Jesus: Humanity's Full and Final Word to God

12/13/09
Jesus: Humanity’s Full and Final Word to God
Hudson UMC

Last week, I preached a sermon declaring that the man Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God Incarnate, was God’s full and final word to us. I did not mean “full and final” in a way to say that what God has done is over, but that what God has done in Christ still endures to this day. I meant that Jesus is God’s full and final word to us because in Christ, God Himself has come among us as one of us. There is nothing more for God to say because God has revealed Himself to us in His entirety, and yet, we will spend all eternity learning more about what this means and we will never exhaust the mystery of God.

Today, I want to look at the other side of the coin. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God Incarnate, is also the full and final word from humanity to God. Again, I do not mean this to be understood in a limiting way. Just like God’s word to us was a person and, therefore, far to rich too be captured in mere words, the same is true for our word to God. Jesus is the faithful human response of humanity, and we cannot capture that reality in words, though we are compelled to say something about it. And yet, we cannot understand this concept unless we once again look at how God has shaped the Israelite culture.

God made a covenant with Abraham and ancient Israel. When people talk about the covenant, they usually point out that there are two parties in the covenant, God and humanity. Also, they point out, quite correctly, that we see God fulfilling both sides of the covenant. However, what we need to notice is that there is another element to the covenant. God, in addition to laying out the terms for the fulfillment of the covenant, also gives the people a covenanted way of response. This was not a list of things that the people needed to do or else God would not be their God, but rather a way of life that God gave them.

Now, we could spend a bunch of time analyzing just what they were supposed to do, but what is important for us to understand today is not so much the particular response that God gave them, but the fact that it was God that chose it and not the people. You see, Israel was not allowed to pick the ways that they thought that God should be worshipped. A big reason for this is because, since Israel was surrounded by pagan nations who had their own ways of worshiping God that were simply incommensurate with how God told them to live, if they were left to themselves, they would do things like everyone else was doing them. Over and over again, we read about the ancient Israelites going after the gods of the other nations, or trying to worship their God in the same ways. The problem is that these ways of worship were extremely graphic, violent and completely contrary to God as we see revealed in Jesus Christ. Every time the people departed from God’s ways of life and worship, God would raise up prophets to remind them that their God was not like the brutal and sexually immoral gods of their neighbors.

This is important for us to grasp because, every time we start to think out the Christian life in light of how we think we should live or how society thinks we should live, we will do just like the ancient Israelites did. We will think really well of our way of doing things without ever realizing, until God raises up a prophet, that our ways are not like God’s ways. In fact, when God has raised up prophets to deliver this kind of message in the past, the people have not traditionally reacted well, because they would rather do things their way than God’s way. In fact, most of the prophets were brutally killed.

Another thing to remember about God’s covenant is that it was made between God and an unholy people. You see, God knew full well that the people did not deserve to receive God’s favor and He knew that they would not be able to fulfill the laws that He gave them. And yet, He gave them anyway. Because God was making this agreement with a people who were already unholy, it meant that, despite the fact that they tried over and over again to escape from God’s ways, they could not get out of God’s grasp simply by being disobedient. God would not let them go that easily, even when they wanted nothing more than to be like the other nations and to be the lords of their own lives.

One of the things that God told the people to do was to give sacrifices as a part of their daily worship. Part of the reason for this is because God wanted to impress upon the people that their sin was a really big deal; such a big deal that life had to be taken away because of it. Another thing they needed to learn was that they could not deal with their sin in their own way. The only way God dealt with sin was in the ways that He laid out, not the ways that we think up. Another theme that was firmly impressed upon the Israelite mind is that God always provides the lamb for the sacrifice. In the story where Abraham is told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, God provides the lamb that is to serve as a substitute.

In Israel’s most significant sacrifice of the year, on the Day of Atonement, there are two lambs in the ceremony, a sacrifice and a bearer of sin. The sacrificial lamb is slaughtered in the Temple and the sins of Israel are confessed over the other lamb, called the “scapegoat,” which is then driven out into the wilderness. In this way, sin is shown as being so serious that death is the result, but it is also shown that sin needs to be taken upon a living being and dealt with in that way as well.

As Christians, we believe that God has provided the lamb for us as well, not just a sacrifice but also a sin bearer. Indeed, not even just that, but, in that same person of Jesus Christ, God has executed the judgment that our sins deserve, He has borne our sins away upon His own shoulders, and has fulfilled the appropriate human response, for us and our salvation, on our behalf and in our place.

Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human. Through Him, God has given His word to us so that we might know God and live our lives in response to that revelation. However, we need to always remember that it is through Him that humanity, that is, you and me, give our word back to God. You see, you and I mess things up from time to time, or, at least in my own case, all the time. If our hope was based on how well we can do something, we are in a heap of trouble, because, I don’t know about you, but I am all too aware of how far short of the mark I fall. And yet, God knows that we cannot respond like we should, but He does not abandon us. Instead, He sent His Son to live among us, to take our brokenness upon Himself so that He could respond on our behalf and make the one true and perfect human response to God.

