Good Friday

[cappie]

Three times in the New Testament, we see the phrase “before the foundation of the world”. We find it John chapter 17, in the Letter to the Ephesians, and in the First Letter of Peter. In each instance, it means the same thing: that God chose to be incarnate in Jesus before there was any creation. In fact, it means that God’s intention to become incarnate in Jesus was the reason for creation.

That all sounds fine, until you realise what else the phrase means but doesn’t actually say — that Jesus couldn’t have come to fix the results of the fall, because God’s decision to become incarnate in Jesus was made before there ever was a fall. So, all those theories that make out Jesus had to die in order to fix the problem of evil, sin, and death, they miss the crucial revelation made three times in the New Testament that that wasn’t why Jesus came. Jesus came to be with us in time so that we could be with him forever.

Remember the short introduction to the foot washing scene during the Last Supper in John’s gospel: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). That’s what happens on the cross. Jesus loves us to the end. The fact that Jesus didn’t come to die to fix the sin problem doesn’t make the cross less important. It makes it more important. Look at it this way. God creates the world to be with us in Christ. God prepares to bring the world finally to an end and to be with us forever. The whole story is about being with — beginning, middle, and end.

But here’s the crucial moment in the story. God becomes incarnate in Jesus and dwells among us. Jesus meets us in our fragility, our folly, and our fecklessness. He is Immanuel, “God with us”. Then suddenly he’s surrounded, arrested, assaulted, condemned, crucified. Now’s the moment. If he escapes to the Father now — if he can’t hack it and, because of physical pain or total humiliation or the unthinkability of death, he gets swooped up by angels — then he has demolished and discredited the whole story: the whole reason for creation, the whole destiny of eternity together, the whole purpose of the incarnation. If Jesus can’t stay on the cross, even in the face of being abandoned by the Father, the whole initiative to be with us now and always goes up in smoke.

The cross is the ultimate test of whether God is serious about us. And what it shows in the face of agony, desertion, abandonment, and isolation, is that God is so serious about being with us that God is willing to jeopardise being with God. “No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of life”, says the great Easter hymn Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son — Jesus is so committed to being with us that he endures separation from the Father. And the Father is so committed to Jesus being with us that he endures not being with Jesus. And in the great mystery of being-with, the Spirit remains with the Father and the Son. And two days later, the Spirit reunites the Father with the Son and God with us in the resurrection.

Look at that. No fancy atonement theory that distorts God and goes against the true reason for creation and incarnation. No human-centric story that’s all about Jesus fixing our problem. Just God; just God being with us; just God being with us whatever happens; just God being with us into, through and beyond Jesus’s death and ours. Just God being with us forever. That’s the gospel. That’s the story that reaches its climax on Palm Sunday.

Recall the words of the hymn “Be Thou My Vision”: Heart of my own heart, whatever befall. That’s what the cross means. That’s what the incarnation means. That’s what Holy Week means. From the foundation of the world. From the dying Jesus. And forever. God is singing to us: Whatever befall. I am with you always. Forever.