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It Had to be a Cross

Did it matter how the Savior of the world died? Did it have to be on a cross?

After all, Jesus was accused by the religious establishment of heresy. And heretics were, in accordance with Levitical law, stoned. In fact, the words of Jesus had, on numerous ocassions, prompted the listening scribes and Pharisees to pick up stones. And the fledgling Church’s very first martyr, Stephen, was stoned by an enraged mob for speaking what they believed were heresies—even as a Sanhedrin “enforcer” from Tarsus named Saul looked on approvingly. Why wasn’t Jesus stoned?

Or why not a priestly knife?

After all, Jesus, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” was the living fulfillment of all the types and shadows embodied by the Passover lamb. The thousands of Passover lambs being sacrificed over on the Temple mount the day Jesus was cruciified died by the knife of a Levitical priest. Had Jesus similarly been run through with a Roman sword, or stabbed with a rogue Levite’s knife, would His shed blood have been just as effective in washing away Sin?

As Father Richard John Neuhaus once admitted, our questions about the crucifixion and the cross are only “probings into mystery.” But the Bible gives us clues and insights into this—the greatest and most consequential of all mysteries. 

First, the Word of God makes it clear that the shedding of the Messiah’s innocent blood was a vital aspect of His sacrifice. And the Roman process of crucifixion was an appallingly bloody affair. As the writer of Hebrews declares, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission” of sin (9:22).  On the eve of His death, Jesus Himself pointed to a cup of wine and said, “… for this is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:28)

Yes, the role of Jesus’ shed blood cannot be over-emphasized. However, the mission of Jesus was wider and deepr than just solving the Sin-guilt problem. The New Covenant scriptures make it clear that He left Heaven’s splendor and became the Second and Final “Adam” in order to roll back the Curse that descended upon all mankind, indeed upon Creation itself, when the First Adam fell. 

And here’s the thing . . . 

That fall happened at a tree—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And for reasons we may not fully understand this side of eternity, there is something significant about a death on a tree that points back to that Fall and the resultant Curse. In Deuteronomy 21:22-23 we find:

And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.

The Jews of Jesus day were very attuned to the implications of this passage. They viewed crucifixion as the worst fate that could befall any Jew. Such a person was under a curse and irredeemable. But it was the Apostle Paul who, by divine inspiration and revelation, grasped the full curse-repealing implications of death on a tree. He had those implications in mind when he penned Galatians 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

Yes, the shedding of that blood—a blood utterly untouched by the stain of sin—was essential to bring about a redemption that could pass legal muster in the Court of Heaven. But a sacrificial death that would once-and-for-all-time roll back the curse . . . ALSO had to be a death on a tree. But that’s not all.

There had to be thorns at that tree because thorns were a God-declared outcome of of that curse’s unfolding. (Gen. 3:18) And it had to be a naked and shameful death because the very first indicator that Adam and Eve had severed their life-sustaining connection to God was their shame-filled realization of their nakedness. 

There was no other possible death for that “Seed” promised to Eve. The One whose heel the serpent would bruise. The One who, in His victory over Death, would crush the head of that Serpent of old and make all things new.

Oh, yes. it had to be a cross.

A Season of Creative Destruction

Image: Creative Commons License

As anyone who has undertaken a major home remodeling project will attest–the “demo” phase is messy and ugly. (This, no matter how fun Chip Gaines makes “demo” look on TV.) It’s messy and chaotic, but absolutely necessary if something better, upgraded, and improved is going arise.

I’m not exceptionally “prophetic” but I do try to keep my spiritual ears attuned to what the Spirit is saying to me. And back in July, I told the folks on my email list that I believed we—God’s people individually, His Church, and His churches—had entered a season “accelerated transition.” (By the way, if you’re not on my email list, you can remedy that be registering on the home page.)

In the handful of months since, I’ve seen that observation validated in my own life in the cases of many families, institutions, churches and ministries I know. There is a lot of “demo” going on right now. And it feels messy and ugly and chaotic and can feel like things will never look pretty and orderly ever again. But they will.

They will because God has a pen in His hand and isn’t finished writing our chapters. And Jesus, the Head of His Church is:

. . . at [God’s] right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Ephesians 1:20-23 TPT

The “demo” phase is part of a process of creative destruction. And I believe this season of a “accelerated transition” also is bringing with it big, long, disruptive season of creative destruction—for individuals, businesses, ministries, and churches.

These disruptions and revelations are NOT “the devil.” They are NOT the enemy persecuting the Church. They are God, refining, restructuring, and rebuilding HIS Church and HIS world.