What this means is that, once the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church on Pentecost, we have been bound to Christ. We have become implicated in Christ’s death as we often say, but more than just His death. Every aspect of the life of Christ has an impact on the way we live, on the way we think, and the way we relate to God. God has fulfilled our response in Jesus, has lived the perfect human life, has died the perfect human death, all on our behalf and in our place. And yet, this does not get us off the hook. Through the Holy Spirit, we come to realize that it is our life that Christ was living, our death that He was dying, our prayers that He was praying. In Jesus we see that, when God does everything, it does not leave humanity out of the picture because, when God moved in Christ, it was both a perfect divine act and a perfect human act. When God does something in our place, it implicates us as well. In Jesus we see that all of God does not mean nothing of humanity or, more specifically, nothing of us. All of God in our lives means all of us. When God moves in our lives, all of who we are is changed.

If we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to confess that we do not always respond correctly to God’s revelation. We might even say that we never do. We read the Bible and the truth of God remains for us just words on the page. We pray, but sometimes we hold back or we don’t really mean everything we say. We love our neighbors but sometimes we hope that we will receive something in return for it. And yet, we do not need to be depressed because, though we are called to be faithful and we should always strive to be faithful, we are not condemned for our shortcomings. Christ has responded to God’s revelation to us on our behalf and in our place. In Christ, knowledge of God has been made possible for human beings. Through the almighty power of the Holy Spirit, we, too, may have real knowledge of God. And yet, this real knowledge is not just whatever we want to think about God, but is grounded in the human mind of Christ. Just like the Israelites could not worship God however they wanted to but had to ground their worship in God’s revelation, we can know God, but we only really know God when our minds begin to reflect the mind of Christ.

Know that Christ has believed in God on your behalf and in your place. He has lived the Christian life on your behalf and in your place. Everything that we have been called to do, Christ has done on your behalf and in your place. This might bother us at first. After all, what is left for us, do we not also need to live as Christians? We do. This is how Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians. He says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Paul is saying that he is living his life, but in the end, though it is Paul who is living it, it is really the life of Christ. As we grow in grace, we begin to do what Jesus would do, say what Jesus would say, think how Jesus would think, and feel how Jesus would feel. John Wesley had a keen grasp of this kind of participation in the life of Christ as individual Christians. He said, “We have no grace from Christ, but only in Him.” Christ does not give us grace to empower us to live our lives like He did, Christ lives His life through us.

So, this means that, whenever we have real faith, it is Christ believing in us by the Spirit. When our faith is weak and we are struggling and we are all too aware of the weakness of our faith, we can take comfort knowing that, even when we are weak, He is strong and that Christ’s faith on our behalf does not falter when ours does. Whenever we pray as we should, it is not because we have worked really hard and we learned all the right things to say. What happens is the Holy Spirit takes our words, even when we do not use the right words, and unites them to the dynamic and powerful prayer of Christ who prays for us while seated at the right hand of God. This is one of the reasons that we pray the Lord’s Prayer. We know all too well that we do not always pray like we should, so we, through the Spirit, take the words of Christ onto our lips and offer them to God, who accepts them because of Christ. Even when we repent, we do not always repent fully like we should, holding onto some of our bad habits and other vices. When we realize this, let us remember that Christ was baptized with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The sins He confessed were not His own, they were ours. He has repented for us and we join in that repentance through the Spirit.

When we really love our neighbors in the way Christ calls us to love; when we really are ready to lay our lives down for others; when we show mercy and compassion and every other kindness to others, not because we think God will like us more, or because they did nice things for us, or because we think they might be able to pay us back someday, or because we can expect a favor in return; when our love is really all that it should be, we must always remember that it is not because we are so good, but because God is so good that He is loving in and through us. When the Spirit works that kind of magnificent love in our lives, we are joining in the love that God has for the world, the love that drove Him to send His only Son so that all who believe in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.

When we live our lives every moment of every day, or even any moment of any day, with the kind of love for God and neighbor that God has promised us in the gospel, it is the life of Christ in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The life we now live is the life of Christ in us. What a glorious thing it is to be joined to the very life of God through Christ and in the Spirit!

We are never off the hook. Just like Paul, we are implicated in Christ’s ministry. Like Wesley said, we only have grace in Christ, while we are in Christ by the Spirit. Christ is humanity’s full and final word to God. Christ has already done the ministry. All the activity of the church from day one is a participation in that ministry, the joining Christ in what He has already done and is continuing to do in and through us. We could say that our ministry is just a participation, but that participation is utterly real. We really do join with Christ in that ministry and in that divine life. Christ living His life in and through us really changes us and it really makes a difference in the world.

So, since we have a God who has loved us to the uttermost with a love that will not let us go, let us respond in faith and trust. God in Christ has pledged His very being as God for us that God cannot undo unless He were to deny Himself. God has done everything, even believing and living on our behalf and in our place. The only rational response is to give God everything that He has already given us. So, since God has renounced Himself and taken up His cross for us, let us renounce ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, let us remember that Jesus is not only God’s gift to humanity, but humanity’s gift to God. Let us pray.

AMEN