Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him.
—Jesus
Conceived by the Holy Spirit, the Father’s Son became a baby in the womb of the virgin Mary. He was born a Jewish boy in Israel, and in the midst of Israel’s relationship with God. As he grew in wisdom and stature, he became more and more involved in the life of Israel. Entering his public ministry around thirty, Jesus immediately began healing and teaching. Some “beheld his glory,”1 which means they saw Jesus for who he really is,2 as the Father’s own Son, the Creator, and the One anointed in the Holy Spirit. In him, the light of life was shining in the darkness—and people were drawn to him. Full of compassion for the broken and overwhelmed, he poured himself out to help others, to heal and restore, to enlighten and liberate. As his fame spread like wildfire, great crowds gathered to hear him, touch him, receive his healing, and be part of his world. For a short while it was beautiful, something like the way it should be when the Father’s Son enters our world.
But things quickly changed. Conflict seemed inevitable as the religious leaders began watching Jesus with suspicious hearts.3 They had a lot to lose—and Jesus was making staggering promises and equally staggering claims. He spoke with “revolutionary boldness,”4 assuming superiority not only to the Jewish leaders, but also to the sacred Torah itself.5 For Jesus, as we have seen, God was his own Father, and he was the unique and only Son. But Jesus made no promises that he did not keep. He delivered: he healed, he restored, he gave new sight to the blind, and he even raised the dead.
Jesus’ presence—his heart, his life, his healing—forced the hand of the Jewish leadership by exposing the bankruptcy of their religion. In hush-toned, backroom meetings, they plotted to silence him: “If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”6 So they sent out spies to find “proof,” anything they could use to discredit him.7 Even (or perhaps especially) in the face of Jesus calling Lazarus back to life from the dead, “they planned together to kill Him.”8
It is easy for us to throw stones at the outright blindness of the Jewish leaders, but in the end Jesus had few real friends, as he died virtually alone. The great crowds dwindled and then turned against him. One of his own inner-circle disciples betrayed him into the hands of the powers that be; another denied him publicly three times. All the others, save a handful, deserted him when it mattered most. A few women and the beloved disciple gathered around him in his final hours.9
In the space of three or so years of biblically unparalleled ministry, the Father’s Son incarnate died in apparent shame, while the scoffing of the Jewish leaders and the sneering cheers of the Gentiles filled the arena of his brutal execution.
The point here is not the way Jesus’ fortunes changed or even to examine why. The point is that the almost universal response to him was one of rejection. The news that the Father’s Son came to be with us and to bless us with a share in his own life is astonishing indeed—who would have ever dreamed of such divine grace and blessing?—but there is something here even more stunning. We mocked him.10 We abused him. We rejected him. We plotted against him and murdered the Anointed One.
Just after John announces that it was through the Word of God that “all things” came into being, that “apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being,”11 he writes these terrible words: “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”12 In those two verses we stare into the most terrifying irony: the Creator himself stooped to become one of us, and his own creatures did not receive him.
Straightaway John prepares his readers to see that something is terribly wrong. His own received him not. The Son’s coming was all too human, too nondivine. We did not recognize him. As the songwriter says, “No banners were unfurled as God stepped into the world, held in the arms of a little girl named Miriam.”13 The presence of the Father’s Son made no sense to us. He did not meet our expectations of God, or of God’s coming, or of God’s presence and blessing, or of God’s Messiah. “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?”14
Far from being received with the honor due to the Father’s eternal Son, Jesus was in fact slandered as being a bastard.15 Think about it. The one person in biblical history who was anointed with the Holy Spirit as an abiding gift16 was accused of being demon-possessed.17 The Good Shepherd,18 appointed before the foundation of the world,19 was thought to be leading the multitude astray.20 But the issue of Adam’s fall is far more catastrophic than a quibble over expectations or an inability to think clearly about God or God’s kingdom. The fallen mind led us into serious conflict with the presence of the Lord. The blindness expressed in that verse, “He came unto his own and his own received him not,” grew with horrifying intensity into the curse “Away with this man! Crucify, crucify him!”21
This rejection was no simple refusal to play God’s game. It had a violent stinger in its tail; it was rejection with a double shot of bitterness and cruelty. The Father’s Son came to share his life with us, and he was spat upon. The Anointed One was mocked, derided, scoffed at, and beaten, and then in plain view of the world he was brutally murdered while his own creatures universally approved.
