Toward the end of the last entry, I alluded to God's determination to perform a rescue operation to save His creation from sin and death. By Jesus' time, it had been more than five hundred years since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of Jacob's descendants to Assyria and Babylon. Many had returned to the Holy Land. But there were some serious problems. For one, the land continued to be under the control of various pagan empires. The days of King David and Solomon were behind them, and the future great king promised to David's lineage was nowhere to be found. Under the Romans, several “messiah” movements to restore political sovereignty had come and gone in failure. On top of that, a beautiful new Temple had been built on the site of the original one, but God's presence hadn't seemed to return with it. In short, the glorious descriptions in scripture of what would happen when the Jews returned to the land, of the ushering in of the Kingdom of God and their deliverance from the pagans, weren't yet fulfilled.
The Old Testament prophets had spoken of this return in various ways. Ezekiel chapter 37 used graphic imagery of a valley of dry bones reanimated by the breath of God to symbolize the restoration of Israel. This revelation was interpreted by many Jews as predicting a future physical resurrection of God's people. Resurrection of the righteous (along with the wicked) at the end of days was echoed in Daniel 12:2. Jeremiah had prophesied a renewal of the covenant between God and His people, in which His Law would be engraved in their minds and hearts and their sins and wickedness forgiven. (Jer. 31:31-34). In Isaiah's vision, the return of the Jews would result in a flocking of all the nations to Zion and God's creation of a new heavens and new earth.
According to many Jewish writers and interpreters of scripture, this re-birth wouldn't come without great distress. There was a belief that things would get much worse before they got better, that God's saving act would be ushered in only after birth pangs of increased oppression and injustice. When the Messiah arrived in Jerusalem, this worsened state of affairs would be reversed, the faithful dead would rise from their graves, and God's justice would be sovereign. Besides the crucial role of the Messiah in bringing in the “World to Come” (as Jews call it), scripture alludes to a mysterious “Suffering Servant,” who would bear the punishment for man's sin but be despised and rejected. (mainly in Isaiah 53) After being oppressed, afflicted, and “cut off from the land of the living,” he would “see the light of life and be satisfied.” (8,11) Traditionally, this figure was interpreted as representing Israel itself or a faithful remnant that would do God's will, that would offer up its life for the sins of God's lost sheep.
Only when the problems of human sin and disobedience were dealt with, then, would God's plans for His Kingdom come to fruition. This was a task that could not be accomplished by mankind as a whole nor by God's chosen people Israel, which in spite of being given the Law and the prophets was as much in sin as the Gentiles. What was needed was a rescue mission carried out by God Himself in the form of a human being, who would experience all of the temptations and trials of the rest of mankind but would remain obedient to God.
During his life on Earth, Jesus would take it upon himself to embody several of the prophetic “characters” that would bring in the World to Come: the faithful Israelite, carrying out the mission of God's people to be the light of the world and a blessing for the nations; the long-awaited Messiah, God's anointed king and priest; the Son of Man predicted by Daniel, worshiped and given authority over all the nations and whose kingdom would never be destroyed; and perhaps most surprisingly to the Jews of his day, the Suffering Servant. Through his ministry, death, and resurrection, Jesus revealed that these seemingly disparate vocations were always meant to point to one person, Jesus himself, who had come to offer eternal life, forgiveness of sins, and a place in God's renewed creation. Jesus would take all of these weighty vocations upon himself. He would come to serve rather than to be served, and experience great suffering and an excruciating death so that others could be freed. Out of divine love for us and obedience to the Father, he laid down his life and bore the punishment of the sins of the world in his flesh. (Romans 8:3)
The idea of the incarnation of God (or even one of His great prophets) dying a painful death on the cross has been a hard pill to swallow for lots of people ever since it happened. People have had thousands of years to come up with all kinds of counter-explanations of the events to avoid confronting the death of God's Son or to deny the supernatural nature of his resurrection appearances. But his death wasn't an illusion. His bodily presence on the cross was real. His suffering was real. Real, but temporary.
And so we come to the discovery of an empty tomb, a tomb that could not hold its occupant for long. We come to the shock and joy of the grieving women, who had come to prepare Jesus' body for burial, as they receive the incredible news that Jesus had overcome death through his obedience and love. Here, the first witnesses of the Christian faith received the truth that all hope was not lost, that their teacher, Lord, and friend had defeated death for their sake and for the sake of people in all generations afterward, until he comes again in glory to receive his kingdom. We will be there on that day, bowing down to our Savior, eternally grateful for the love he showed in going to the cross, and for the faithfulness that our Father showed in raising him. 
No comments:
Post a Comment