(7.) Our God’s Ultimate Accommodation: His Incarnation

(7.) Our God’s Ultimate Accommodation: His Incarnation. (this post is in process and will be completed soon)

“Who is able to understand the mind of Lord Yahweh? Who is able to be His teacher? We, however, have the mind of Christ!” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

An Accommodating Person is one who graciously changes plans for another’s benefit; who is willing to adjust in order to meet another’s needs; is open to adapting to changing circumstances; who is able to make concessions if needed; who makes allowances for others; who choose to oblige other and give them favors in order to be helpful; who is able to creatively shift from Plan A to Plan B if needed; who makes space for others to learn and grow; who welcomes others to fit into his own space; who makes reasonable exceptions to a general rule; who is comfortable in doing whatever it takes to be understood or to communicate effectively; who is willing to adjust expectations in light of reality; who is able to place limits on himself if it help others to flourish; who is able to step back in order to enable others to step forward.

Qualities of An Accommodating Person: Gracious; Humble; Sacrificial; Flexible; Observant; Farsighted; Insightful; Adaptable; Reasonable; Forgiving; Hospitable; Patient; Self-Effacing; Shrewd.

Our Accommodating God is willing, in His wisdom, to do everything described above, and then some. It seems to be in His nature to be an accommodating Soul, a part of His character since before Day One. God has been making concessions from before the creation of the universe, since creation itself was accomplished in the spirit of accommodation. God has also condescended to reveal His glory, agreed to His presence in the wilderness Tabernacle, made concessions to cultural realities in His Law, communicated in human language to produce holy Scripture, accommodated His word through His messengers, made Himself available through the Church’s sacraments, humbly revealed Himself with dreams and visions, and offered to us the ultimate accommodation… the Incarnation of His infinite Being to finite planet earth. God’s accommodations began before the beginning, during that eternal time before Day One, when Creator God filled everything, had always been present everywhere at the same time, and yet decided to make room for the universe. And the Lord has continued making concessions with His creation, with human beings, ever since. And that is the divine pattern to be found in our lives as well… to accommodate, to make space in our lives for God and for each other.

“In the beginning was the Word… And the Word was made flesh and pitched His tent with us… Full of Grace and Truth.”  (from John 1).

God with Skin On. For the Infinite to willingly join the finite world, for the Heavenly to volunteer membership in the earthly, is mind-boggling. The Incarnation is the most astounding event in the history of the universe. Can we wrap our minds around the Incomprehensible offering to become knowable out of love? It’s the Spirit putting on flesh. It’s the Intangible choosing to become tangible. It’s as if the Painter has become the portrait, and the Singer has become His song. It’s as if the Creator has become the created, and the Maker has become the made. The Incarnation means the Printer has turned into the book, and the Teacher has become His visual aid. It’s as if the Conductor has become His wand, and the composer has become His score. It’s as if the lion has become the lamb and the hunter has become the prey. The Incarnation means that the King has become the servant, the Master has become the slave, and the High Priest has offered Himself to become the blood sacrifice. It’s as if the Consuming Fire has agreed to also become the accelerant. God in the abstract has revealed that He can also be God the personal, and God the infinite is willing to become subject to the limitations of time. God’s supreme act of divine accommodation has changed the world forever.

Jesus in God’s Eternal Bosom. “No one has ever seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made Him known.” (John 1:18). One could name this room in God’s heart ‘The Trinity Room,’ because it is where they are united as One. Bosom was the innermost place of the deepest relationship possible; the place of mystery inside of God where the profound union takes place; where there is complete intimate knowledge of Each Other that is reciprocal; the spiritual “womb” deep in God’s heart of hearts from which Someone is “brought forth;” the place of deepest affection, where the intimacy is reserved for the Three who are in union; it is where the Three-in-One are truly “with” each other at the deepest level possible.  In God’s heart, which is utterly holy throughout, His bosom would be considered the “Holy of Holies.” Based on how a wide variety of New Testament scholars have translated John 1:18, the following is another way of looking at that passage: “No one has ever seen the invisible God at any time. It is the Father’s one and only Son who has made God known at that visible level. God chose to reveal Himself physically through His one-of-a-kind Son, who exists in the deepest, most intimate part of God. The Father and the Son share a union in God’s mysterious bosom, His heart of hearts, the innermost part of God where the Godhead partakes of Each Other. Jesus had an assignment… bring forth Father God out into the open where He can be explained and understood.”