Some big entities are being “demo-ed” right now (“some,” not all). And here’s the thing. As I told a friend today, “I don’t know details in most of these cases. But I do know that the bigger and wealthier any enterprise gets the more incentives the key stakeholders have to keep the party going . . . no matter what.”

And some of these enterprises are very, very big.

And to another friend this week I texted:

“Spiritually, it is ‘pride’ and a sense ‘ownership entitlement’ that are the enemies here, not {person’s name}. God’s not having it any longer. But something wonderful is waiting on the other side of this season. Something glorious.”

This is not “judgment beginning with the house of God.” This is loving redemptive remodeling. Yes, the “demo” phase has begun. But something much better is coming. And that is God’s end game, because being redemptive lies at the very core of who He is.

My encouragement is this. Be on the side of building what God envisions. Not on the side of what has been. Pride, arrogance, entitlement are getting ripped out to the studs. The Master Architect has something much healthier in His plans.

Fight the Trend of Tech-Driven Isolation. Fight it with all Your Might.

A dear friend lost a 17-year-old son in a traffic accident a while back. At the service, my friend spoke of how, in the days following the horrific event, the way church friends and Christian coworkers instantly rallied to support him and his family in every conceivable way revealed to him the importance and power of being a part of a supportive community.

At the same time, I’ve recently watched several close friends wither and begin to struggle as circumstances caused them to become isolated from the networks of Christian friends of which they had long been a part.

Christian community is a big deal. But it’s rapidly going the way of the dinosaurs.

Prior to 2020, there were a lot of negative, unhealthy trends slowly but relentlessly unfolding in our culture. And then the Covid-19 pandemic (and our government responses to it) gave all of those trends a huge shove forward.

The most glaring example of this is the trend toward isolation and away from community, and the vital human connections community provides. I recently came across a graph in a BusinessInsider.com article that graphically (literally) illustratates what I’m talking about:

If you’ve wondered why so many young people have mental health struggles, this graph would be a good place to start looking for an answer. (And from there, I recommend a visit to the data concerning fatherlessness.)

Not only are we increasingly cut off from friends, we’re mingling with strangers less, too. People used to know their neighbors, but over the last 50 years, suburban neighborhood design–sideslip garages, minimalist front porches, backyard outdoor living spaces, etc.–carried the effect of minimizing our opportunities to interact with the people who live around us. And Amazon-DoorDash culture made it possible to never leave the house or apartment; or to rub shoulders with strangers at all.

For a fleeting season, coffee shops became superficial substitutes for having an authentic local community. You were alone with your coffee and your screen, ensconced in headphones or earbuds, but at least you around other humans. Today, many of the coffee shops are empty but the drive-thrus are full, as we prefer to stay in the isolation bubble of our cars.

Sadly, American Christians are not immune from this troubling trend. For quite a while now, I’ve been yammering at anyone who will stand still a few minutes to listen, about the decline of true “community” in our churches. With our feet and our checkbooks (remember those?) we voted for a style of “church” that gradually turned active, engaged members into passive spectators of minisitry content. Consumers rather than contributors.

The churches that delivered the “highest quality” content from the platform thrived–turning pastors and worship leaders into minor (and sometimes major) celebrities. Christian media played a huge role in this, as well. As a result, we got fewer, but bigger, churches. And the bigger they got, the easier it got for individuals to just just disappear while checking the church attendance box.

First, millions of believers were told that church membership involved two things: (1) showing up (to passively consume music and teaching); and (2) give (ideally through some sort of cold, digital, automated giving arrangement).

Then the Covid lockdowns came along and showed many Christians that, if “doing church” was mostly consuming a service and giving . . . they could do that from the sofa in their pajamas. In fact, many of the largest churches saw online viewing of their services (and online giving) soar during the lockdowns. But . . .

After the lockdowns ended, live church attendance never returned to previous levels.

I’m rooting for a comeback for community. A renaissance of relationship. And I’m saying this as a card-carrying introvert. Why? Because isolation is bad for us. Really bad. Yet the cultural and technological winds are blowing us toward ever-increasing levels of isolation. As you walk through the next few days, just take note of how many people are “alone in a crowd,” often ensconced in a tech-cocoon of earbuds and screen in front of their face.

When out wandering around in the wild, I intentionally try to see how many people I can make eye contact with so I can give them a smile. I’ve turned it into a game in my head. Sadly, my scores are not rising. But I’m trying.

