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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good
Jesus left anything that resembled army-tank-like protection and allowed Himself to experience humanity in its most pitiful form.
Perhaps the greatest blessing in writing these books has been the way they have helped me to connect with the emotions of Jesus. He has joined His heart to mine, giving me His perspective, and this has been the perfect cure for my insanity.
We live in a world wracked by broken relationships, addictions, and problems without number. Many are turning to legal and illegal drugs to numb the pain. Others cling to more “natural” addictions like overworking or sex. As someone who understands the desire for these sorts of options, I am grateful that Jesus has offered me the only real solution.
His solution, however, was far from what I expected. As a young man, I thought that with Him living in me I would be like a man fighting swordsmen from inside an army tank. There would be few setbacks and lots of squashed enemies. I would roll over difficulties while singing a spiritual version of “We will, we will rock you!”[76] Instead I found a struggle that exposed my human weaknesses and left me with no good option but the heart of God.
I gradually learned that the Christian life was beyond my abilities. I was impulsive and emotional by nature, subject to ups and downs, scared, angry, prone to addiction, hypersensitive. I struggled just to act like a normal person who could hold down a job and raise a family. Though my challenges were somewhat unique to me, the fact that they were a long way from army-tank-spirituality wasn’t unique. All of us are weak human beings in need of God’s power.
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us.
(2 Corinthians 4:7, The Message)
The Christian life was supposed to be beyond my abilities. My unadorned clay pot of an ordinary life was designed to show that any good I did came from Him rather than from me. My army-tank vision of spirituality didn’t match what Jesus expected of me – or even what He experienced when He lived on earth. His ordinariness was as much of an issue for Him as mine was for me.
That's why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people's sins, he would have already experienced it all himself — all the pain, all the testing — and would be able to help where help was needed …He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin.
(Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15, The Message)
Though I believed these verses theologically, I couldn’t figure out how they could be true in practice. Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, and was bold enough to denounce the Pharisees. How could He be like me? He seemed to be fortified with some sort of spiritual titanium-alloy that made Him invulnerable, squashing enemies as He triumphed in life. Could He really relate to my struggles?
I found the verses that helped me to make an emotional connection with “Jesus the man” in Psalm 22 and Mark 9:19. These glimpses into His heart showed Him to be far different than I had expected.
I will start with Psalm 22. I believe it is a prophetic prayer that shows what Jesus was thinking and feeling as He died on the cross. As evidence for this, He quoted Psalm 22:1, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” from the cross (Mark 15:34). The psalm also makes a number of amazing predictions about His death, for example: “They pierced My hands and My feet” (Psalm 22:16), “They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:18, Matthew 27:35), and the mocking, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him deliver Him” (Psalm 22:8, Matthew 27:43). Finally, Hebrews 2:11-12 lists Jesus as the speaker in Psalm 22:22, “I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise You.” In a strange scriptural paradox, Jesus on the cross quoted David, and David writing Psalm 22 quoted Jesus on the cross.
To me, Psalm 22 is one of the most precious chapters in the Bible. It gives a picture of “Jesus the man” at His lowest point, and this allows us to see Him as an unadorned clay pot who found His Father’s incomparable power.
Its famous first verse, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” is the heart’s cry of a man who feels abandoned. Jesus was all but overcome as He experienced the Father not giving Him the kind of help He felt He needed. God seemed to have failed Him – to have left Him alone to endure more than He could bear.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.
Consider the statement, “O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.” Jesus was looking back at His recent experience, which included more than the six hours He spent on the cross (it included days and nights). He described it as an ongoing struggle that was climaxing in His death. God did not seem to hear (which is hardly the way we would expect Jesus to describe His prayer life). He felt as if the Father was far from helping Him.
First a quick theological note: we know that the Father always heard Jesus’ prayers (John 11:41-42). We also know that Jesus always trusted God, so there was no sin of unbelief here. But that doesn’t mean His prayers were always answered in the time and way He desired. It also doesn’t mean that He never experienced doubt, which is the temptation toward the sin of unbelief.
What we see in Psalm 22 is Jesus speaking transparently about His emotional weakness. He faced disappointment in the same way we do (Hebrews 4:15). It gnawed at Him during the daytime and in the night season; He cried out, but God seemed far from His groaning.
When He reached the cross, where the Father actually did turn from Him as He bore the sins of the world, it pushed Him past His human breaking point. He expressed His anguish by blurting out, “Why have you forsaken Me?”