Jesus as God’s Co-Creator. “I was there with Him, the master craftsman at His side, right beside Him as His artist and confidant. I was filled with delight day after day, enjoying His company, rejoicing in His presence, playfully rejoicing before Him. I laughed and played on the surface of the earth, so happy with what He had made. I delighted in mankind, happily celebrating the human family.” (Proverbs 8:30-31). In the poetic version of creation as seen in Proverbs 8, we see the vital role of wisdom, or as it reads, Lady Wisdom. This was a poetic device in the Hebrew Bible that anticipated the attribute of wisdom being completed in the form of an actual Person. Wisdom as poetically seen as a person was completed in the New Testament in the real Person, Jesus Christ. What was an attribute of God in the Old Testament came to be accepted as a picture of God Himself, Jesus the Son of God, in the New Testament, early church and to the  present day. “Christ, who is the Wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24). In Proverbs 8, Wisdom was an intricate part of creation, and Christians have believed ever since that Wisdom was in fact the Person of Christ participating in the creation of the world. “In Him were created all things in heaven and earth. All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:11). “Through Him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through Him.”” (John 1:3). As the Orthodox Church puts it, “The Father made the world through the Son in the Spirit.”

Jesus as the Angel of Yahweh. “The Angel of the Lord is the visible Lord God of the Old Testament, as Jesus Christ was of the New Testament.” (Amplified Bible notes). Early Church theologians, and most Biblical scholars since, have believed that when God is in visible form, Christ has made an appearance. Every physical appearance of God in the Hebrew Bible (the OT) is a revelation of Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form. There is a particular character who flits in and out of the Hebrew Bible, the Angel of Yahweh also known as the Angel of God, the Angel of the LORD, the Messenger of Yahweh, the Messenger of the Covenant, or the Angel of His Presence. It is widely accepted in Biblical scholarship that this mysterious Angel is none other than the bodily appearance of Jesus Christ. When Biblical characters in the Hebrew Bible reported that they had seen God, they had been right… They had seen the face of Christ. The Deity of Jesus is clearly portrayed in His role of Angelic Messenger, God’s special representative that speaks God’s mind and performs His will. Here is a list of the exciting appearances of Jesus in the Old Testament, or Christophanies as they are called. This incomparable Messenger from heaven, this Angel of Yahweh, is God in the form of God’s Son before His incarnation.

(1.)  With Hagar, in Genesis 16, as she was abandoned and on the run from an obstinate Sarai;

(2.)  With Abraham, in Genesis 18, when the Lord appeared in bodily form to him by the Oaks of Mamre;

(3.)  With Isaac, in Genesis 22, when he was tied to the altar and about to be sacrificed by Abraham;

(4.)  With Jacob, in Genesis 32, when wrestling with the Angel and he saw the face of God;

(5.)  With Moses, on a number of occasions: in Exodus 3 when he talked with Him at the burning bush; in Exodus 14 when the Israelites were saved at the Red Sea; in Exodus 23 at Mount Sinai;

(6.)  With Balaam, in Numbers 22, when his donkey started engaging in conversation with him;

(7.)  With Joshua, in Joshua 5, when he was confronted by the Captain and he was on holy ground;

(8.)  With Gideon, in Judges 6, when he was given his special calling and assignment;

(9.)  With Samson’s parents, in Judges 13, when they received a heavenly birth announcement;

(10.)  With Elijah, in 1 Kings 19, when he was fed and rested on the run from Jezebel in the wilderness;

(11.)  With Isaiah, in Isaiah 63:9, when he referred to someone known to him, “the Angel of His Presence.”

