Friends: Embracing the mystery of the cross while living with joy and certainty is a great way to be a Christian.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #862

May 23, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Just Like That

By Bob Walters

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Jesus to Nicodemus, John 3:17

There are many things I do not understand about the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, but the obvious lessons – to me anyway – are plain as day.

 The appearance of Jesus in humanity proves God’s existence.  The self-sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross proves God’s obedience and righteousness.  The resurrection of Jesus proves God’s command over life and death. Jesus sending the Holy Spirit proves God’s personal involvement in our lives, loves, faith, and creativity. 

Our human minds want to put Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit behind three different doors with three different functions.  That is the heresy of “modalism”, and it is wrong.  The Trinity’s eternal life of community and love should be our model – since we are created in God’s image – for completeness in Christian fellowship and Kingdom obedience.  But we divide and judge God the same way we divide and judge humanity.

We over-think details of the cross like whether Jesus was separated from God, or “when” specifically we were forgiven, or where Jesus’s spirit “went” when He died.

I’ve heard good ideas for and against God’s separation from Jesus – “why have you forsaken me?” – but Romans 8 says we can’t be separated from the love of God, so I go with that one.  I think our forgiveness was founded in the very presence of Jesus, not only the history-changing, human life-changing event of the cross, which defeated the death that man received in the Fall.  Whether dead Jesus’s human spirit went to Hades or to Heaven or nowhere before Easter Sunday … does not matter to me.

That the resurrection showed Jesus was God? That really matters to me.  

Our contemporary and ubiquitous Christian focus on sin, guilt, forgiveness, and salvation creates a tightly defined, though to me schizophrenic, window through which we experience God’s love.  Where is the joy?  We Christians are still begging for the divine forgiveness already freely ensured on the cross 2,000 years ago. It was a gift no one would imagine or think to ask for. What if one sacrifice restored our life in God?

That is what Jesus did on the cross, “once for all” (Romans 6:10). It is finished.

We are oddly urged to shout our joy in Jesus while contemplating our horrible filth, unworthiness, and sin, plus guilt for the suffering He endured on the cross. All true, but His grace enables our rebirth into God’s Kingdom, revealing God’s desire and love.  A mother in childbirth endures great pain, but it is her love a child learns, not her pain.

That is what I do with my rebirth in Jesus. I do not demand answers; I am thankful knowing the truth that God exists, considers me part of the team (Jesus), and guides my steps in love (Spirit).  Grace allows me to press forward, not look backward. My purpose is no longer a mystery, it is to glorify God and to participate in His glory.

Chistian irony today is that the selfless love of Jesus is so often preached as the focus on, and condemnation of, self.  We are to examine ourselves, sure, but to see if Jesus is in us.  Which to me means, who must I forgive? Jesus already forgave me.

In faith, we find our salvation today in God’s truth and grace.  Just like that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) today, May 23, celebrates human birthday no. 69.