Now that is a High Priest I can relate to! I have spoken similar words many times. There have been times when I have stepped out in faith and He didn’t come through as I expected, leaving me feeling wounded and abandoned. I cried out, in effect, “Where are You!? How can you expect me to handle this if you don’t give me more help!?”
Jesus wasn’t holding to a forced positive confession; He was honestly pouring out His inner turmoil to the only One who could give Him the ability to deal with it. He wasn’t being “army-tank-like;” He was searching for His Father’s strength while being an honest human being.
To fully understand Jesus’ words, I believe we need to consider the three years that led up to the cross. He had healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed thousands of people from a few loaves and fish, yet people didn’t understand Him. They interpreted His ministry in terms of their limited religious views rather than receiving what He was really offering.
Though we might like to think that this never bothered Jesus, the evidence says otherwise. Consider the following verse:
Jesus said, "What a generation! No sense of God! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? …"
(Mark 9:19, The Message)
Jesus was upset. He had shared the reality of His Father’s love day after day, and He had done it with a grace and power like no one else before Him, but people still didn’t get it. They seemed to hear, but they easily fell back into their previous mindset.
Jesus was like any of us. He wanted some tangible evidence that something permanent was happening – that His ministry was working. When people failed to give it to Him, He was bothered. To express His disappointment He said, “How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this?”
I have found Mark 9:19 to be life changing. Why? Because it totally contradicted my image of Jesus. In my view, He would never make a statement like that. He was blissfully gentle at all times, never perturbed by our spiritual incompetence.
To be honest, I was afraid of a Jesus who had to put up with me. That seemed a little too close to giving up on me. To my mind, Mark 9:19 was almost sinful on Jesus’ part; if I hadn’t believed that He lived a perfect life, I might have concluded that this was the one exception to His flawless character. Shouldn’t a sinless man be infinitely patient? Shouldn’t He glide through life untouched by the chaos around Him? A statement like “how much longer do I have to put up with this” was so different from what I expected that it forced me to rethink my whole image of Him.
Jesus said that those who saw Him saw the Father (John 14:9), so if He was upset, it was because the Father was upset also. The Father had been waiting for results (or fruit as the Bible calls it) for centuries. He had sent prophets, scribes, and teachers, but the job wasn’t getting done, so He finally sent His Son. If we were Him, wouldn’t we be hurt if people were exposed to all that He was offering and they instead chose spiritual ignorance? He was emotionally invested in their lives. He was laying out before them the most marvelous gift He could give, yet they refused to put in the effort to receive it. Jesus expressed His dissatisfaction so everyone could know that something was wrong.
We have to be careful at this point. We might be tempted to interpret Jesus’ words as, “Forget these people. I can’t deal with them.” That is certainly what we might mean if we said “how much longer do I have to put up with this.” Jesus, however, showed the meaning of His words with His actions. He continued to love the people who bothered Him. He dedicated His time and effort to them, and He eventually died for them.
We see the final expression of this commitment in Psalm 22. Jesus was making the ultimate sacrifice for our sakes, even as He expressed his disappointment with the visible results. He had cried out day and night for His people, but they still didn’t understand. Though He knew that everything was happening according to the Father’s plan, He wanted more, and Psalm 22:2 shows Him coming to grips with not receiving it.
I don’t tend to say, “How much longer do I have to put up with this?” I tend to say, “Can’t people read?” Allow me to explain: When I was a young Christian, I was one time discussing a doctrinal point with some fellow Christians. I am not sure what it was, but I do remember that they seemed unable to understand the verses I presented to support my beliefs. It was as if they could not take in words that disagreed with their opinion.
I didn’t mind them holding to their view, because I knew I might be missing something. I did think, however, they should at least admit that the verses I presented appeared to support my view. I didn’t see how anyone could read them without saying, “Yeah, it seems to say that….” Yet they acted as if the verses could mean nothing of the sort.
I came home to my wife, frustrated, and said for the first time, “Can’t people read?”
I have repeated this phrase often. For example, I am sometimes amazed at how people miss the Bible’s plain black and white words that speak directly to their situations. I try to help them to understand, patiently waiting for them to grasp the meaning. Yet if certain scriptures require major changes in their lives, they gloss right over them – or they find reasons why they can’t thoughtfully study them. Their minds seem unable to understand truths that would seriously shake their world.
At that point, I generally remind myself of God’s mercy. I consider that I have missed many insights that might seem obvious to others. I also remember that not everyone has the gifts God has given me for reading and studying.