(12.)  With Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in Daniel 3, as they were surviving in the fiery furnace;

(13.)  With Daniel, in Daniel 10, when he was visited by God after fasting for three weeks;

(14.)  With David, in Psalm 34, when he referred to “the Angel of Yahweh encamping all around those who fear Him” (Ps. 34:7); and also in 1 Chronicles 21:16, when on the threshing floor after sinfully taking a census;

Jesus as a Human Fetus. Mary was the first literal “Christian,” Christ literally within her, the first human tabernacle containing the Holy of Holies, the womanly Ark of the Covenant harboring the Word made flesh, the human branch bearing a heavenly Fruit, the Holy Gate that welcomed the Spirit of Yahweh to enter into her most intimate place and begin an unprecedented, unrepeatable new Life within her. Mary, who responsibly, carefully, and lovingly nurtured the unborn Savior inside of her, right on through to the bloody birth pangs when she introduced the physical, human God to the world:

• At conception, when Jesus was a one-cell zygote, a fertilized egg, when His genetic framework was established, his gender is set, and is now programmed to develop into a unique individual with trillions of cells; when God “empties Himself” into the human experience; Julian of Norwich called His conception “God in a point.” All this in a fraction of a second, when a spiritual seed united with a human egg. It is here we begin to see the weak and helpless God, vulnerable, and completely dependent on a human mother;
• Week 1 = The embryo of Jesus becomes attached to Mary’s uterine wall;
• Week 2 = Christ’s early brain begins to appear, as well as His heart;
• Week 3 = The blood vessels of Jesus begin to appear, and His heart begins to beat;
• Weeks 4/5 = The embryo of Jesus has His eyes and lungs appear, His kidneys form, and the cerebral hemispheres of His brain develop; Mary’s umbilical cord starts developing, and is fully formed by week 7, the life-line between them that provides the unborn Jesus with oxygen-rich blood and nutrients, and carrying away his waste products;
• Weeks 6/7 = The brain waves of the Lord in the womb begin to pulsate, the heart has developed its four chambers, and His hands and feet and legs begin to move;
• Weeks 8/9 = In modern terms, Jesus is now officially a fetus, and He can now open His mouth, suck His thumb, and move His head around;
• Weeks 10-12 = Jesus can now make facial expressions, and a heavenly eye witness could now see His fully formed nose, lips, and gender anatomy;
• Weeks 13-14 = The unborn body of Christ is now sensitive to touch;
• Weeks 15-20 = His brain’s hemispheres are now completely connected, He has stem cells in His bone marrow, and has a stress response to anything invasive;
• Weeks 21-24 = Jesus now has a blink/startle response to sudden loud noises;
• Weeks 25-30 = Jesus can now produce tears, react to light, and practice breathing movements for the near future;
• Weeks 31-40 = Jesus now shows preference for mother Mary’s voice, is aware of new songs sung to Him, has evidence of memory function, and has the capacity for learning.

Knowing Jesus By Name: Yeshua. Yeshua is the Hebrew name for Jesus. It means Yahweh who saves, or LORD to the rescue. Yeshua, or Y’shua, is a common form of the Hebrew name Yehoshua, which translates to Joshua. The name Jesus is actually an English version of the Greek version (Yay-soos) of the Hebrew Yeshua. And since Greek was the common international language used when spreading word about Yeshua, Jesus (Yay-soos) is the name most commonly used. Yeshua is the name most commonly used by Hebrew-speaking Christians in Israel and followers of Messianic Judaism. The name Yeshua represents His Hebrew identity, and anyone who called Jesus by His Hebrew name while He was on earth would have called Him Yeshua. An attempt to approach the Person and ministry of Jesus by unpacking his special Hebrew name:

