FOLLOWING THE RESURRECTION.1

"Oh fools, and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Should not Christ have suffered all of these things and then enter into his glory! Be faithless no longer, but believe."

- Jesus

Slow belief or Suspended disbelief?

In order to get the fullest experience from a work of fiction, whether on screen or in a book, we are often

required to suspend disbelief. We know people can't really fly around on broomsticks, or spaceships travel at warp speed to distant galaxies, or caped wonders bend bars of steel. We also know reasonably mentally healthy people can distinguish between fantasy and reality.

And we know people don't come back from the dead. Especially those who die in an exceptionally brutal manner!

To shake them (and us) out of the fog of disbelief, Jesus directs our thoughts to this powerful truth: the Savior fit to save all mankind must suffer the worst of mankind's warped world.

He created a world worth redeeming.

He came from heaven to rescue that world from natural and man-made induced suffering.

He gave himself to show what it is that makes a god worthy of universal devotion, honor, sacrifice and worship.

He lived Perfect Obedience to the Perfect Will to develop Perfect Love in all the created order.

God plunged himself into the most significant and toxic of human experiences: the suffering man brought upon himself when he realized not only his own vulnerability and the fear of exposure when his disobedience cast him out into a hostile environment, but that he could, with forethought and malice, inflict hurt on other naked/vulnerable members of the species.

As Dr. Jordan Peterson* observes,

"...the rise of self-consciousness and its attendant realization of mortality and knowledge of Good and Evil is presented in the early chapters of Genesis (and in the vast tradition that surrounds them) as a cataclysm of cosmic magnitude...
Earthquakes, floods, poverty, cancer--we're tough enough to take on all of that. But human evil adds a whole new dimension of misery to the world. Conscious human malevolence can break the spirit even tragedy [can] not shake.
...the central problem of life—the dealing with its brute facts—is not merely what and how to sacrifice to diminish suffering, but what and how to sacrifice to diminish suffering and evil—the conscious and voluntary and vengeful source of the worst suffering."

Sacrifice and Suffering

The idea of sacrifice as a means of holding suffering in "abeyance" and ensuring a more beneficial future is an idea as old as mankind itself. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the benefit.

My wife recently took a tumble with her horse resulting in a severely broken ankle. She was in another state hundreds of miles from our home on a trip she'd planned with several of her horse riding friends. Those friends demonstrated extraordinary sacrifice in ensuring the best possible future for my wife's foot. First, they immediately cut short that day's ride. Then they transported her to the nearest emergency room...an hour away. Then they rearranged their schedules to accommodate the follow up visits with the surgeon who needed to repair the ankle. And they took her place for cooking and clean up duties so that she could rest! The benefits of their sacrifice included minimizing the suffering my wife had to endure and a deepening of the bonds of friendship.

Why must the Savior suffer?

The greatest benefit for all of mankind is to be made right, eternally given to the highest good possible: Oneness with God. The disciples would have some sense of this idea as sons of Israel whose history was replete with illustrations about the purpose and effectiveness of God-ordained sacrifice.

What they certainly did not grasp is how God himself would offer himself as the Ultimate Sacrifice to achieve the Ultimate Benefit for mankind. Nor that his resurrection put the stamp of finality that this sacrifice was eternal!

image by 2013 Anatoly Shumkin

"...the Son of God, who, instead of accepting the sacrifice of one of his creatures to satisfy his justice or support his dignity, gave himself utterly unto them, and therein to the Father by doing his lovely will; who suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his, and lead them up to his perfection" -George MacDonald

Just as suffering shapes the person (our response can leave us stronger, more patient, humbler, with deeper understanding of God's care and will, -or- it can leave us bitter, vengeful, angry, wounded) sacrifice shapes the suffering in giving it meaning and purpose in helping us reach our potential to love...like Jesus.

"Greater love has no one than this that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Now you know.


*Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life, chapter 7

A Place For You.4

"A woman, when she is in childbirth, knows pain and agony; but as soon as the child is delivered, she forgets her suffering, rejoicing that her child is born into the world. For a moment you may experience sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will be able to take your joy from you."

--Jesus

A new Kuyper to bless the world;
photo by Mom

I met a man the other day who told me that he and his wife had decided years ago not to bring children into this corrupt world.  Some decisions we just can't take back...the regret on his face filled my heart with pity.  (Perhaps I shouldn't have told him about our Lyon's Pride of eight boys...)

The trauma of having children is not, in my humble opinion, limited to the physical pain of birthing them (no offense ladies, but how should a man ever understand this analogy if the Lord limited its meaning only to half the human equation), but also includes the day to day anxiety of providing for them, protecting them, disciplining and directing them in the way they should go!

Our Father wanted each of us and loves us into existence. 

That love begins at the intense pleasure of conceiving them followed by the suffering of childbirth, followed by the moment the child looks up into the eyes of love.  A lifetime cycle of love and suffering is birthed in that moment! 

But the great reward throughout the parenting process is:

JOY!  It may very well be the one analogy that we can truly understand about the very real love & suffering our Creator God feels toward us.  His stamp of approval and our confident hope is Jesus.  Take hope then, follower of Jesus, that the cycle will be broken when we see Jesus face to face - 

Joy 

will never again 

be taken from us!

Jesus Saves!
"She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
Matthew1:21

A junior high student on my school bus once proclaimed that she was moving to another school! The reason, she said, is "I'm just so sick of people in my school!" Her sentiments were echoed by a close friend. 'Never let a teachable moment pass' is my motto, so I said, "Well you know, whether we like to admit it or not, we usually take our troubles with us..." Blank stares. So much for the teachable moment!

