Hi all,
Last
week I shared how Jesus lives perpetually in the glory and power of His
resurrection, and by the new birth our spirit also lives within the
ever-present and eternal condition of 'is risen'.
My
thought today is how Jesus paying for our sins on the cross also spans
time and space, but in a different way. Let me explain.
Our
spirit is born again and empowered with the life of God provided by
Jesus living in 'is risen. Our soul is being renewed to 'is risen'
truths in the process called discipleship. But our spirit and soul are
trapped in a fallen, earth-made body which continually wants to go the
way of the world. One day we'll have a glorified body made of heavenly
material which will by nature always want to please God like our spirit
does, but for now we are in earth bodies.
This
sets us up for a life-long tug of war between our 'is risen' empowered
spirit and our 'do your own thing' body, with our soul being the battle
ground between the warring sides*. (*Galatians 5:17, James 4:5)
One
day we are emotionally and mentally on top of the world, ready to slay
the dragon, and the next we succumb to the sin(s) we hate in our spirit
but which our flesh loves.
The cross that spanned time
When
Paul wrote "while we were yet (still) sinners Christ died for us" in
Romans 5:8, it was only about 20 years after the cross, meaning he was
writing to people who were in fact alive and living in Rome at the time
Jesus was on the cross in Israel. The original readers of his letter to
the Romans could nod their heads in agreement as they read that line,
and tell each other what they were doing in the spring of that year when
Jesus died.
We
live 2,000 years later, and though that verse has been used in
countless sermons, it isn't accurate for us to say "while we were yet
(still) sinners Christ died for us", because we weren't even born until
more than 1900 years later!
A
much more accurate understanding for us is found in II Timothy 1:9,
written just before Paul's death in the middle 60's AD, to Timothy in
Ephesus. This was read by people, the largest majority of whom by that
time, were born after the cross:
"Who
(God the Father) has saved us and called us with a holy calling not
according to our works, but according to His (Father's) purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ *before the world began." (*literally 'before times eternal').
The time-tornado
We
talk about how our sins were on that cross, looking back 2,000 years.
And we read about Old Testament saints like *Abraham and **David who
looked forward in time and saw by the Spirit the cross that would one
day pay the price for their sins. (*Hebrews 11:17-19, **Acts 2:25-28,
31)
That
means the Father did something beyond the laws of nature at the cross;
While observing His Son on the cross at a specific point in time, He
transcended time by pulling all sins from the first sin of Adam up to
the point of the cross and put them on Jesus, while also from that
point of the cross looked forward in time to all our future sins we
would ever sin, and put past, present, and future sins all on the cross
at the same time.
Like some
celestial giant standing above the cross, it was like He took one arm
and reached back through time to the start of man's history and swept
all man's sins up in His mighty reach, while simultaneously with His
other arm stretched forward in time to the end of man's
history, sweeping up all future sins in His span, then bringing His
arms together He funneled them all onto Jesus on the cross.
Paul
states in II Timothy 1:9 that in the mind of the Father God, He first
did this before He ever created the physical universe, and followed
through with it at the cross, which was when time caught up with the
Plan.
He brought
all sins past, present, and future together to one time and
one geographical location onto His Son on that cross. Is it no wonder
Jesus, who had always called the Father, Father, now cried out in agony
as He felt the weight of the sin of the world upon Him; "My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?"
The test of something of man or something divine in origin
Man
describes things by that which is known by man, meaning for instance,
if we could take a modern airplane back in time 500 years, the people
seeing it would describe it as a giant bird. This shows human origin in
the description as they simply relate it to what they already know. An
outside - that is to say divine - source of information in this example
would be to describe exactly what it was, a flying machine built by man
for carrying people and goods.
Similarly,
creation stories that relate the creation of the world by things known
by man, reveal a human source - not divine. So when several ancient
religions say the earth is carried on the back of a turtle or tortoise,
we know that is natural knowledge. Yet for just one example, Job 26:7
states plainly that God "hangs the earth on nothing", showing an ancient
understanding of the earth and space that reveal that knowledge was
given from outside of mankind.
The cross and the resurrection - both reveal divine knowledge
And
so it is we see the claims of both the cross and the resurrection did
not originate with man, for in their claims is knowledge beyond people
merely sharing information related to natural things around them.
The
New Testament authors did not claim the story of 1 man hanging on a
cross for the sins of the world were limited to that time and space and
things they could relate to in their life experience, but instead wrote
how God spanned time to gather all sins past, present, and future and
put them on that one Man, His Son, to buy back man from death.
That
ancient man, who didn't even have the ability to travel faster than a
horse could carry them, wrote of the cross spanning time past and future
to gather all sins to that 1 event, is beyond their ability to think or
even imagine.
Similarly,
the men and women who claimed Jesus was resurrected from the dead did
not tell their experiences in a way limited to man's natural knowledge -
as if Jesus merely revived or even that someone stole the body. No
one claimed a giant turtle carried Him to heaven, for instance.
The context of the resurrection story was set by angels who used the
gnomic aorist, "He is risen", indicating His resurrection is a condition
of existence that spans time and is simply beyond the ability of
those (ancient) men and women to even imagine.
Add
to that the eyewitness accounts including over 500* at the same time
seeing Him alive after His resurrection, which reveals no plot nor lie
nor tale spun of their own, and the only conclusion is that the
resurrection has a divine origin, outside the knowledge of man. (*I
Corinthians 15:6)
Thus
our sins had a finite and definable end at the cross, while us being
joined to 'is risen' life and power is an eternal state of existence.
Wow.
I
have concluded what Peter did in Acts 2:24: "But God raised Him up,
having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He
could be held by it", which led to His perpetual condition, the state of
existence that "is risen" reflects - forever free and alive - and so
are we...by His amazing grace.
With
Paul let us acknowledge we have not yet arrived, but this one thing we
do, we forget those things which are behind, and reach forth to those
things before...we press toward the mark of the high call in Christ
Jesus.
Another random through next week, until then, blessings,
John Fenn
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