Y is for Yahweh, the self-revealed Name God provided Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. It is God’s unspeakably holy Name, seen by many as too sacred to be sullied by human speech. Faithful Jews refuse to pronounce it for any reason. For a personal name, Yahweh is rather abstract and elusive. The word, or non-word, given at the burning bush, YHWH, has no vowels or real consonants. Y, H and W in Hebrew are actually blowing sounds, and are rushings of air through the mouth. The unpronounceable Name could mean I AM WHAT I AM, or I AM THE ONE WHO EXISTS, or even I AM HE WHO IS. It is connected with the Hebrew word hayah, which means to be, to become, to happen. Yahweh is the Name God gave Himself, alluding perhaps to His uncreated existence, His eternal Personhood, His quality of Being, His Self-sufficiency. In many ways, Yahweh is a spiritual version of an ‘act of being’ verb, which just may be beyond our imagination. One important method that Jesus used to reveal Himself as the Son of God was to claim the Name I AM. When uttering this phrase, Jesus claimed to be on equal footing with the Great I AM, Yahweh. With this outrageous claim, Jesus declares that He has eternal kinship with God. When Jesus says I AM, He is claiming divinity, He is connecting His personhood with the most sacred Name in Judaism. In using this abbreviated form of the Great I AM, He is claiming heavenly blood, using the I AM declaration about twenty times in the Gospel of John. To the spiritual elite at the time, this was scandalous and blasphemous. It certainly was startling and unexpected to His listening audience, since Jesus is claiming to be the LORD with flesh on. When God said to Moses His Name was I AM WHAT I AM, any curious person might follow that up with… I AM what, exactly? The Great I AM is mysterious, impersonal and abstract. Jesus anticipated this question by offering to fill in the blanks with seven homespun metaphors in the I AM tradition. All seven are in John:

… I AM the Bread of Life (6:35) who nourishes you with solid, spiritual food;

… I AM the Light of the World (8:12) who enables you to shine in purity, goodness and truth;

… I AM the Door (10:7) to the sheep pen who will welcome you to God’s flock;

… I AM the Good Shepherd (10:14) who will guide, feed and protect you as a member of His flock;

… I AM the Resurrection and the Life (11:25) who will raise you from the dead into eternal life;

… I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life (14:6) who will provide the way to truth and abundant life;

… I AM the True Vine (15:1) who will provide what is needed to bear good fruit in your life.

Serving as mini-parables, these common, plain-spoken sayings of Jesus made it more difficult to complain about the lack of clarity about the Great I AM. Jesus, by expanding the Name of Yahweh, went a long way towards clarifying the nature of God. By claiming to be in union with the Father, Jesus made it clear that He wasn’t merely a super-prophet, a master teacher, a miracle-worker, or a story-teller. With His I AM declarations, Jesus is claiming divinity. By saying I AM, Jesus claimed the holy Name of Yahweh as His own.

E is for Exorcist. Many scholars have noted that Jesus conducted more exorcisms than any historical figure on record. Casting out demons seemed to take up just as much of His time as physical healings, and in fact, His ministry usually included both forms of healings together. “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons…”  (Mark 1:32-34). Jesus revealed His authority over physical ailments and over spiritual possession. In the spiritual realm, not one demon ever successfully resisted the commands of Jesus. As soon as the demons saw it was Jesus, they knew their days were numbered. It is heartening to see that Jesus was just as concerned with the spiritual world as He was the physical world. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Jesus cast out demons to show His power over the Devil, to bring spiritual wholeness to the afflicted person, and to advance the kingdom of God. “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Matt. 12:28). Wherever Christ’s kingdom spread, Satan’s realm diminished. The power of Christ overwhelmed the power of the Evil One. It was also significant that Jesus gave the spiritual power to cast out demons to His disciples. “Jesus summoned together His twelve disciples and imparted to them authority over every demon and the power to heal every disease.” (Luke 9:1). Sure enough, “They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” (Mark 6:13). Jesus’ power and authority in the spiritual realm was absolute, and in order to understand Jesus, we need to understand that. Peter said as much when he tried to explain to Cornelius who Jesus was: “Jesus of Nazareth was anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and with great power. He did wonderful things for others and divinely healed all who were under the tyranny of the Devil; He went through the country helping people and healing everyone who was harassed by the Devil.” (Acts 10:38). When Peter tried to help the Roman Gentile Cornelius understand Jesus, he put His exorcisms and power over demon-possession right at the top of the list. And so should we.

