Pondering the Son of God

The story is told of a somewhat new Christian who, at his church, heard they were serving the Lord's Supper the following week. So when that Sunday rolled around, he went to church with an appetite and a cooler because from what he'd read in the Bible, whenever Jesus served a meal, there were frequently leftovers. Even though that's intended to be a humorous anecdote, there's a certain element of truth we can cull from it.

There are some of us who think that just because Jesus did something for someone else, He will do it for us as well. Joe had cancer, God healed him--Marge has cancer so God will heal her, too. Or maybe the couple that usually sit three rows in front of you in the early service gave their savings to a missionary and two months later, the husband was promoted to a position that netted an extra 15K a year; so certainly if you give all you have to a missionary, God will do the same. This is false thinking. Each of our walks with Christ are unique and God has different things He wants to accomplish through each of us. He wants to use your talents and abilities in a way that will bring glory to Himself. If that means He gives one child of His a Porsche and gives another a son with no legs, that's His prerogative. It's one of the things in the walk of a believer that many say we'll never understand this side of heaven. Romans 8:28 tells us that 'all things work together for good to those that love God, to those who are called according to His purpose'. That indicates that the Lord uses circumstances to shape us and to conform us to the likeness of His son. If God has given you a child with no legs, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need more work to conform to Christ's image because the Lord uses our circumstances not only to conform us to His son, but to prepare us for service and ministry.

I wonder how many Christians think about that. I don't all the time. I complain and gripe and sometimes fall prey to the thoughts of "How come his life is blessed in such and such a way?" or "She never had to deal with this, why do I get all the hard times?". Instead, I should trust my God to know what He's doing. If I've yielded my life to Him, I'm in no better hands. If I tell God I want to be more like Christ, it won't be an easy trip. The Christian life isn't easy. Jesus died as a result of living His. So will a lot of us. Most believers who die for the faith aren't even in this country (USA). The persecution we face is, more often than not, segregation in Hollywood and political platforms. Maybe it's all relative. In the USA, we have freedom of choice and you can do almost anything and be pretty much whatever you want to be. We have vast wealth and endless opportunities to succeed. We also have about a billion religions and none of them--in the eyes of society--are wrong. (Except Christianity, but most people won't admit that. Instead they just call us intolerant) So, if I'm at work and talking about Christ and someone says "Oh man, what a wimp! I mean, come on...turn the other cheek?!", I may see that as persecution. Right now there are people in China who could--though they wouldn't--laugh at the idea of that being persecution, because they're being strung up, shot, raped, having limbs severed. The list goes on. Being like Jesus wasn't intended to be easy.

I find myself pondering the sweet things about Jesus. What did He laugh at? Did girls think He was cute and tease Him when He was a teenager? Did He see people in the street and think "Hey, you look a lot like your great great great great great grandfather!"? Being God, did He see King Herod as a growing embryo and love Him, even though he would attempt to take His life in a matter of years? Was He ever spanked as a child? Although He performed miracles to glorify God, did He ever do them just as much for the sheer joy of seeing delighted faces? Why did He spit in the mud and rub it in the blind man's eyes to make Him see, when others were healed with a word? (And why did it take two times?)

But we know that Jesus suffered and we know that, in order to be like Him, so must we. We may not all be on the run like He was or hated in entire towns. We may never feel the excruciating pain of nails piercing our hands or know what it's like to have our backs so severely beaten that our muscle and bone is exposed in places. But it's part of the drill, part of taking up our cross daily. The apostle Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:12 says:

"Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

Are you being persecuted? Was Paul, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, not aware of a day to come where we would not be persecuted any longer, where we could live in a land so fat with it's own materials and fast food restaurants that we stopped caring about whether God even existed or not? Do any of us care? Just a handful of months ago, when New York's towers were attacked, large masses of people were frightened and confused and sought God. Many of them probably formed a love relationship with the Almighty God as a result. I would guess that most did not. After the smoke had cleared a little and the professional sport seasons got back into swing and the planes took to the air again, people stopped thinking about God so much. Vendors are still selling X-rated videos, kids in the ghetto are still getting shot and people are telling Osama bin Laden jokes. (My personal favorite was on a local tavern marquee: Osama, Stop on in! First shot is on us.) Christians I spoke with are angry, as they should be, but none that I knew mentioned that they were praying for his salvation. And here's a shocker: Jesus loves him the same as He loves you and me. In fact, our sins may not affect as many people--certainly not with such violent permanence--but they are as grievous to the Lord, because the Lord detests all sin. (I'm not implying that the bin Ladens and Hitlers of this world will have the same punishment as the sweet old atheist across the street, but rather making a statement on God's perfect purity).

Are you persecuted, are you suffering?

The Bible has many references to suffering for the name of Christ. In Acts 5:41 after the apostles were flogged for speaking about Jesus, it says: "The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name." Other verses include:

"Not only so, but we [Or let us] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." (Romans 5:3,4)

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." (Romans 8:17)

"For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Corinthians 1:5)

"For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have." (Phillipians 1:29,30)

But we do not suffer alone:

"If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it" (1Corinthians 12:26)

Your brothers and sisters are called to suffer with you and to bear your burdens. None of us need to go it alone that are in Christ. Not only is He always with us, but so should our brothers and sisters be. We should be praying for one another and helping each other however the Lord enables and empowers us. Whether that means taking a meal to a sick elder or sitting with a dear brother who is going through job loss, we ought to be able to respond where God plugs us in. (We aren't called to do all things or be all things to all people but each of us has gifts, abilities and righteous desires and these are what we can use as springboards to help us toward action).