Crucifixion is not simply elimination; it is rejection. It is personal rejection under a curse. What a terrible spectacle it must have been for the cosmos to watch Jesus’ own creatures condemn him—the true Judge, judged by broken humanity, to borrow from Karl Barth.22 Is it any wonder that the earth itself shook, and darkness fell over the whole land as the sun hid its face?23 But then again, what reader of Scripture is really that shocked? Didn’t the prophets receive the same treatment, and didn’t Jesus tell a prophetic parable about his own rejection and murder at the hands of the chief priests and elders?24
There is much here that will never be understood. But two things are crystal clear. First, Jesus’ crucifixion—and the enmity that fueled it—shouts to us that something is hideously wrong, that humanity suffers from diabolical confusion. The Father’s Son came to be with us in person, and not only did we not want him, we were hell-bent on casting him out of our world and humiliating him in the process. We could not be more wrongheaded! The fact that the presence of the Anointed One produced such a hostile reaction from us, leaving the Father’s Son publicly cursed, proves the point that Adam’s fall involves us in the most vile and ungodly blindness.
Second, there is serious venom in the attack upon Jesus. It is terrible enough to crucify a good and innocent man; it is even more horrific when we enjoy it. The Gospel narratives do not portray a larger crowd helplessly watching in horror as a handful of wicked men play their power politics and snuff out their greatest threat. The leadership wanted Jesus dead, gone, eliminated—but so did the crowds. And the shouts of “Crucify, crucify him!” say so much more than simply “We want this man out of the picture.” There is deep bitterness here. Give him vinegar. Damn him. The astonishing blasphemy of the Jewish leaders, “We have no king but Caesar,”25 betrays a feverish hostility toward Jesus that would go to any length to have him eliminated.
The inherent legalism of the Western Church26 trains our eyes to see Jesus’ suffering as the judgment of God upon our sin, and virtually blinds us to the more obvious point that Jesus suffered from the wickedness of humanity.27 It was the human race, not the Father, who rejected his beloved Son and killed him.28 The wrath poured out on Calvary’s hill did not originate in the Father’s heart, but in ours.29 The humiliation that Jesus bore, the torment that he suffered, was not divine but human. We mocked him; we detested him; we judged him. We ridiculed him, tortured him, and turned our face from him. It was not the Father or the Holy Spirit who abandoned Jesus and banished him to the abyss of shame; it was the human race. We cursed him.
Either the Father, Son, and Spirit were caught off guard by our corporate rejection of Jesus, or there is a redemptive genius at work here that is too beautiful for words. Was the Jewish and Roman rejection of Jesus not foreseen by the triune God? Was the Father surprised when we killed the solution? Was Jesus bewildered and the Holy Spirit shocked when things went south and the crowds turned against him? No, of course not. The animosity of the human race toward the Father’s Son was anticipated, and indeed counted on, and literally incorporated30 as the critical part in bringing about our real relationship. Here is amazing grace. In breathtaking love, the Lord’s way of relationship involves the shocking acceptance of our cruelty. The Incarnation involves the inconceivable submission of the Trinity to our bizarre darkness and its bitter judgment.
What sin could be more heinous than rejecting—and then murdering—the Father’s Son, and what grace could be more shocking and personal and real than the Lord willingly submitting himself to suffer our wrath so as to actually meet us in our terrible darkness? It is astonishing indeed that the Father’s Son became what we are, and it is even more stunning that we rejected and abused and crucified him. But it is more mind-boggling still that Jesus willingly accepted and endured it all, when one word would have unleashed legions of angels to his defense.31
How far is the blessed Trinity prepared to go to meet us? The Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally serious about loving us and bringing us to know their love, but isn’t there a line in the cosmic sand that they will not cross? Isn’t there a point at which even the love of the triune God draws back?
It would seem impossible that the blessed Trinity could so enter into our miserable nightmare of projected hostility as to make contact with the real us. But what is relationship if it leaves the real us trapped in our confusion, unable to hear and see and receive the Father’s love? What kind of reconciliation would it be that declared humanity legally clean, yet left us lost in the darkened cosmos of the fallen mind and its appalling pain?
Following Torrance’s line of insight, the deliberate intensification of Israel’s animosity toward God leads straight into the cruel rejection of Jesus by the Jews, and by the whole race of humanity. This is how the Lord reaches the real us: he comes to us in person, and submits himself to our evil, alien judgment. He does not try to win us theologically. He does not call fire down upon our brazen stupidity. He does not shame us for our self-incarcerating pride and detestable prejudice. He simply comes in person, and the conflict between fallen humanity and the Lord’s presence reaches its boiling point. There is nowhere to hide. The fury of our hell breaks loose.
