No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
Humanity has always been ready and willing to try to climb from here to heaven. This was evident ever since the construction of the Tower of Babel when the builders said, "let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves" (see Genesis 11:4). But Jesus explained that there was a distance between heaven and earth that was so great that it could not be bridged from our side. Only the Son of Man acting as a bridge between heaven and earth could connect us from the top down, rather than us achieving it from the bottom up. He was therefore the ladder upon whom the angels of heaven would ascend and descend as he told Nicodemus (see John 1:51).
Several additional facts follow from the truth that Jesus was the only one to come down from heaven. It meant that he was the only one who could truly reveal God the Father. As Jesus said, "no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (see Matthew 11:27). It also meant that our only hope to ascend to heaven would be through the person of Jesus Christ himself. It wasn't as though Jesus simply built a bridge and then left us to climb it. Rather, he himself remains the only bridge connecting humanity and divinity, heaven and earth. It is for this reason that "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (see Acts 4:12). He himself is "the way" as well as the truth and the life (see John 14:6).
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.
Considering what we have said about the exulted status of Jesus these next verses are all the more surprising. Why would someone in the form of God empty himself, take the form of a slave, and become obedient even unto death? We can imagine a royal king showing up to conquer enemies and save the day. But the king offering himself for the sake of those who are to him even less than peasants? It should be unthinkable except that we are so used to hearing it. Couldn't Jesus just come and forcibly set things right? Perhaps, but perhaps also the outcome of such as external imposition would be a less meaningful form of salvation than what he ultimately chose to give us.
Sin and death are ugly, like the saraph serpents in the desert. We might have preferred for God to simply come in and remove them and the effects of their poison. But God chose to do something different. He decreed that the those who had been stung must look upon the bronze serpent on the poll. This action required the use of free will and represented repentance. It was a form of owning the ugliness in which one had become complicit. Thinking about making such a choice, it is clear that one who received healing in that way, rather than by being allowed to ignore the problem, would be healed at an existentially deeper level. Their own freedom was refashioned as they cooperated with the grace that made their healing possible. This foreshadowed what happened with Jesus himself, as the prophet Zechariah predicted, "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).
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.
The point of the serpents was not to kill those in the desert, but to provoke them to turn to God who desired to heal them. He wasn't out to get them. And he isn't out to get us, as though he were waiting for us to sin as an excuse to condemn us. Rather he goes to the greatest lengths imaginable to offer us salvation. He isn't stingy in what he offers, no matter how narrow the road is said to be. It is only because of the heights he desires us to reach that the way to get there must be so specific.
Let's not flatter God with our mouths and lie to him with our tongues. We need our hearts refashioned in order that we might be steadfast toward him and faithful to his covenant. Just as for all past generations, he has mercy on all those who fear him, forgiving their sin and destroying them not. Let us remember these wonderful works of the Lord. When we do not know which way to turn this sacred memory can give us direction. When we think we've hit our limits it can give us hope. God is truly on rock and our redeemer.
No comments:
Post a Comment