S is for Story-Teller. One could say that the imagination is the intellect at play. Or that it is reason listening to a story. Of course Jesus, who invented the human mind, planned the learning process to include the capturing of the imagination. The master teacher, Jesus loved to express His vivid and inspired imagination whenever He could. He loved to tell stories, all kinds of stories, depending on the audience and the situation. At one point in His ministry, He evidently told nothing but stories to the crowds (Matt. 13:34). His favorite method of teaching seemed to be through parables, extended metaphors. These parables included simple, everyday realities, which had universal appeal and drew the audience in, wherever He was, whoever He was with. God in the flesh loved to teach through the imagination, to speak the truth indirectly. Rather than simply stating a spiritual fact or principle, Jesus often came at the truth sideways to get their attention, to slip past defenses, to tell the truth at a slant, as Emily Dickenson once said. Believers need to develop a vivid imagination, because it seems that a chief element of faith itself is the ability to draw an image in your mind, to paint a picture, to imagine the seen as coming from the unseen (Heb. 11:1-2). How can we believe in the unseen without an active imagination? Jesus intended His stories to be provocative, and to shrewdly slip in a main point, or many main points. Sometimes His stories were like firecrackers, the indirection thrown into the midst of the hearers in order to stir things up, pointedly aimed at people who need to take the story personally. Other times, the story hits more like a smoke bomb, the main point being clouded over and confusing, forcing the hearers to dig deeper and try to figure it out. This primary teaching strategy of Jesus is actually a fulfillment of an OT prophecy found in Ps. 78:2, mentioned in Matthew 13:35: “Give ear O my people to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth and tell stories. I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.” One can make the case therefore, as Kenneth Bailey does, that Jesus was in fact teaching theology through His parables: “Jesus was a metaphorical theologian. That is, His primary method of creating meaning was through metaphor, simile, parable and dramatic action rather than through logic and reasoning. He created meaning like a dramatist and a poet rather than like a philosopher.”  Some of His stories were simpler than others, but all of his parables were rich with kingdom meaning, and were in Bailey’s words, “serious theology.” Therefore, parables are deep theology, learned indirectly, through a divinely inspired imagination and a winsome, compelling personality. Jesus proved to be a seriously playful theologian who effectively used His imaginative stories to teach the truth, throwing them into the mix of people he encountered.

H is for Healer. We know that Jesus healed people, all the time, but here’s a question… why? Why did Jesus heal people? Was it some moral obligation He felt? Did He compel Himself to heal because the people expected Him to do so? It’s clear that, from the start of His public ministry, Jesus was a healer far beyond what the people had ever seen.  But why did He heal? Here are some thoughts on why…

1. He is love. “And Jesus went around doing good, doing wonderful things for others and helping them wherever he went…” (Acts 10:38). He couldn’t seem to help Himself. Mercy is in His spiritual DNA. God is love, so Jesus is the Son of Love. His inherent nature is pure compassion, so He gravitated to love-in-action. If He sees someone broken, He jumps at the chance to bring wholeness. Healing was His natural form of self-expression as the Anointed One of God.
2. Healings are personal. “Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and preaching the Good News about the kingdom. And He healed every kind of disease and illness.” (Matt. 4:23). Jesus proved that God is not distant or abstract. Through Jesus, God is intensely personal and in the flesh. He didn’t just want to talk about love, He wanted to demonstrate it.  Jesus proved that long-distance interaction is no longer sufficient. And healing was the most kind-hearted, most personally helpful thing He could do. Jesus was all about making things whole, and healings of the body was a good place to start.
3. Healings are proof.  When John the Baptist had some moments of doubt, and sent some of his disciples to ask if Jesus is the One, how did Jesus answer that question? Jesus replied that they should go and tell John that the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor. (Luke 7:20-22). The Hebrew Scriptures state that miraculous healings would be a sign of the Messianic Age. Healings were prophesied to be vivid pictures of the New Kingdom (eg, Isaiah 26:19, 29:18-19, 35:5-6, 61:1-2). Through His healings, Jesus confirmed that He was indeed the long-awaited Messiah. The healings authenticated His role as the anointed Son of God.