I know fighting these winds will require being intentional. It will require choosing to talk to people. To be with people. A willingness to know others and to be known. And for us Jesus-followers, it will require voting with our feet for a model of church community that goes beyond passive consumption and spectating.

Fight the trend toward isolation. Fight it with all your might.

Are You Ready to Be Disrupted?

{Image Credit: mikemacmarketing, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons}

We are in the early days of what is the fifth disruptive technology revolution of my lifetime. This new one may be the biggest and most disruptive of all.

Disruption 1. The first was the advent of the personal computer in the early ’80s. I got my first PC in 1985. Then smart people started working on how to connect them all together to share information. Which led to . . .

Disruption 2. The Internet came along in the 90s. This changed everything. Anyone born after ’95 or so has no memory of a pre-Internet world. This led to . . .

Disruption 3. The advent of social networking and social media in the “oughts”, that is, the ’00s. MySpace was first to market in 2003. Facebook came along a year later. Twitter arrived in 2006 and Instagram in 2010–rewiring the brains of a couple of generations of young people and spawning an epidemic of anxiety, insecurity, fear, and rage. Then came . . .

Disruption 4. Smart phones. The first iPhone debuted in 2007. This technology merged the internet revolution with the convulsive changes brought about by mobile cellular phones. Watching television shows and movies produced prior to the year 2000, I’m constantly reminded that most of those plots don’t work if mobile phones exist. Now we have arrive at . . .

Disruption 5. ArtificiaI Intelligence (AI). Every tech company in the world is rapidly rolling out new AI platforms that contain the potential to change everything.

Back in 1990, it would have been impossible to anticipate all the ways the internet and smart phones would change our lives.

In a similar way, it’s impossible to know all the ways AI will change our world and our lives. But, for better and worse, it’s coming. The fact is, all new technologies have had “better” and “worse” aspects to them. Alfred Nobel (father of the Nobel prize) invented dynamite in the 1860s. It instantly made things like construction and mining easier. It also made killing people easier.

Less than a century later, the advent of nuclear power also became a two-edged sword. The power of nuclear fission could power entire cities. It could also destroy entire cities.

In a similar way, social media connects shut-ins like my 93-year-old mother to the outside world and to the lives of her great-grandchildren living hours away. And it exposes those same great-grandchildren to perversity and darkness while distorting their perception of themselves and the world.

All new technologies are like this. Some will use it for evil and others will use it for good. It will make lives better. And it will destroy lives. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the fallen, broken humans who utilize it. (Side Note: At the root of Progressive and Left ideologies is a denial of that basic truth about humans. We’re all born fallen and broken and in desperate need of a Redeemer. A rejection of this Genesis 2 and 3 truth sits as an uexamined false premise at the foundation of all Leftist ideology. But that’s a discussion for another post.)

One of the most negative effects of AI is already visible. The tech’s astonishing ability to fabricate images and video, and perfectly replicate voices, makes creating fake evidence and false narratives quick, cheap, and easy. Which means the most gullible and naive among us–particularly those most desperate to have their preferred narrative validated–are being duped. Meanwhile everyone else grows more cynical and skeptical.

Given the powers of photoshop and cgi video editing, this trend has been in place for years, but AI is accelerating it to warp speed.

For a while now I’ve been saying that the most troubling end game of this specific use of AI is not that our fellow citizens will believe lies, but that they ultimately will refuse to believe the truth when it’s standing right in front of them. (Note: I have a “Critical Thinking for Christians” e-course in the works that will help immensely with this. Stay tuned!)

Nevertheless, along with the manifold negative uses of AI hundreds of beneficial uses will emerge as well. Uses that make life better, easier, longer, and more pleasant for billions.

The disruptive AI revolution is coming. In fact, it’s here. The impulse in the West will always be to regulate it to death. Of course, Western governments have a terrible track record where regulation is concerned. It will invariably resort in bigger government; another bloated, corrupt bureaucracy; and will hinder the good applications of AI while sending the bad applications underground and out of sight. And while that’s happening, the world’s most evil actors; China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, et. al.; will gallop unrestrained toward developing AI’s worst applications.

Technologies are morally neutral. It’s people that are broken. And there is only one remedy for that brokenness. And we Jesus-followers carry it with us wherever we go.

The Twin Barriers to Intmacy with God

You are no doubt familiar with Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Maybe too familiar. Sometimes we let familiarity keep us from seeing things we’ve never seen before.

It really should be titled “The Parable of the Merciful, Gracious, Generous Father.” As I pointed out in my devotional, Praying Grace, neither of the two sons in Jesus’ story had a clue about the nature of their relationship and standing with their father. And the same thing is true of most believers.