Except for all the things that make life miserable it’s really not that bad! I’m serious. Never mind the fact that we exert tremendous time and resources trying to escape the things that trouble us. The sad truth (if we’re honest enough to admit it) is we carry the trouble with us: through the years of schooling, up the social ladder, into our careers, hobbies, relationships and often pass them onto our posterity, till the day we leave this place!

The problem: are we honest enough to recognize the real cause of our trouble? Will we admit that the real issue is the evil in us? Moral evil, our own individual sin, the thing that makes me wrong, un-right and out of harmony with true self. (The evil in the ones we love is another story altogether.)

The only way to get rid of the trouble, pain and suffering is for each person to get rid of his or her own sin!

Rightness alone is the cure. 

No one is right until there is no wrong in them. The wrong, the evil in us, we must be free of it—not just from the things we have done, that will follow—but free from the sins we are doing or are capable of doing! The sins that spoil our nature, the evil we consent to, which makes us commit worthless acts we will at some point deeply regret: evil judgments, wrong desires, hate, pride, envy, greed and self-satisfaction; these are the "souls" of our sins and are worse than the "bodies" of our sins (e.g., grumblings, fear, bitterness, judgmental attitudes, sneering, arrogance, exploitation, pretentiousness, ingratitude, deceit, and on and on and on...) because they not only produce the ugly things but make us as ugly as they are!

To save a man from his sins is, in a perfect & eternal sense, to say to him: Be Free! Be free as the Son of God is free! Rise up. Walk in the true freedom of the children of God. To do this Jesus was born. 

Born to be our deliverer: 

“He shall save His people 

from their sins”. 

But would we be free of the suffering only and not the root of the suffering? That would be far worse than any suffering it could produce; if we won’t be free of the true cause—the evil in us—then we must keep the suffering!

The pain that is a consequence of sin exists because there is a Creator God who ordered the universe and our place in it. We know that if we violate a physical law, such as gravity, we suffer the consequences of a hard knock on the ground. It holds true in the spiritual realm: if we violate the law of truth, for example, we will suffer consequences that aren’t as easily identifiable as a knock on the ground but are just as damaging to our character, integrity, peace of mind and relationships.

There is a sense in which Jesus came to deliver us from the pain & suffering of sin. His invitation to “Come unto me, all who are tired, oppressed, and sick of life, and I will give you wonderful rest! Receive my words, and let me teach you, for I am gentle and kind. You will find rest for your souls. That which I ask of you, is for your benefit, and that which I demand of you, is light.” But even a doctor who treated only symptoms would not be considered worthy of our confidence, don't you agree? As difficult as it was to hear, I needed to know that my enlarged prostrate might be cancerous (thank God it wasn't!) If it had been I would certainly have done everything I could to have the cancer removed, no matter how painful the process of the cure might have been.

The pain of consequences is part of God's work of eradicating sin in each of us individually. First to bring us from loving the darkness that is inside of ourselves, to seeing it's awfulness to rejecting it (repentance) permanently and casting it away altogether. Jesus comes alongside the consequences of our sin to help lead us toward His righteousness; to a true man or woman.

"He came to work along with our punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins; but a man to whom his sins, that is the evil things in him, are a burden, while he may indeed sometimes feel as if he were in hell, will soon have forgotten that ever he had any other hell to think of than that of his sinful condition. For to him his sins are hell; he would go to the other hell to be free of them; free of them, hell itself would be endurable to him. For hell is God's and not the devil's. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father. 'Salvation from hell, is salvation as conceived by such to whom hell and not evil is the terror."

 George MacDonald, Salvation From Sin

A popular Christian song says, "Jesus Paid It All" inferring that there is nothing we are obligated to do for salvation; that we cannot "earn" our salvation. Typically that view holds that Jesus came to save us from one destination (hell) to another destination (heaven). But how can we understand the eternal if we cannot see it in the shadows of the temporary? The cancer patient must strive against the disease in his body if he wants the skilled surgeon to eradicate it. My doctor told me that the cure for the (possible) cancer would be costly: financially, emotionally, physically.

For most of us, some sin has been woven into the fabric of our nature and we can't hardly imagine it not being a part of the way we conduct life. Several years ago, a manager of a neighboring McDonald's restaurant came to our print shop seeking advice. She was visibly upset and quickly burst into tears as she explained her dilemma. She had recently become a follower of Jesus and soon realized that her outbursts of anger were not pleasing to Him nor lovely in her. Yet she also realized that she used those outbursts to motivate her subordinates at the restaurant and didn't know how to do anything differently!

For myself, years of resentment have festered inside. It has only been recently that I've been able to see clearly how utterly awful it is. It is an amazing thing to experience His gentleness in making me realize how insidious that sin has been and His power in helping me get rid of the thing (I still have a ways to go!)

That is His claim on humanity: He alone has the grace and the power to help each human being deal with the sin in their life, to eradicate it completely. And there is one master-sin at the root of all the rest: indifference or antagonism to the Will of God. The highest in man is neither intellect, reason or imagination; it is will. God created us with a Will independent of His Perfect Will. We can, to our own hurt, want things that He doesn't; we can thwart His will (at least for a time). Harmony, rightness, freedom from wrongness & evil in ourselves comes only as we submit our will to His; willingly give ourselves to Him for the working out of our perfecting, completion, maturing; a true sonship based on the model of His Son, Jesus, who leads us up to the throne of His Father. Step by (sometimes agonizingly painful) step!

"Herein lies the way to eternal life: know the only true God and Jesus Christ, the one sent to you by God"--Jesus. We are asked to believe in a Living Savior--the very One who rose again from death. The One who lives to Save Us From Our Sins. Daily. Eternally.  

Believe in Him today!
(adapted from Salvation From Sin in The Hope of the Gospel, by George MacDonald.)