To be God's chosen people, the Messiah's chosen and cultivated bloodline in a fallen world ruled by darkness is an honor, but it is also a death sentence. Personally, I thank God for the Jews, for without them there is no hope.
But why would God do all of this? Why would the Supreme Being incarnate as the Messiah? Why would God Himself appear on the Earth as a peasant carpenter, a lowly laborer, a mere human? Jesus blew away the expectations of the Jews that their Messiah would be mighty warrior, a fearful king. Jesus was a package no one ever expected. You are the Messiah, they said, and you are God? But you are Jesus, Joseph and Mary's boy, the carpenter, a nobody. There is no beauty or majesty to you! Nothing in your appearance makes us desire you! You are NOT what we expected, NOT what we want. A lowly peasant Messiah is embarrassing. We proclaimed to our oppressors that one greater than Caesar himself would soon come and deliver us, to stamp them under his mighty feet, and yet this Jesus cannot keep the filthy masses from stepping on His sandals, He is defiled by women and the unclean and He claims to be God! We expected a conqueror and we get a carpenter! This is no Messiah, this is no Samson, this is no David, this is no deliverer. He can't even save himself, what kind of God is this...
With such an angry and disappointed audience is it any wonder that Jesus was despised and rejected by the Jews? Jesus as God shatters every conception we have of a Supreme Being, robed in majesty and splendor, and yet Jesus is in every way the opposite, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, sweat and toil, one who inspires in His chosen people nothing but anger and shame. To this day Jesus is baffling. Why did God do this? What was God trying to tell us in this work?
Perhaps one of the things God is trying to tell us is that humans are not so bad. Jesus did not appear on Earth in human form so much as He appeared on Earth in His own form, the image from which we were fashioned, for we did not create God in our image, but rather we were created in His image. What we saw in Jesus was the intended human perfection of the original creation. See, God said, this is what I mean for you to be. Not warriors or kings, but humble, full of love and joy, seeking after Me. What does it matter that God mingled with crowds of the unclean and women? What does it mean that God had His feet stepped on by peasants, that he was immersed in their sweat and toil day in and day out? What does it mean that God felt pain, that God suffered on our behalf? What does it mean that He allowed men to beat Him down, to make Him bleed? What does it mean that God allowed this perfect vessel to be destroyed? All of this conveys a simple message that speaks to all people, in all times, in all cultures—you matter.
God Himself assumed the role of MessiahX for you. God allowed Himself to be destroyed for your sake so you could find your way home.
