Jesus said to Nicodemus:
"No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
Jesus is the only one qualified to teach us the truth about heavenly realities. But though he teaches about those realities with words he also reveals the truth through efficacious signs which he himself interprets for us. He had just done this for Nicodemus in explaining how one could be born again in baptism. He would now go on to provide the context for understanding the sign of his crucifixion.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
From a human perspective, dying on a cross seemed to be an unmitigated tragedy, a disaster, and the complete failure of the one who was nailed upon it. It was redolent with shame, exposing, apparently, the weakness of the crucified one, and the iron strength of the governing regime. Most likely even the devil saw things this way, assuming that the cross his most recent and perhaps greatest victory over God's attempts to salvage his creation, "for if they had [known], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (see First Corinthians 2:8). But Jesus saw things from a heavenly perspective and understood the deeper truth that was being revealed by the cross.
And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn (see Zechariah 12:10).
In being lifted up Jesus was no mere victim, not merely another casualty of a fallen world. Rather, just as the serpent lifted up in the desert forced the people to confront the ugliness of the results of their sinfulness, so too, and much more, did the crucifixion of Jesus reveal the true horror of sin. By gazing upon the effects of sin on Jesus, entirely innocent, entirely pure, it was finally possible to interrupt the pattern and cycle of sin.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
If Jesus had simply succumbed to the same fate as the world of sinners, death and decay, then looking upon his cross could not have liberating power. It would instead have left us in deeper despair than ever. But it was "it was not possible for him to be held" by death (see Acts 2:24). Thus, lifting him up did not end with our mourning him as an only son on Good Friday. But the lifting continued on to exaltation when he was raised on the third day, and further when he ascended into heaven and was seated upon the throne together with his Father. The suffering of the suffering servant was never meant to be the end of his mission, rather:
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
As many were astonished at you—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
so shall he sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand (see Isaiah 52:13-15).
The cross has therefore been transformed from a mere instrument of torture to the sign of the victory by which we conquer. Gazing upon it can heal of us sin and free us from the power of fear by which death manipulates our lives. It reveals the attitude that was in Christ Jesus which we may now share, the attitude of he who "though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped".
Jesus calls us to take up our own crosses and follow him. And when we first hear this our flesh, our old self, tends to resist and to push back. In order to receive this word from Jesus we must first look to his own cross and let the power of that vision transform us. Then we will follow him, no longer grudgingly, but gladly, amazed that he his called in to share in something so great and wonderful.
Let us join here and now and the chorus of all creation exalting the one who was lifted up for us.
at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
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