Still, I find the whole process confusing and upsetting. I am not sure if people need more time and instruction or if they are “playing dumb” in order to avoid the truth. When it all builds up to the point where my emotions become too much for me, I turn to God and say, “Can’t people read?”
It took me quite a while to see that Jesus’ statement, “How much longer do I have to put up with this” was similar to my “Can’t people read.” Jesus desired results, and He was bothered when people chose not to produce them.
The beauty of that for me was that it helped me to discover new levels of intimacy with Him. I didn’t have to pretend that I was unmoved by the reality of being a human being who works with other human beings. Jesus also found it upsetting, and He is my High Priest who has promised to help me with these very sorts of problems.
I am never totally sure if the problem is with me or with others. I might be speaking unclearly, or not patiently – or I might be missing the point entirely. This makes me wonder if I am failing in my attempts to share God’s life. Did Jesus ever feel like that? Psalm 22 makes it clear He did:
And here I am, a nothing — an earthworm, something to step on, to squash. Everyone pokes fun at me; they make faces at me, they shake their heads: "Let's see how GOD handles this one; since God likes him so much, let him help him!"
(Psalm 22:6-8, The Message)
Consider the end of Jesus’ life; put yourself into His shoes (or sandals) and consider what you would have felt. He had performed more miracles than Moses, and His life had demonstrated the incredible beauty of a relationship with His Father. Yet after three amazing years, the nation of Israel didn’t believe. Even the men who had the privilege of being in His presence every day were so lacking in character that they fell away (Mark 14:27).
What did the cross seem to say about Jesus’ work? From a human perspective, He was a failure; all was lost. Would His bumbling disciples, a group of fishermen, a tax collector, and other commoners, be able to stand up to the impressive power of the religious establishment? Who among them was capable of carrying Jesus’ message forward? It looked as if He had done a poor job of recruiting them, had failed in their training, and now was abandoning them before they were ready to stand on their own.
Though Jesus knew His Father had led Him in every step of the process, He also felt the penetrating attitudes and accusations of those who had given Him over to be crucified. He wasn’t untouched as their words pressed in on His soul with demonic power. “You are a failure! You have wasted Your life! You thought you were doing something important, but you are nothing but a lunatic! Let’s see how God handles this one; since God likes Him so much.”
Jesus didn’t give in to the accusations, but that doesn’t mean He was immune to their sting. The shame weighed on Him, and He let us know what He felt by saying, “here I am, a nothing — an earthworm, something to step on, to squash.”
Looking back from where we are now, it is easy for us to see the reality of the situation. Jesus was dying for the sins of the world, so He obviously was not an insignificant worm, but His words showed His struggle. He was Broken. He had decided with His mind and will to trust His Father to come through with the most powerful of Appointments, but He was a whipped and beaten human being. He was not experiencing the cross as a transcendent spirit looking down from eternity. He was experiencing it as a flesh and blood man fighting for each breath, unsure of exactly what the next moment would bring. (Of course, He was also God, but He chose to not use His powers as God to save His humanity.)
His unadorned clay pot of an ordinary life didn’t have the ability to hold His emotions together. The strain of dying for the sins of the world was too much. The cross had seemed like a good idea when He was in the presence of His Father, but now it looked like craziness. Could a laughingstock before the nation pull it off?
Jesus felt the inner turmoil that any of us would have under those conditions. His confidence drained and spilled on the ground with His blood. His world was crashing down around Him, and doubt rose in His heart. All of the weaknesses of the human race plagued Him as He hung suspended between heaven and hell.
But what else could He do? There was no other hope for humanity. He had felt the difficulty of “putting up with” us. He knew that more miracles wouldn’t somehow awaken us. He couldn’t change our condition by raising another “Lazarus” from the dead. Would it improve anything if He demonstrated more character or gave another teaching? He had already done more than anyone else, but it obviously wasn’t enough.
The angst of the entire Godhead from the time of Adam till the present filled Jesus’ breast, motivating Him to risk everything on a hill outside of Jerusalem. Something drastic had to be done, and He was willing to feel worthless and forsaken if that was what it took. The only way for our hearts to rise above our fatal human weaknesses was for Him to make a way for us to become more than human – to become new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Jesus left anything that resembled army-tank-like protection and allowed Himself to experience humanity in its most pitiful form. He knew that this level of an unadorned ordinary life was necessary to release God’s incomparable power. It was no longer enough to put up with us; it was time to change us.
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