I've always had a hard time understanding the nature and purpose of Christ's sacrifice. Sometimes I ask myself: what lesson are we meant to learn from God's decision to be made flesh? Why did God choose to be born into humanity? And then, to allow himself to be sacrificed! To undergo agony and tortures of the worst kind - on our behalf? How exactly did this help us? What was the point of it?
It staggers the mind to think that a being so majestic - all-powerful, all-knowing, God! - would choose to be born as a human. To take on lowly humanity, and walk the earth just as any mortal. That alone staggers the mind. But to add to that, the willing acceptance of such a horrifying death...why would anyone do this? Why would God...?
Why would the one being who could never at any time be forced to suffer - choose suffering?
When we struggle through our trials, when we find ourselves suffering through seemingly undeserved punishments...many times, we see and feel how often life is unfair. All of us have at some point found ourselves in a place where we doubted our importance in God's eyes. Where we felt that there was no plan for us, that we could not be any less significant; that what we do doesn't matter. That who we are doesn't matter. Who among us has not felt hurt, unjustly hurt? Who has not felt at times, that the path of life was too long to walk, that the pain of life was too great to bear? Who of us has not cried out in despair, "oh God - why have you abandoned me?"
Yet was there ever a more blameless sufferer than Christ? Was there ever anyone less deserving of a seemingly endless, drawn-out torture and humiliation, ending in death? We could have been sent down alone, to walk a path beset with dangers - a path of pain, of anguish, a path of agony - while God sat on high and watched from a safe distance. But God did not do this. God said, "I will not forsake you. I too will walk this path." God became one of us. For the sake of us, God forsook his only begotten son - for the sake of us, God forsook himself.
Life is painful. Life is dangerous - by its very nature. There must be pain, because we are mortal, and must die. But God came down to show us that suffering and death is not the end. This world is not our final home. God came to show us the way to our true home, and to reassure us that even as we walk that path and suffer those pitfalls, God has suffered with us. God walks that path with us still.
God never needed to suffer for his own sake - but God chose to suffer for our sake. So that we would know that God is not aloof from us in our pain. God took on our pain, so to show us our salvation. And in his final words on that day of suffering so long ago, Christ himself cried out in despair: "My God! Why have you abandoned me?"
Do not believe that you have ever been abandoned. No matter what pain and shame and torture this world may put upon you, even in the worst pain that you will ever feel: God is with you. No pain can last. After suffering, solace. After imprisonment, release.
After death, there will be life.
1 comment:
I feel like I've said it better. I should have emphasized the idea of our being born into this life, in a mortal world - we are born into death; Christ's example shows that no matter what our suffering, death need not be the end. In his sacrifice, death is conquered - and we, by following in his example, are made capable of being saved. For later, for after life - for eternity.
Something like that. It's a case of not deserving eternity. Which we don't, which we didn't - of ourselves, and in our own life. Christ's example says that God has judged us worth saving, even though we know we don't deserve it.
And I didn't put anything in about how Christ's sacrifice, Christ's decision to prefer God's will above his own, counteracts and undoes the fall of humankind in Adam & Eve's decision to prefer their will to God's. Prior to Christ, all humanity had was that choice, that inheritance, that example.
After Christ, we have another inheritance. All it takes is for us to collapse with relief and gratitude into the plenitude and mercy of God's judgment upon us: which is Jesus Christ.
So there's basically 3 things. I'll have to wrap 'em up all succinct in one go at some point, but the truth is, Christ's sacrifice does make sense to me now! Where it used to not. It makes sense in the context of humanity's progress (if you can call it that), and in the sense of God's revelation to us of God's will for us. It refutes not just our fall, but death itself. It does so powerfully and with effect, and we can see why and where the effect comes.
And on top of that, it demonstrates God's love! God's willingness to show us that though we do and will feel abandoned and forsaken, in Christ we will never be. Even Christ felt that way, but - see!
He is risen.
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