"Jesus comes knowing the entire world is in the grip of a demonic power, an enemy of God’s purposes. He knows that this Enemy will oppose him at every turn. He knows he will have to come to an apocalyptic confrontation with this Enemy, that he will have to grapple with it, suffer from it, die under its power, and then conquer it.
It’s important mainly because it’s in the New Testament. But it also gives us language to talk about the world. In my book, I quote secular scholars who admit that we are at a bit of a loss about how to talk about radical evil if we do not have a concept of an active, personal intelligence set against God.
An apocalyptic interpretation is exactly what we need, because it takes so seriously the situation we find ourselves in—wars and rumors of wars. If I believe my personal struggles are part of a great and mighty cosmic work of God, that gives me hope and courage and strength. My little contribution to the battle against Satan and all his works means something. It’s part of my discipleship. Writing or saying something to combat the dreadful mood in our country right now, the demonizing of everybody and everything—even the smallest statement or action taken against that is the work of the end time.
We have seen the end time in Jesus Christ. The love of God cannot be defeated. That’s what we see in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. If you just have the Resurrection, then you have no sense of anything being defeated. You have no sense of Jesus having taken anything on. In the Crucifixion, Jesus has taken on everything satanic, everything evil, everything demonic, everything sinful, everything wrong. In the Resurrection we see that he has been vindicated and that his victory is complete."
For some reason this invigorated me and got my gears turning. Then I read a wonderful blog post by a friend's daughter that really brought out for me the opposite aspect of this take on the crucifixion. That can be read here: https://daphrose.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/the-cross-is-not-the-climax/ by the way what fun that I can learn from and ponder from what a young woman of sixteen has to offer. Wonderful insights from Daphne:
"Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is crucial to our faith, but if He hadn’t risen again, we wouldn’t be able to have faith at all. If He hadn’t risen, He was only a mortal man–He had no power to save. The cross was Him waging war against death. He challenged death and won.
The cross is not the climax of the story of Jesus. It’s the darkest moment; it’s defeat.
Our victory comes through the resurrection. Our debt for sin is death. We deserve death. Jesus willingly took on death for us. His actions on the cross are what save us. But if He had only died, then He didn’t really do anything. Our faith is pointless."
This made me stop and think is there really a difference of meaning between the cross and the resurrection? Do they need to be separated so completely or are they part of one single great act that cannot be compartmentalized into this, then that, then this? Is it one great three day long moment of redemption? I think Daphne struggles a little with contradicting her own self in parts of her post. For example "The cross was Him waging war against death. He challenged death and won" would seem to contradict her earlier statements that death won in that moment on the cross. When she says it was the darkest moment however, she is right. I totally get what she meant and where she was coming from and it brought me up short after having jumped enthusiastically into the train of thought of the first article all about the triumphant defeat of darkness. Then perusing my twitter feeds I came across this article: http://www.ligonier.org/blog/it-accurate-say-god-died-cross/
while this article responds to a particular question it fits right in with all the questions and thoughts that were already taking up brain space these past weeks. This article discusses what it means that Christ died on the cross and two heresies that arose from the line of thought that God himself died on the cross. Here is an excerpt from a Ligioniere Ministry's blog post:
"In fact, two such heresies related to this problem arose in the early centuries of the church: theopassianism and patripassianism. The first of these,theopassianism, teaches that God Himself suffered death on the cross.Patripassianism indicates that the Father suffered vicariously through the suffering of His Son. Both of these heresies were roundly rejected by the church for the very reason that they categorically deny the very character and nature of God, including His immutability. There is no change in the substantive nature or character of God at any time." . . .also this "It’s the God-man Who dies, but death is something that is experienced only by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death."
Okay so what stood out to me? Just how good God is. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost good. Lets just say that the work of the cross got real personal for me last week leading up to Good Friday. Never have I experienced an Easter with a more immediate need to ponder what Christ means to me. It turns out that while all these similar-yet-different articles on the crucifixion were stretching my understanding and asking me to define some things more clearly for my own persuasions, the overarching feeling for me was praise. Praise that it even happened. Praise that something so ugly was, and is, and always will be an integral part of something so beautiful. And my heart leaped within me. And suddenly it was enough to praise Him. It was EVERYTHING to praise Him.
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