Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)
Even death on a cross… Even death on a cross… Even death on a cross…
Let that sink in for a moment. The God of the universe emptied Himself to become just like us and then died. He didn’t die of natural causes but was put to death as a criminal. Stunningly, the very people He created became His executioners, and in one of those rare first century moments, the state and religious establishment sang in perfect harmony as they performed a dirge for the divine. The tabernacling God was told to fold up His tent and hit the road to shouts of, “not in my neighborhood!” As it turned out, God with us, violated the safe space of those who believed themselves to be gods.
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1 :10 -13)
Despite some early popular press, Jesus was ultimately crossed off the ledger of religious accomplishment because He turned out to be a divine underachiever. The people were disappointed that He didn’t behave more like the ruler of the universe and kick some pagan butt instead of turning on His own and putting the religious faction in the hot seat.
Jesus came to save humans from sin and ended up being executed by sinners. We consider this the defining moment of Christianity, why?
We need to begin by asking ourselves two questions, first, what was this sin that condemned us? and second, why did God get so cross with us?
In the beginning, Adam and Eve walked with God along the well-marked Garden paths of Eden until one day a snake oil salesman tempted them to step off the beaten track and try his special fruit elixir. He promised that it was not only good for the aches and pains brought on by a hard days tilling, but also had the added benefit of making one wise enough to rise above the level of common laborer to that of master gardener. I think we too often think of sin as an unwieldy ledger of forbidden acts which multiply on a daily basis. We get so lost in the dense collection of sinful trees that we forget why we so brazenly entered the forest in the first place. We need to remember that Adam and Eve’s first transgression was motivated by a desire to be like God, which ultimately led to a divine obsession that caused us to view every subsequent sin as the divine right of a naked emperor.
Every sin we commit is not only a violation of God’s order, but is also an act of self-worship. While we conventionally ascribe idol status to sex, power, and money, I would argue that those temptations actually represent acts of self-worship. Our problem is not bowing down to idols but thinking that the world should bow down to us. We humans have a terrible tendency to supersize our powers to God like proportions. We create nuclear power, so we can read the Bible at night and then are shocked when it mushrooms out of control. We want to fill the earth and offer infertile couples reproductive help and then end up with octamom. Inspired by Jesus to heal the sick, we create antibiotics but then watch in horror as people die from superbugs. Sadly, instead of worshipping God with our creativity we use it to dethrone Him.
God did not empty Himself for a meet and greet, He came for a search and rescue. But rescue from what? I would argue that in order to save us He had to deal with the source of our problems, the original sin of thinking we are gods.
What then would be the natural end-point of the original sin of wanting to be like God? It would be the death of the One True God. Our original sin would never be complete until we had performed a divine hit job. We could never assume the throne if God insisted on remaining there. Our divine coup could only be completed if we could declare the King of the Jews dead and self-proclaim, “long live the king.”
“Whither is God? He cried. I shall tell you. We have killed Him – you and I. All of us our His murderers…. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe the blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us-for the sake of this deed, he will be a part of a higher history than all history hitherto.” (Nietzsche in his parable The Madman)
All of us, friends and enemies, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, women and men, are complicit in the execution of God. Jesus was betrayed by a follower with a kiss, mocked by the religious elite, denied by a friend, and then pierced by the authorities. The problem is that when God is killed, the earth gets a bit shaky, rocks get broken, and a darkness falls over our “enlightened thoughts,” and as we take the throne we quickly find that our cosmic ruling resume is a bit weak, even when laminated. The Good News, however, is that the rumors of God’s death had been greatly exaggerated, and to make it abundantly clear that He was alive and kicking, He went on a 40-day personal appearance tour.
The reason that Jesus’ one-time sacrifice was enough was because He drained the power of original sin by allowing it to be spent on the cross. Original sin could do nothing more severe than kill God and Jesus took that divine pretension to the grave. It is interesting that in the book of Revelation, the new heaven and earth is described as having the trees of life but not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was nowhere to be found because the axe of Jesus’ death and resurrection had cut it down. The choice of the tree in the Garden ushered us into the wilderness but the choice of the tree upon which Jesus hung allowed us access back into the Garden of God’s presence. We will not be tempted to sin in heaven because that sin was dealt with when we chose the better tree.
The first tree resulted in the delusion that we were the Arborist, but the second tree showed us that the true Arborist was a Suffering Servant. Instead of being tempted to become God, we are offered a Jesus, who despite being God, chose not to act like God. The initial humility that we should have exercised as image-bearers was actualized by the True Image of God, and if we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we vicariously enjoy a new status as one who didn’t succumb to the temptation. The immortal hubris of mortal humans had to be worked out by the mortal humility of an immortal God.
I had often wondered how it was possible for Jesus to die for all of the sins of mankind, but if you view Jesus’ death as the culmination of our original sin, then His crucifixion makes perfect sense because it takes the divine ambitions of every person and nails them to the cross. The work of Jesus, however, didn’t end there because through His resurrection, we realize that God’s not dead, He is surely alive. The poignancy of the passion is that we pierced the hands of the potter who crafted us, we marred the one who formed us in the womb, we made the one who breathed life into us take His last breath. Ironically, the death of the One whose throne we tried to assume became the King to which each and every knee will bow.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2: 9-11)
We spent the last of our original sin energy trying to bury Him in the ground only to find a forwarding address. Our divine ambition climaxed on the cross but then fizzled in front of an empty tomb. The Good News is that every time we try to make the case that we are god we find our testimony wither under Cross examination.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (Colossians 1: 15-23)
