4/10/2020 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com
Many
things about Christianity are counterintuitive but none more than this: God the
perfect Father sent Jesus the perfect Son to Earth as a human being to suffer
and die for the sins of imperfect human beings so that those who believe in the
Son would receive the perfect Holy Spirit and live in eternal love with God.
Scripture
makes all this clear.
"For
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16).
"In
your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to
be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the
very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in
appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death -- even
death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:5-8).
"And
if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who
raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because
of his Spirit who lives in you" (Romans 8:11).
While
we properly emphasize Christ's deity, we sometimes underappreciate His full
humanity. It's distasteful for lowly humans to imagine that the God of the
universe could or would take on human form, let alone do so to save us.
Shouldn't that be beneath Him?
Of
course, that's precisely the point. It was beneath Him, and He did it
anyway out of His pure love for us -- each of us as individuals. He became
human to save us but also to empathize with us through His suffering so he
could feel our pain. His human suffering, which is worse than ours could ever
be considering He is God, makes Him approachable, as the writer of Hebrews
affirmed.
"For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let
us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace to help in time of
need" (Hebrews 4:15).
Through
His incarnation and passion, Jesus not only relates to us but also enables us
to understand Him. Given His perfect attributes, one would think mere humans
couldn't fathom His nature, much less relate to Him. And yet we can do
both.
Perhaps
we can't fully comprehend God's infinite love, power and knowledge, but we can
understand His nature. The Gospels reveal Jesus' nature and thus God's nature.
Jesus tells us, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John
14:9), and "The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me"
(John 12:45). Apostle Paul (Colossians 1:15) and the writer of Hebrews (Hebrews
1:3) express the same truth.
Christ's
perfection is so sublimely revealed in the Gospels that the finest fiction
writer couldn't have created a character like Him, because He is beyond the
capacity of the human intellect and imagination to construct.
Christ
spoke with divine authority: "The crowds were astonished at his teaching,
for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their
scribes" (Matthew 7:28-29). He radiated the full power of God. His words
exude truth, making His teachings irresistibly attractive to all who heard Him.
When the authorities asked the temple guards why they didn't arrest Jesus, they
replied, "No one ever spoke the way this man does" (John 7:46). Don't
you see? They sensed He was God.
We
must, then, appreciate both Christ's deity and humanity, because it is only
through understanding His deity that we can grasp the profound sacrifice in His
decision to become human, and to suffer and die for us. God's salvation plan
required Christ's dual nature because if Jesus were not both fully human and
fully divine, He could not have lived a sinless life, and He couldn't have
become sin for us.
One
of the major stumbling blocks to the Christian faith is the reality of human
suffering in the world, and we are getting a megadose of that now with the
coronavirus pandemic. We are comforted, however, by the Bible's assurance that
we have a God who intimately understands our pain even more than we do because
He lived it -- and continues to live it. Our pain is His pain. Jesus doesn't
stand apart from our suffering but lives in it, and He promises us that despite
the agony we will endure on Earth, the glory and bliss of Heaven will
infinitely eclipse it.
On
this Easter holiday, as we try to make sense of the human pain around us, let's
focus on the cross and on Jesus' triumphant declaration: "It is
finished" (John 19:30). Yes, it was a triumphant statement.
"This was
not the despairing cry of a helpless martyr; it was not an expression of
satisfaction that the termination of his sufferings was now reached; it was not
the last gasp of a worn-out life," says Christian writer Arthur Pink.
"No, rather was it the declaration on the part of the divine Redeemer that
all for which he came from heaven to earth to do, was now done; that all that
was needed to reveal the full character of God had now been accomplished; that
all that was required by law before sinners could be saved had now been
performed; that the full price of our redemption was now paid."
What
was finished? Christ's victory over Satan, sin and death so that we may live
and live abundantly (John 10:10). "Since the children have flesh and
blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the
power of him who holds the power of death -- that is, the devil -- and free
those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death"
(Hebrews 2:14). "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the
devil's work" (1 John 3:8).
Prayers
for all who are suffering physically and financially, and for America to
recover from this nightmare.
David
Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Guilty by
Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win." Follow him on Twitter
@davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
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