We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Cruciform Aikido Pt 2: God-Forsaken Judgment
So if Jesus is the supreme revelation of what God is like, as we explained in our last post, what does that tell us about the nature of God’s judgment?
As Jesus was dying on the cross he cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46). This shocking cry reveals that on the cross, the all-holy Son of God experienced God-forsakenness as he bore the sins of the world. In the words of Paul, God did not “spare his own Son” but “gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32) and “delivered him over to death for our sins” (Rom. 4:25). On the cross, we see, the one who bore our sin experienced God’s judgment on all sin by being abandoned to suffer the death-consequences of all sin. The essence of divine judgment, we see, is divine abandonment.
As he usually does, God worked through human agents when he abandoned Jesus. Hence Scripture also says that Judas delivered Jesus up to the Jewish authorities (Mt 26:2, 14-15; Mk 10:33; Lk 22:4-6) while the Jewish authorities in turn handed Jesus over to the Roman authorities to be killed (Mt 27:18; Lk 20:20). The Father’s act of delivering Jesus over to suffer, we see, was mediated through humans who delivered Jesus over to suffer. This is why Scripture describes these wicked acts as taking place in accordance with “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Ac. 2:23, cf. 4:27-28). It’s not that God predestined or in any way caused these specific individuals to betray or abuse Jesus, for this would make God the determiner of these individuals’ sin and thus make him complicit in their evil. Rather, God used individuals who had, of their own free volition, already made themselves evil, to fulfill his predestined plan. Through the wicked character and evil intentions of Judas as well as Jewish and Gentile authorities, God delivered Jesus over to suffer for the sins of the world.
But it wasn’t only human agents who played into God’s predestined plan. Even more importantly, God delivered Jesus over to Satan and other fallen powers to carry out their evil agendas against him. John indicates that Satan was instrumental in Judas’ betrayal (Jn 13:27), while Paul teaches that ruling cosmic powers were behind the scenes orchestrating Christ’s crucifixion (I Cor 2:6-8). Moreover, in the process of delivering Jesus over to suffer at the hands of these fallen powers, God was wisely turning the wickedness of these spirit-agents back on themselves such that they brought about their own defeat. Hence Paul teaches that, if the wicked powers had understood the wisdom of God that had been kept secret throughout the ages, they “would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (I Cor. 2:8). For by means of the crucifixion — which they themselves helped orchestrate — God “canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness” and thereby “disarmed the powers and authorities… triumphing over them…” (Col. 2:14-15). Through the unsurpassable love of God expressed on the cross, God defeated the devil, and thereby freed humanity and all creation from his rule (Heb. 2:14; I Jn 3:8).
Through the crucifixion, in short, God ingeniously turned evil back on itself and triumphed over it. But what does all this teach us about the nature of divine judgment?
Stay tuned…
Cruciform Aikido Series
Image by Flickr user bRokEnCHaRacTer . Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgement
Related Reading
Would God Kill a Baby To Teach Parents a Lesson?
Question: We have a group of guys that are going through your book “Is God to Blame” and a question came up that I would be curious how you would look at it. In the beginning of the book you ask the question “do you really think that God kills babies to teach parents a lesson?”…
Quotes to Chew On: The Cross and God’s Love
“The cross is the central way Christ images God. Christ was not an innocent third party who was punished against his will to appease the Father’s wrath. Christ is himself God, and he voluntarily took our sin and its just punishment upon himself. Hence his sacrifice does not appease God’s wrath; it reveals God’s love.…
Atonement: What is the Christus Victor View?
Most western Christians today understand the atonement as a sort of legal-transaction that took place between the Father and the Son that got humanity “off the hook.” The legal-transaction scenario goes something like this: God’s holiness demands that all sin be punished, which in turn requires that sinners go to eternal hell. The trouble is,…
Yahweh as the Dark Knight
I recently received an interesting analogy for The Crucifixion of the Warrior God from Aaron Reini. Thank you Aaron! In the final scene of “The Dark Knight,” Batman and Commissioner Gordon are standing over Harvey Dent, whom everyone in Gotham City looks up to as a hero, but whom the Joker had turned into a…
Are You Fully Alive? Here’s the Key
Image by rashdada via flickr. The cross reveals the full truth about us. This truth reconnects us with our true source of life, which in turn heals our idol addictions. This dimension of the cross is frankly so breathtakingly beautiful that, so far as I can tell, very few followers of Jesus have ever really grasped it.…
Challenging the Assumptions of Classical Theism
What came to be known as the classical view of God’s nature has shaped the common, traditional way that most people think about God. It is based in the logic borrowed, mostly unconsciously, from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their…