Too many times today we have lip service. I couldn't begin to guess if this is statistically accurate, but my guess is that more often than not the church falls victim to this mentality.

"I love you, sister, let's do lunch sometime."

"Give me a call because I care about you."

"I'm going to pray for you this week."

These statements are great if they are backed up by action. But so often it seems like people say the right thing but have no follow-through. You call the sister to do lunch only to find out she's too busy. You call the one who says they care only to find out they, too, are 'busy'. And I'm unsure as to whether the person promising to pray actually does, but I know that I don't always pray for those that I know are suffering. How many sermons have you sat through where the preacher sounding angry and cynical and didn't mention a lot about grace and God's love, only to have him tell you--at the end--that he and the church love you?

Awhile ago I wrote a satirical column regarding what I call the 'WWJD' movement. In it, I invented another acronym called 'WWGD' and I went on to say it could stand for whatever you wanted it to. For example, What Would George Do? or What Would Gore Do? (this was around the time of the Presidential elections) or What Would Gilligan Do? The whole point was two-fold. Number one, I think a lot of people wearing the WWJD bracelets, gauging by their lifestyles, weren't really interested in what Jesus would do; but since their mentality was probably that of one who says He was a great teacher or a gentle hippie with great love, peace and happiness vibes they wore it thinking it would remind them they need to be a little nicer. The second point was that I don't really think any of us ought to ask ourselves what Jesus would do because, frankly, you and I aren't Jesus. Jesus was and is forever God. It's been said that it would be better to ask What Would Jesus Want Me to Do? and I agree. If you know about a woman with cancer in your church and ask yourself 'What Would Jesus Do?' you'd probably tell her to rise up and be healed and her sins are forgiven, right? (Would she?) By asking yourself, "What Would Jesus Want me to Do?", you'd likely have a different response. (You may end up sitting with her or offering to help her clean house on those bad chemo days). With few exceptions, we should ask ourselves what Jesus would want us to do. One exception, one occasion where WWJD is appropriate, is to suffer. Did Jesus suffer? Yes. Will you suffer, if you are found in Christ as His co-heir? Yes.

Should we be grateful for our hardships, thankful for the pain and the suffering, rejoicing when we aren't feeling especially well or prosperous? Yes. Should Jesus be our example, our brother and Lord who has gone ahead of us and reserves a place in Eternity for us, the finish line to our race; should the Lion of Judah and King of Kings who died for the sins of everyone who was and ever will be, and is an example of righteousness and purity be the One whose likeness we adapt to? Absolutely.

So as we ponder the Son of God, we consider His suffering and the fact that none of us can be Christ. We can be His ambassadors and, in some cases, the only Christ people will see but we can't be God. Jesus gets to do that. And as we ponder the Son of God, we see the brotherhood we have with Him. We see that we are co-heirs with Him and that He has reserved a place for us in Heaven. What an amazing privilege. That our Father should love us so much that He'd send His son, Jesus, to die a horrible death in our place. What are we willing to do for Him in return. Many of us go to church and sings hymns about the 'wondrous cross'. Wondrous? Really?

I don't wonder sometimes why those that are not believers think we're nuts. With our talk of being 'washed' in blood and praising God for the wonderful cross of Jesus and being made whiter than snow and all the other esoteric phrases we use. Why so much emphasis on the cross? Execution by crucifixion was painful, horrible and violent. There was nothing beautiful about it. Jesus wasn't pretty hanging on His cross, with satin swags above his head and a bouquet of hyssop at his feet like pictures make him seem. When you think about two heavy beams of wood, intersected to form a cross, and the body of a man suspended upon it with nails through his hands and feet it loses some of its romance. The wood was undoubtedly rough against Jesus' back which had been flayed open by the lashes He'd received earlier. The cross He hung on was probably caked with blood and other body fluids that would ooze during the process of His execution. There were probably flies and other insects hovering about, tantalized by the sweaty blood on our Lord's brow. The cross as we know it was nothing but a primitive electric chair, a forerunner of gas chambers and firing squads. But we don't bronze them and put them around our necks, do we? It's because our Saviour died on one that we wear our crosses and hang them on our walls proudly. Yet we bleach it of all it's blood, gore and vileness and we cover it with gold, brass, beads and affix it to earrings, silver chains and ankle braclets. We make twelve foot crosses out of walnut and hang them at the front of our churches. But there is no blood on them, nothing morbid adheres to their shiny veneers. In 'A Stranger to Self Hatred', Brennan Manning says:

"Lamentably, Christian piety has prettified the passionate God of Golgotha; Christian art has banalized unspeakable outrage into dignified jewelry; Christian worship has sentimentalized monstrous scandal into sacred pageant. We have corrupted our sense of reality by sentimentalizing it. Pious imagination, romantic preaching and lifeless or raucous worship overshadow the real Jesus. The Christian should tremble and the whole community quake during the veneration of the cross on Good Friday."