Jesus the healer. We can’t put Him in a box with this part of His ministry. There is no can’t-miss formula; no magic words; no consistent style; no lack of variety of people and occasion and brokenness. His mercy is deep and sometimes mysterious. Sometimes faith seems to be needed for a healing. Other times faith didn’t seem to be a part of the action at all. Sometimes he touched, sometimes He was touched. Sometimes He spit, sometimes He just spoke the healing into existence. Sometimes He forgave sins during the healing, and sometimes He didn’t. Sometimes he was thanked, and often enough He was forgotten soon after the healing. Sometimes He told everyone not to say a word about the healing, and sometimes He told them to spread the word. Most of the healings were immediate, but there was a time when there seemed to be more of a gradual process (Mark 8:22-26). Jesus was an equal opportunity healer, confidently healing unexpected people in unpredictable ways. He loved to heal, to bring wholeness, whenever He had the opportunity. He still does. After all, Jesus is love.

U is for Unorthodox. Jesus was highly unorthodox for His time regarding social relationships. His various friendships drove the spiritual elite wild. He was anointed by the tears of a repentant prostitute in the home of a Pharisee. He invited Himself to dinner with a notorious tax collector. He was a friend of sinners, a companion of women, a welcomer of children. The Pharisees accused Jesus of being a glutton and a drunkard. “Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Jesus to hear Him teach, and the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!” (Luke 15:1-2). This in itself was scandalous, since eating with someone in that culture was a sign of acceptance, an offer of friendship and trust. Jesus welcomed the lost sheep and befriended them, of all things. And Jesus remained the Good Shepherd to all those lost sheep who were living outside of the flock. Unlike most men in that society, Jesus befriended women. In acquiring the friendship of many women, Jesus broke social barriers aplenty. Despite the limits put on women, Jesus turned the culture on its head by publicly honoring women, by giving them His undivided attention, by holding up their dignity as a full person made in the image of God. Unlike the rabbinic tradition in the 1st century, Jesus respected a woman’s intelligence, whether talking theology with the woman at the well, or teaching Torah to Mary of Bethany. He strengthened women’s status in the home by His teaching on adultery, divorce and marriage. He encouraged women to be His disciples, even though women were not allowed to be taught by a rabbi during that time. He would touch and heal women without hesitation. He would make up stories and parables with women as the main characters, which was unheard of, and highlighted their importance in God’s narrative. His attitude toward women was countercultural at the time, and he was comfortable inviting women wholeheartedly into His life and ministry. Another social barrier Jesus enjoyed breaking regarded children. He loved them. He was known to embrace a child in the presence of impatient adults, taking the child up in His arms, and saying to the crowd that whoever receives one of these children in His name in fact welcomes Him (Mark 9:36-37). Jesus so closely identified with children that He paraded them as an example of faith. As co-creator of children, He had a hand in designing their DNA, inventing their nervous system, in knitting them together in the womb. Jesus loved children in an age that tended to take them for granted and give them second place. Jesus honored them as worthy of respect, being made in God’s image. Significantly, Jesus knew what it was like to be a child, to be overlooked and undervalued. So it was important to Jesus to dignify the children in His midst.

A is for Audacious. Jesus was an unpredictable, audacious bundle of extreme qualities. He would ignore His mother, berate the religious, forgive the adulterous, befriend the rip-off artist, kiss His betrayer, stare down a storm, call His most faithful apprentice a name from hell, weep at a death, tend bar at a wedding reception, whip the tar out of unwelcome salesmen, hug the children, touch the untouchable, welcome the lepers and lunatics. In fact, many considered Jesus so audacious as to be a lunatic himself, including His own family at one point. Well, they thought, if he didn’t suffer from temporary insanity, he certainly acted the fool. As it turned out, a holy fool, for during His life, he somehow learned to successfully juggle grace and truth. When Jesus was tender, He seemed to almost wilt. When He was angry, there was a scary flash of fire in His eyes. When He mourned, He was a puddle of tears. And he often aroused those same extremes in others. In fact, He started His ministry by igniting His hometown with flammable speech; He continued it by answering somber questions with bewildering stories which often bordered on the comic; and close to the end, He irked His accusers with unflappable silence. Throughout His life, His version of sainthood was never sanctimonious. In the earliest days of His earthly life, Jesus was a Savior fetus in a teenager’s womb. Then soon a God who wet diapers, a Co-Creator needing to be burped, the Lord of the universe nursing at his young mother’s breast. A few years later, He was the heavenly King with seared flesh and punctured scalp, passively facing mockery and torture. It’s a toss-up as to which of those two mysteries, the Manger Messiah or the Dead God, are the most incomprehensible and scandalous. Fortunately, this holy fool’s last juggling act was of life and death, and He somehow managed to juggle both. When the juggling act was over, He gladly performed a lively courtroom dance before the King that will last forever.

