Jesus could have rejected the Father’s will- cup of suffering. No kingdom would have to advance like a mustard seed. The kingdom would rather- descend like a hailstorm. Yoder: the cross- the ‘cup’ was the very reason Jesus came to earth. Here we have a man who loves his enemies, who being rich became poor, who gave his robe to those who took his cloak, who prayed for those who spitefully used him. The cross was not a detour or hurdle on the way to the kingdom nor was it even the way to the kingdom, it was the kingdom come!
On religious wars:
No one thinks modern Italians responsible for what their forefathers did 19 centuries ago. Jews- far less guilty of the death of Jesus than Greeks who are guilty of the death of Socrates. Who will now avenge the blood of Socrates upon his countrymen? Yet this 1900 years past, the world continues to avenge the blood of Jesus upon countrymen.
Karl Barth: Jesus does not confess His Messiahship until the moment when the danger of founding a religion is finally past. Only when He was weak, rejected and utterly alone did He accept the title ‘Christ’ and reveal himself. What happens to us when we are alone seeking Him? Christ reveals himself. God happens. Not religion.
Test of individual greatness:
1. What did they leave to grow?
2. Did they start men to think along fresh lines of vigour after them?
Jesus stands 1st here. He is the dividing point of history and our lives. What we think about God and how we respond determines our destiny for eternity. Some of us looking for Jesus don’t see past our own noses.
William Blake:
The vision of Christ that thou see,
Is my greatest enemy,
Thine has a great hook nose like thine,
Mine has a snub nose like mine,
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou readst black where I read white.
Walter Wink: If Jesus never lived, it would be impossible to invent Him.
Often the work of God has two sides: Great joy and great pain. An oxymoron: a humble God.
A different kind of glory than we know: The glory of humility.
Father Neville Figgis: The fact that God is great does not need to be taught by God to men. Fear is a primary emotion while approaching God.
God’s act of mercy is seen as cruelty. His attempts to heal seen as destruction. The playwright became a character in the play. Word became flesh. History is His Story. Jesus’ sensibilities is affected most by the poor or pressed underdogs.
Rom 12:3: faith is the process of proving the perfect will of God.
Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication- Simone Weil.
The temptations on Jesus:
1. Garden: Can you be like God?
2. Wilderness: Can you be truly a human?
They seemed like Jesus’ prerogatives. Qualities of the Messiah. Prove himself and worship Satan. Therefore, man’s conflict with Satan always concerns proving himself and who he worships. The devil is farsighted. He looked at only what is big or high and attached himself to it. He does not see Jesus’ capacity of humble association with sinful people. Satan wants Jesus to dazzle him with Godlike acts. Jesus on the other hand: only God makes these decisions. I will not do it at your command.
Satan tempted Jesus to the good parts of his being i.e. to savour bread without rules of hunger and agriculture, to confront risk without danger, to enjoy fame without the prospect of rejection= to wear a crown without a cross. These are what us, his followers still long for.
Malcolm Muggeridge: Jesus had but to give a nod of agreement and He could construct Christendom not on 4 shaky gospels and a defeated man on the cross but on sound economic principles. Every utopia brought to pass and every dream come true. Satan offers Him to be the Messiah we think we want. We don’t want a suffering Messiah.
Jesus rebuked Peter though Peter recoiled in defense of Him at his prediction of suffering: “You do not have in mind the things of God but of men.” Peter’s words were again a temptation by Satan to an easier way. On the cross the last temptation was by the criminal: “Aren’t you Christ? Save yourself!”
Jesus surrendered his greatest advantage: the power to compel belief.
Russia: attempts to compel morality produced defiant subjects and tyrannical rulers who lose their moral core.
The lesson of the Temptation is that goodness cannot be imposed externally from top to bottom. It must grow internally from bottom up.
The profound difference between God’s power and Satan’s power is that Satan coerces, forces obedience. destroys and dazzles. Humans learn much from this.
God’s powers are internal. It is not coercive. He does not enslave man by miracles and He craves free-given faith- not based on miracles. This may at times seem like weakness because it is relentlessly dependent on human choice. Love is abdication! Love can be rendered powerless as every parent and lover knows if the beloved chooses to spurn it.
Soren Kiekergaard: Omnipotence which can lay its hand so heavily on the world can make its touch so light that the creature receives independence.
Sometimes we wish God would use a heavier touch. Our faith suffers from too much freedom- too much temptations to disbelief. We want God to constantly overwhelm us, overcome us with certainty, flick Hitler off the world. We are like Satan- hurling temptations at God.
To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it.
He would not force himself on those who are not willing. Ivan Karamazov: the ‘miracle’ of restraint’.
Only love can summon love. The reason He created us. That is how love is. Love is the only power in conquering a human’s heart.
When people accuse someone of a Saviour complex- it is an obsession over curing other people’s problems. The true Saviour is free from this. He does not cure those who are not ready to be cured. God persuades instead of using fear. People start to use manipulative techniques to win a soul. Believe! Don’t ask questions! Jesus was not like that at all.
The worship of success is the form of idol worship which the devil cultivates most assiduously- Helmut Thielicke on the German church’s early infatuation with Hitler.
We are willing to trade away certain freedoms for success and protection. When these temptations arise, we should return to Jesus in the desert. Jesus resisted Satan, preserved me for the very freedom I exercise in my own temptations. Pray for patience because he has gone through it and will help us.
Jesus is different from world masters: He pointed the truth rather than seek it. Peter and Andrew abandoned their fishing business- ironically after Jesus gave them the most successful fishing day ever.
The value of apocryphal things and such lies in the contrast with the truth.
