Monday, July 29, 2019
663 - For My Sake
Spirituality Column #663
July 30, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
For My Sake
By Bob Walters
Jesus Christ on the excruciating cross of human salvation is
a frightening image, one upon which only the very crassest among humanity would
gaze and ask:
“What’s in
it for me?”
Fact is,
none of us wants exactly that – the
cross of Christ – as Christian life’s promise.
Believe in Jesus, be Christ-like, do Godly things with a Godly attitude,
love God, love others, read the Bible, go to church, be selfless, kind, obedient
… and what do we get? A horrendous and
humiliating public death? No thanks.
That’s not the deal anyone is
looking for.
We must be especially wary, then,
in our Christian witness and preaching, to be very clear what it is exactly
that Jesus did on the cross. The world
sees punishment, shame, payment, retribution, and maybe feels a little (or a
lot of) personal sin and guilt. The
neurotic Christian may wilt with remorse: “That agonizing passion on the cross
is my fault! That bloody end is what I
deserve!” The arrogant libertine may be
repulsed and dismissive: “How can a good God allow that to happen to His
son? I don’t believe any of it!” A
devious theologian may see a means to control people with fear and guilt.
What we see on the cross is less a
picture of God than of what a perfect human will do to glorify God. In that
sense a little neurosis about our fate is quite apt. The wrathful God of the Law is the same
loving and sacrificial God of the New Testament. God never changes, but the enormous gift we
are given through Christ is to see the true nature of a Godly human: Jesus is
our example of what a perfect human in God’s eyes actually is. Our fallenness makes it hard to see that.
We are – each of us individually –
a great mess of conflicts, fear, aspirations, hope, and pain-avoidance. The sneaky truth of Christ that takes a while
to truly see is that our greatest human joy – and our highest, most God-like
humanity – is the picture of Christ humbly sacrificing himself for others. Seeing the cross as God’s love and mercy for
us, rather than seeing it as God’s anger and wrath for our sin, changes
everything about what kind of Christian we can be: loving? … or judgmental?
Our greatest joy, then, is in
serving others in freedom, freedom not just from sin but freedom to be all that
God created me to be … what He created each of us in His own image to be. I get that the cross is a picture of
humanity’s gross failings and sinfulness, but more importantly it is the
picture of God’s love, Christ’s humility, and the Spirit’s illumination of
truth. In this picture are glory, love,
self-sacrifice, humility, restoration, forgiveness, repaired relationship,
covered sins, eternal life, the conquering of both sin and death … and overwhelming
peace that exceeds all understanding.
As much as we fallen humans focus
on “being forgiven,” in Jesus’s entire last prayer – indeed His final teaching
we see in John 13-17 including foot-washing, the last supper, the vine, His relationship
with God, the Kingdom as life, God as Father, Jesus as Son, the Spirit as
comfort, plus persecution, glory, faith, and perseverance – there is not one
word about forgiveness of sin. Instead,
there is assurance of God’s truth.
When the chips were down and His
own end was near, Jesus prayed humbly for God’s glory, His own restoration, and for
our faith. So should we. It’s part of the deal.
That’s the best thing I can do for
my sake; that’s what’s in it for me.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) notes that humility frees us from pride.
Duh.
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