Jesus the True Passover Lamb. Scripture was fulfilled throughout Christ’s agonizing experience on the Cross. Psalm 22, for example, is often called the “Psalm of the Cross” because of the uncanny prophecies that were made that make no sense unless one considers Christ on the Cross. His physical suffering alone is accurately reported in this Psalm: “I’m poured out like water, completely exhausted; every joint of my body has slipped out of joint; my heart is like wax, my courage has vanished, melting away within me; my strength is dried up like the broken fragments of a sunbaked piece of clay pottery; I am thirsty to the point of my dry tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth; they have pierced my hands and my feet; I look so emaciated that I can count all my bones.“ Continuing from that, the specific prophecy of Psalm 69:21 is messianic and clearly fulfilled in Christ’s statement about His acute thirst on the Cross and the immediate limited remedy: “… and they gave me soured wine to drink.” Sour wine was a cheap liquid refreshment used by the Roman soldiers on duty who had no access to clean water, and so drank this fluid, diluted with water and no actual alcohol in it, and was considered the same as vinegar. In this scene, the soldiers had a jar of the vinegar nearby for their use, heard Jesus croak out his thirst, and offered to Jesus on the Cross a sponge placed on a flowering hyssop branch that was soaked with the vinegar. Jesus sipped from the sponge after they had raised it to His lips. Jesus was thus able to shout, “It is finished!” so everyone within listening distance could easily hear it. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice hinted at in the animal sacrifice. He fulfilled all the requirements of the Old Covenant system… an unblemished, pure, innocent victim offering blood for atonement. Jesus completed the sacrificial system, so only one sacrifice, His, was needed. His blood brought forgiveness of all sins, by all people, for all time. At a superficial glance, it looks like God is out for blood. But God “doesn’t want blood, He wants life.” Only Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can offer his blood for eternal life, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). In Jewish tradition, the discovery of an unblemished red heifer signals the coming of the Messiah. Truer words were never spoken. Jesus is the Red Heifer. The Messiah has come.

Jesus Continues to be the Great Intercessor. The divine accommodations continue in the heavenly sphere as the Son bends the ear of the Father through the Spirit.

1. “There must be Someone in heaven who knows the truth about me; in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name – my Champion, my Friend, while I’m weeping my eyes out before God. I appeal to the One who represents mortals before God as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor.” (Job 16:18-22);
2. “The heartfelt prayer of someone upright works very powerfully.” (James 5:16);
3. “Who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us – who was raised to life for us! – is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way!” (Romans 8:33-35);
4. “My children, I am writing this to prevent you from sinning; but if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the upright.” (1 John 2:1);
5. “It is not as though Christ had entered a man-made sanctuary which was merely a model of the real one; He entered heaven itself, so that He now appears in the presence of God on our behalf.” (Hebrews 9:24);
6. “The former priests were many in number, because death put an end to each one of them; but this One, because He remains forever, has a perpetual priesthood. It follows then, that His power to save those who come to God through Him is absolute, since He lives forever to intercede for them.” (Hebrews 7:23-25).

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, is He who prays for us, who prays in us and who is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our Priest; He prays in us as our Head; and is prayed to by us as our God. Let us, therefore, recognize in Him our voice, and His voice in us.”  (St. Augustine, On the Psalms, as quoted in Life in Christ, above)