How dare you show up, God!

There are songs that act like a bladed spotlight penetrating, cutting away at the walls I make, cutting deep enough to expose my heart and reveal who I am. In these words I hear the sentiments of myself and see myself for who I am with all its ugliness,

Behold the man upon a cross, 

My sin upon His shoulders; 

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice 

Call out among the scoffers.  

(How Deep is the Father’s Love for Us) 

As I see my heart, I come to understand more deeply that without God’s grace, my rebellious heart would have no hope at all.

Many will say, if God showed up I would believe in him. Or even we might say we admire Jesus, even though we do not believe he is a God or that the Christian religion is valid. And most of us at least consider Jesus to be an ok guy. Christians may be jerks, but Jesus was a good moral teacher that taught people to love one another. Love is good. Can’t hate a person like that, right? I suppose, but do we know the man. We can say we like Jesus because for most of us Jesus is an idea, a concept more than a real person, with whom we must interact. We can define and mold an idea to our imagination and fit it around our expectations. If we keep him contained, Jesus is not a person we have to get to know. Here is the deal, if you have this casual knowledge of Jesus and like him, it is probably because you do not know much about him. Yes, they greeted him with joy and a kingly welcome when he entered Jerusalem. But only a few days later, those who were alive and interacted with him when he was here ended up crying out, “crucifying him.” 

But we might say, “Yeh, they crucified him back then, but I wouldn’t do that.” Well, . . . is that really true. Do you know him? Have you experienced him, seen him, heard him speak, like those who crucified him? He deeply challenged the hearts of all who were near him. Why do you think your response would be different? We tend to see the best in ourselves. “If I was there, I would have behaved differently. . .I would have stood up to Nazism, racism, slavery, etc. blah, blah, blah . . .” We believe we are wiser, better prepared, stronger, unique, and not like all others who have come before us. But if we are honest with ourselves, we are no better than others, for our hearts are prone to the same longings for safety and comfort. We have a strong instinct for self-preservation. We are by no means unique or superior in this instinct but are flawed with the same weaknesses and faults as those who came before us. I know this because I have seen this so many times in my own heart and actions. And even though I wish I could simply shake them off, they cling to me. Or better said they are a cancer inside of me, that requires major intervention in order to be removed.

When I say this you may think I am going to say that you would be offended by Jesus’ moral teaching. Though this is often true, it is not the core of the offense. This is crucial to understand, Jesus was not a moral teacher. He did not come to make us better people. He was not creating a to-do list or steps on how to be a good person. He was not giving strategies on how to love others. He did not come to build us up or to make us feel better about ourselves.

He came to destroy us. To call us to lose our life. He had come to destroy our world. For he was calling people out of the kingdom of this world, out of the darkness, out of oppression into his Kingdom. Jesus said, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46, ESV). 

We hear darkness, and we think of things that are clearly evil. Things like murder, rape, slavery, and abuse. But the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not something that was grotesque, but “was good for food,” and “a delight to the eyes” and “was to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). The fruit “opened their eyes.” The truth is we are not attracted to things we find grotesque. We are attracted to the things we love and hold dear. But in turning to these things we have turned away from our creator to things that have been created. We have abandoned the source of light, and therefore we are in darkness.

Most of us are attached to the world we live in, the things we have and the ideas we treasure and the joys we experience and so were most in the days Jesus walked the earth. Jesus said that we need to be willing to cut off our right arm or pluck out our right eye. The right arm was seen as a symbol of one’s power, the eye as something most precious to us. If someone came to chop off our right arm or pluck out our right eye, we would fight and fight to the death to defend ourselves. Imagine if someone was coming to destroy your world and all that you loved. How would you respond? Would you defend yourself? What if that enemy declared “no surrender and no quarter”? Yes, the people in Jesus’ day were no different than us. Jesus is by no means comfortable. Jesus has come and threatens all that we know and hold on to. He calls us to abandon this world and follow him. He has called us to die. This is not casual moral teaching; it is a line in the sand. Jesus said that the world “hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (John 7:7, ESV). We do not want to hear this message. Love does not abide evil. It destroys and conquers it completely with no option for surrender or quarter. Love has come to conquer us. 

A popular verse is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” But right after this, Jesus makes it clear, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19,20, ESV).  

Jesus may intrigue us, but in the end, we love this world, and we want to hold on to it. We will take the Jesus of our imagination, but we will not take the Jesus who has come to conquer. Jesus has come to destroy this evil age and if we cling to it, we will be destroyed along with it. And this being so, Jesus is a threat to the life we love. He is a threat to us. Jesus made it clear, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25, ESV).

And so, Jesus came to rescue us from our fate, to save us from the darkness, to save us from ourselves, but we love the darkness more than the light, we love the life we have made more than God. We love the darkness and do not want to let it go, and so the light becomes our enemy and invasion force, rather than a rescue mission and our salvation. Though it is true that Jesus is the enemy of evil and darkness, He also the one who has come to rescue us from evil and darkness. And yet because the darkness has become so dear to us, we flip things in our upside down world and call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. We flee from the light, into the comfort of darkness, and so choose our fate. 

Jesus’s miracles and teachings fascinated and intrigued the masses, but in reality, he was not well-loved by the people of his day. On occasion, people picked up stones to kill Jesus after hearing him speak. He was hounded by the Pharisees and Sadducee. Even the crowds who followed him and appeared to love him, eventually abandoned him, because they found his teachings too hard for them. Their love was the comforts of this world. Only a few stuck it out, and even those deserted him when he was arrested. And in the end, when he was brought before the people to see what they would have done, they cried out, “Crucify him!”   

When I take an honest look at my own heart, I am with those who tried to stone him, with those who abandoned and deserted him, and in that crowd who called for his death. I can say with the hymnist, “Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.” 

Jesus said,  

Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’ (John 15:23-25) 

So, some will say if God showed up, I would believe in him. He has showed up and he has performed great miracles, validating his claims. Those that were there and saw these miracles and heard his teachings instead of believing, killed him. Do not think you would have acted any differently than those who saw him in his day. You too, would defend the things you love. We love this world and are ready to fight against anything that has come to destroy the things we cherish. And this is what the Kingdom of God does, it destroys this evil age and calls us to repent and to come to God and be reconciled with him through the work and worth of Jesus alone. In the end, Love will overcome, and this evil age will come to an end. Though we fight it, we cannot stop it. Love will conquer evil. However, this world is all we have known. What God has called us to is unknown and uncomfortable. We cringe and shrink back and are afraid to tread. We see our world being destroyed and we desperately want to fight to keep it. We believe when we fight against Jesus, we are protecting what is good, fighting against an enemy who is coming after what we believe is good, beautiful, wise, and true. And we are willing to do anything to keep the “good” we have. So, in this frantic desire to protect what I have, regardless of how much God pursues me in his love, I hear my angry voice defending what I love and crying out “Crucify him!” “Away with the man who has come to threaten my world.”