Unlike Adam and Israel, and all of us, the Father’s Son does not run to escape the pain of real relationship. Refusing to pretend that all is well, he embraces the conflict, allowing himself to become the personal target, the scapegoat for all of our pain. He willfully, deliberately, humbly, and astonishingly bows to suffer our loathsome enmity. He takes a dagger to the heart—without ever approving of or agreeing with our dastardly confusion. While we are breathing christological air, he, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the Father’s Son and the Anointed One, allows us to pour our wrath upon him.
On a human, relational level, when someone is angry with us, we have several possible avenues of response. We can pretend that there is no problem, that all is well, and go our merry way. We can invoke the “I don’t care” clause and turn away in indifference. We can retaliate, matching anger with anger. But none of these responses serve the purpose of relationship or solve the problem. What, then, is the way forward? Forgiveness? Yes, forgiveness clears the air for most of us, but forgiveness does not necessarily reach the other person’s heart. But what if we accept the other person’s way of seeing? What if we enter into their way of seeing us, and, without necessarily approving of their judgment, submit ourselves to their verdict? What if we were to bear their wrongheaded anger without condemning them?32 And in doing so, in bearing the scorn of their resentment, what have we done? Have we not identified with them, embraced them, and related to them as they are? Have we not taken them into ourselves and established a real and personal relationship with them in their pain and estrangement? Indeed, have we not reached them?
Such is the way of the trinitarian love of God for us in our terrible darkness. Jesus embraced our hell as the womb of his incarnation. In person, the Son of God walked into the room of our fiery conflict with God and bore our animosity. Who would ever have imagined that the Father’s Son himself would come among us, let alone allow himself to be rejected, damned, and cursed by his own creation? “Most profoundly, Jesus’s death expresses the Trinitarian mystery of self-surrender at the heart of divine reality.”33 Such astounding love, such care, such determination to be with us and to share life, is beyond our wildest dreams. It cannot be. But so it is.
For the Father’s Son did come. He did enter into the trauma of Adam’s fall. He did not pretend that all is well; he did not abandon us and move on to other, more important things; he did not shout instructions from the sidelines of the conflict; and he did not retaliate. His presence stirred up the hell of Adam’s fall, and we poured out our sin upon him and cursed him. Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, the Anointed One, stepped into the arena of our hostility and deliberately submitted himself to suffer our damnation—and we damned him.
The sin of all sins was the irony of all ironies, and the great prophet Isaiah predicted it: “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”34 Twice Isaiah uses the word despised, emphasizing the contempt and disdain of the people toward Jesus. He heard the whispers, the snickering innuendos, the mocking shouts. While he was fully divine, to be sure, he was the Son of God as man and thus thoroughly human. He had no force field to protect his heart, no secret antidote to counter the gut-wrench of such personal rejection.
It is painful enough to live with the knowledge that you have disappointed a friend, but how do you bear knowing that you are a disappointment to the whole world? What Great Sadness engulfs your heart when you are sneered at by your own people as a disgrace—publicly despised and forsaken? Think of Jesus’ pain as he walked into his illegal trial and allowed himself to be unjustly judged and condemned, and then endured the self-righteous grimaces and smirks of disdain, the pompous pride of those who hated him as they relished their victory.
A few years back I met a man out west. As we talked one evening he shared some stories of his own wounds. I noticed his hands quivering as he remembered the details of one particular day.
“When I was about five years old, my dad was plowing in the field behind our house,” he said. “It was a hot day. Daddy whistled, and then shouted to Mama to send out some tape to cover blisters on his hands. Eager to help, I grabbed the tape and started toward Daddy. I tore off a piece of tape about seven inches long, thinking that would be good, but by the time I got there the tape was a twisted mess. I can still see the disgust on my daddy’s face. And he was so mad. With disdain in his eyes he jerked the tape from my hands. Then he grabbed me on the top of my head, spun me around, and kicked me in the ass with his boot. It knocked me to the ground. I’m not proud to say it, but I peed in my pants, and cried all the way home. That was over fifty years ago, my friend. The shame still makes my insides churn.”
