The Cross and the Godhood of Jesus Christ
In Euripides's Alcestis the Spartan king, Admetos, is to die unless he gets a substitute. His wife Alcestis becomes his substitute but the thought of losing her is driving Admetos crazy. Heracles (Hercules), son of the gods and a regular guest at Admetos's house comes to visit, learns of the situation and goes out and rescues her from Death.
The poet Robert Browning zeroes in on the reputation of Heracles as a helper of mankind against the forces that are too strong for it. He makes the point that this going to humanity's defence is one of the authenticating marks of genuine godhood. Here's how he puts it:
Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!
I think this is the authentic sign and seal
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
And recommence at sorrow: drops like seed
After the blossom, ultimate of all.
Say, does the seed scorn the earth and seek the sun?
Surely it has no other end and aim
Than to drop, once more die into the ground,
Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there:
And thence rise, tree-like to grow through pain to joy,
More joy and most joy,-do man good again.
Browning lays hold not only on the theme of suffering to help humanity, he stresses the gladness of heart in which the enterprise is undertaken. It isn't a grim, reluctant, foot-dragging approach to the matter (Heracles "strode" off to effect the rescue). And it was "for the joy set before him" our Saviour despised the pain and loss barring his way.
As P.T. Forsyth insisted, the coming of God as the weak and wounded Jesus Christ is not only not surprising, it would be astonishing if he had not come in Jesus Christ in a rage to suffer on humanity's behalf. In this, Forsyth doesn't only have in mind the tender side of God, his gentle love and compassion though he does have that in mind; he's thinking of God's infinitely holy character. If God was moved in love, it was a holy love. Christ doesn't come simply blessing, being sweet, talking kindly and taking us in his loving arms—he comes sharing the suffering of the judgment that holiness must bring upon sin in order to deal with it!
The forgiveness of sins, the reconciliation of the world is achieved through love's judgment—the word of the cross says that!
And it had to be God's cross or it wouldn't be the love of God that worked the rescue. And it had to be a representative human in and through whom reconciliation was accomplished because a repentance worthy of the sin must come from humankind. In the cross Jesus repents for us. I don't mean he repents so that we don't have to—I mean what R.W. Moberly and McCleod Campbell have taught us, that he alone could give humanity a repentance which gives complete homage to the righteousness of God and to which we can (by faith in him) add our "amen" to his.
It was God and it was God in Christ who came to our rescue. The motivation for this coming/sending of God is that God "so loved the world" (John 3:16).
Not to be able to see that in the cross blinds us to the possibility of seeing it anywhere else in the world.
Would it make any difference to our suffering if we saw it as part of the saving process? If we saw it as part of the destiny of Christ in and through the "body of Christ" as they suffer for the rescue of humanity? What if you in your pain saw it as saying you are a co-worker with God in bringing the reconciling message to the world?
[Sufferers don't suffer alone, as if they were isolated units. They're shaped and enabled by the believing community and the faith, the gospel, that that community has lived out and proclaimed down the centuries. Specific members of the body bear the specific pain and loss to be endured but they don't suffer as independent units. In and through them the body suffers. But it is the body of Christ and in and through them the Christ continues to suffer on behalf of the world, making known his once-for-all atoning sacrifice to every generation. See Colossians 1:24 and 1 Peter 4:13, for example.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.