25 February 2009
Don't lose your focus. Being a
Christian begins with
Christ. If all you did for the rest of your life was deepened your love for Jesus, you would have lived a wonderful life.
Think about him. Chew over what he has done for you on the way to work. Consider what it would have been like to listen as he taught crowds while you sit at the bus stop. Name all the blessings that are now yours through his blood, shed in his death on the cross.
Jesus had the fullness of God in him - he was called the 'Son of God', a title that made him equal with God. People tried to kill him because he claimed to be, and proved that he was God.
Yet, unlike us, he didn't want to seize that position as equal with God. Though by nature, we as humans want to push God off his throne and take his place, Jesus was completely different.
He made himself nothing. He swapped the shining glory of a glittering palace in heaven... for a dirty, cold, disease-ridden stable - and a life living on the poverty line. The prince of the universe chose to be reduced to a manual labourer - a servant. He swapped power and immortality for fragile flesh - a humanity which could bruise and break, which grew tired, and often felt weak.
And the height of his shame, the end point of his deliberate descent from glory to agony, was his death by execution. Spat on, made fun of, punched in the face, laughed at like an animal paraded before a cruel crowd.
Through swollen, half-closed eyes he looked out at the sneering faces of those people he himself had made. Those soldiers who whipped him, again and again without mercy - he had planned their conception, had watched them grow in the womb, been there for their first steps, seen them grow through childhood to become strong men in the Roman army.
And even as he finally hung, exhausted, bleeding, nailed to the cross, struggling to take his final breath, he whispered a prayer - "Father forgive them. They don't know what they are doing."
So God did not leave his Son in the grave. His greatest shame was his greatest glory. Through his death, those people he had created could once again come freely to love and serve their creator God. God brought Jesus back to life, with a renewed body, and lifted him up to place him in the highest throne in the universe - with the greatest name and all power to command and control.
At the name of King Jesus, all people, of every race, country and religion should bow. He is greater than Buddha, greater than Muhammad, greater than Richard Dawkins, or the Queen, or the Pope, or Obama. One day, all those people will fall on their faces in fear before him, along with the rest of humanity.
And all will confess, whether joyfully, or fearfully, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and God the Father will get great glory at the praise of his Son.
That's the glimpse of Jesus Paul shows us in Philippians 2:6-11, so that we might love, and follow in his footsteps with humble obedience.
Jesus is out of this world. I love Jesus.