Jesus knew the kick was coming, and he deliberately walked right into the boot. But the kick was not from his Father. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him.”35 The doom of Calvary haunted Jesus from the moment of his birth. It was always with him, the ghost of every miracle. There was no other way; this was the plan from before Creation. He was the Lamb foreknown, and the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.36 The “buzzing cloud of flies about the cross,” as Lewis says, was foreseen from the beginning.37
Gethsemane is the window into Jesus’ inner world. Just hours before the long agony of his execution, Jesus retreated with his closest friends to pray. “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death,” he told them. Mark says Jesus was “distressed and troubled,” and Luke says he was “in agony,” and that his sweat “became like drops of blood.”38 Overwhelmed with the impending doom of placing himself in the crosshairs of our cruelty, Jesus fell on his face. Three times he cried out in fervent prayer, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.” “Abba! Father! All things are possible for you: remove this cup from me—yet not what I will, but what you will.”39 Jesus is ever the faithful Son, but at this moment faithfulness leads straight into the belly of the coldhearted beast. “Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.”40
What comfort Jesus found in Gethsemane was short-lived. He was soon forsaken by his own disciples, mercilessly beaten and whipped, and ridiculed at every turn. Then came the disgrace of dragging his own cross through the streets lined with murmurs of contempt, and then the nails, the crucifixion, and the belligerent derision: “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God; let God rescue Him now, if He delights in Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”41
Jesus knew his Father would never forsake him, and not in a million millennia would the Holy Spirit abandon her post, but as he was hoisted up on the cross, as the jerking suffocation dislocated his shoulders and tormented his already-broken body, as his ears rang with the scoffing of the crowds, and as he bore the despicable treachery of the human race, he was overwhelmed. It had to be. In the lion’s den of our hostility, Jesus died a humiliating death encircled by a thousand disgusted faces.
Here we must be silent in awe. “One day you folk will understand what he gave up,” says Papa (193). “There are just no words.”
As we poured our scorn upon Jesus, the Lord was causing the iniquity of us all to encounter or fall upon him,42 and Jesus was becoming the scapegoat, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”43 Dying in the arms of our contempt, the Father’s Son met us where we are. He reached us. Accepting us at our most wicked moment, Jesus embraced us in the terrible abyss of our gnarled and twisted pathology, thereby penetrating to the core of Adam’s fall and the original sin—and he brought his Father and the Holy Spirit with him. “We were there together,” says Papa (98). Mack is shocked:
“At the cross? Now wait, I thought you left him—you know—‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ”…
“You misunderstand the mystery there. Regardless of what he felt at that moment, I never left him.”
“How can you say that? You abandoned him just like you abandoned me!”
“Mackenzie, I never left him, and I have never left you.”
“That makes no sense to me,” he snapped. (98)
On the cross Jesus bore the Great Sadness of the world; he gave himself into the trauma of our darkness. Immersed in our contempt, he lost touch with his Father’s love and with the comfort of the Holy Spirit. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”44
But even this cry of despair was also a cry of solid hope; indeed, a sermon of victory.45 For the psalm from which Jesus quotes goes on to say: “For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him for help, He heard.”46 In quoting this psalm, which ends in astonishing triumph, Jesus is interpreting his death, as if to say, “It may look to you, as Isaiah foresaw,47 that my Father is forsaking me. But nothing could be further from the truth, as you will soon see.” Breathing his last breath in the darkness, Jesus gave himself completely into his Father’s hands in helpless trust. “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.”48 In the words of Papa, “Don’t forget, the story didn’t end in his sense of forsakenness. He found his way through it to put himself completely into my hands. Oh, what a moment that was!” (96).
This is how the Father, Son, and Spirit made their way into Adam’s shack—and into Mackenzie’s, and ours. And this is why Papa has nail scars on her wrists, and if Sarayu manifested physically, they would be seen on her wrists as well. For in the oneness of the blessed Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit suffered Jesus’ hell with him. They shared fully in his trauma, feeling his abuse, tasting the salt of his tears, and (I should hasten to add) sharing his humble restraint in the teeth of such sickening injustice. They chose the way of submission, of other-centered love, of grief and shared sorrow, and in doing so drew our very hell into the bosom of the Father and into the dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus entered into the den of our iniquity, thereby establishing a real relationship between the blessed Trinity and us in our twisted prejudice. Jesus reached us in our fallen minds, personally closing the abyss between his Father’s dream for our adoption and our insane blindness. The death of Jesus was an act of inclusion: he was including the real us, the fallen, helpless, broken, rebellious us in his fellowship with his Father. In dying, Jesus became the mercy seat, the place where the blessed Trinity personally suffered and endured sinners and their sin in astonishing mercy.
It deserves repeating again: the gospel is not the news that we can accept an absent Jesus into our lives. The gospel is the news that the Father’s Son has received us into his. In Jesus the alien world of our darkness and pain, of our obstinate pride and anger, was drawn within the life of the blessed Trinity, and the trinitarian life of God set up shop inside our hell forever. Our adoption is not a mere theological doctrine. Adoption is the way things really are, now and forever.