Religion has robbed us of clarity and understanding of what it really means to be a child of God. The traditions of men have warped our view of who we are, and what we have and, most of all, who the Father truly is.

But for now I just want to pose a thought experiment concerning the brother who took his portion of the inheritance, walked away from his father, rejected every moral value his father held, and proceeded to blow through a big chunk of what his father had worked a lifetime to accumulate–and did so in the most defiling, self-destructive way possible. And he returned home only when on the verge of starvation and living in the most degrading, dehumanizing conditions imaginable.

Here’s what I want you to ask yourself . . .

Why did the young man in Jesus story wait so long to return home?

Why not go home when the money ran out? Or head back when he lost his place to live. Or at any other point in his downward spiral in life? If you put yourself in his place, you know the answer to that question. Two things kept him from the welcoming arms of his gracious father.

Pride and Shame

Pride said, “You can’t go back there with your tail between your legs. You’ll look like the fool you actually are.” Shame said, “You were an arrogant idiot. You were a bad son. You’ve done terrible things. You essentially rejected and spit on everything your father stands for and exemplifies.”

So . . . Only when desperation got bigger than pride and shame, did he head homeward. Only when he was willing to admit that he was utterly powerless to address his own basic needs did he make the choice to seek the face of father again.

Here is why I mention this here: The same two obstacles stand betwen most believers and the arms of their Father on most days. When they get in a pickle, they are reluctant or sheepish about seeking the face of their father. And for the same two reasons: Some combination of Pride and Shame.

Pride tells us we need earn our help. That we need to have exhuasted all personal, natural avenues and resources to fix it ourselves before we throw ourselves into the arms of our heavenly Father. Or until we done some penance or self-punishment. Pride tells us we mustn’t admit that we’re utterly powerless and completely helpless.

And Shame convinces us that we won’t be welcome if we run to God. That we’ve done too many “don’ts” and not done enough “dos” to qualify for help. That if we we run to Him, it’s not a smile of delight and open arms we’ll find there, but rather a frown and a punishment stick.

By the way, Pride and Shame often masquearade as authentic “Fear of the Lord.” But that’s a topic for another post.

The promise of Hebrews 4:16 which plainly states that, because of Jesus, we can “come BOLDLY to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and receive help in time of need,” seems like an unattainable benefit that “better Christians” than we have somehow earned or qualified for.

Of course, Pride led to the fall of humanity. And Shame was the first effect. And the then Pride moved our ancestors to create religion and religious activity (fig leaves) to deal with the shame.

But for the blood-bought Christian, Jesus’ parable exposes both Pride and Shame as liars.

One of the truths that make the Gospel “good news” is that Jesus bore our shame on the cross. (Hebrews 12:2) In fact, a key part of the sounds-too-good-to-be-true miracle of the new birth is that we receive “the gift of righteousness.” (Romans 5:17) In fact, we are wrapped in Jesus Himself and His righteousness. (Galatians 3:27) We actuallly “become” the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Deeply renewing your mind to that truth chokes out shame at the root. (But so few have actually done this.)

So the only remaining obstacle to deep connection and joy and power in the arms of the Father remains pride–the original sin. The sin that got Lucifer cast out of heaven. The sin that knocked over the first domino of The Fall at the wrong tree. The sin that drives, even believers, to try to contribute something to their salvation. Or pay back, or earn, or merit, or qualify.

Here, too, the neglected truth of the New Covenant has an answer. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus told us. What part of “nothing” do we not understand? Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:9, passes along a word he heard directly from Jesus when he was struggling with something. Faithfully paraphrasing, “Rest. Relax. Chill. My grace is sufficient for you because my power emerges and takes over whenever and wherever you recognize that you’re weak.”

So, dear Christian, if you’re struggling or hurting and flailing in any in any area of your life, here’s my question for you today:

“What are you waiting for?”

Why not run to His arms now? It’s possible you’re letting Pride or Shame or some combination of both unneccearily keep you from the very place where you’ll find everything you need.

As I said in the devotional Praying Grace, in the entry titled “Our Rejection for His Acceptance”:

Fly to Him, child of God. Run as fast as your feet can carry you. Know that you are accepted, loved, and unspeakably welcome. Then with grateful mindfulness of all He has done for you in the past, pour out to Him your requests.

Note: If shame is your primary obstacle, please allow me to urge to you get this book by my friend Alan Wright–a pastor and brilliant writer: Shame Off You.