Toward the Cross

So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." (John 8:28-29)

As Jesus grew and matured it became more clear to Him what His true destiny and purpose was here on this earth. His awareness was growing of the reality of the coming cross and all its surrounding circumstances that were destined to reveal the immensity of the love of God to all the universe. His real identity and purpose for human existence was coming into sharper clarity in His mind.

Throughout His childhood Jesus' education was primarily from the Scriptures, the tutelage of His mother and the promptings of the Holy Spirit from His true Father in heaven. The Scriptures were His main lesson book and nature was its supplement which all helped to reinforce the Spirit's impressions concerning His true identity. By the age of twelve His awareness of His divine origin had become clear enough to Him that He was ready to make a bold statement to His parents about His own identity, His mission and His willingness to step into His role of Messiah at any time. But He was also humble and willing to submit to them for another eighteen years until the Holy Spirit would prompt Him to step up to the task.

During all of that intervening time Jesus' mind and heart were being instructed by all of the teachings and symbols and lessons both from the written word and what had been embedded into nature that He Himself had placed there before His incarnation. Before He came to this earth He knew explicitly what was happening in all eternity, both past and future. But now as a human He had to learn about His role, His identity and His mission the way that each of us must learn, through teachings, training, mentoring and with faith by learning to listen to that same still small voice of the Spirit that is speaking to each one of us who are also willing to listen.

What Jesus was learning from all these sources was the true meaning behind the whole sacrificial system and all the other symbols connected with the sanctuary system He had given to the Jewish people centuries before. As He studied the prophecies of those whom He Himself had inspired previously, His mind was stirred with recognition of the real truths about God that had been buried by counterfeit beliefs and distortions about God. His own natural desires for righteousness and His spontaneous revulsion of sin were strong clues as to His unique identity. Coupled with the Holy Spirit's linking of all these things to reveal to Him His true identity as prophesied in the Old Testament writings, He began to realize distinctly that He was the one who was to fulfill all that had been predicted.

His own parents had possibly shared with Him stories of the circumstances surrounding His birth which would have confirmed all the other evidence of His divinity accumulating in His heart. Given this background we can see that it was not an act of impudence when He stated so bluntly to His parents that His earthly father was not His real dad when they discovered Him in the temple at the age of twelve. If He had experienced a Bar Mitzvahs around that time which is typical for a boy of His age, it would have been quite clear in how it had occured that His earthly father could not claim that he was Jesus' real father. For in the Bar Mitzvahs ritual only the real father could exclaim the traditional phrase, “This is my beloved son and I am well pleased with him.” To not have that spoken over a child at a Bar Mitzvahs was a public admission that the real father was not present, and that would be an intense public humiliation for obvious reasons.

For Jesus, it was not until His baptism at age thirty that He finally heard those confirming words, and this time they came not from an earthly father but from His real biological Father who had Fathered Him with His real mother Mary thirty one years previous. Jesus had spent thirty years learning about His true identity, as the Son of His parents God and Mary; but only at His baptism were His beliefs confirmed supernaturally. That confirmation though was much needed for in the immediately ensuing temptations in the wilderness His belief in His true identity was fiercely challenged to the breaking point.

Now in this passage from John, Jesus finds Himself again being repeatedly challenged as to His true identity by the religious leaders who find His views about God and religion reprehensible and incompatible with their teachings and views. For years they sought to discredit Jesus in every way possible and to undermine His influence with the people, for His teachings and personal influence continued to undermine their whole system of control and governance. This was really a battle between two very different views of reality and of God, and it always came down to the issue of the true identity of Jesus Christ and what He stood for in His claimed relationship to God.

The great climax of Jesus' revelation of the real truth about God would come later when these very men would turn Him over to be crucified publicly in order to attempt to silence and stop His insurrection and threat against their influence and control. But unknown to them this very act would be the tipping point for all history that would work to actually do the exact opposite of what they intended – it would bring about the greatest revelation of God to the entire universe that could ever be accomplished. Jesus knew all of this from the prophecies that He had immersed Himself in growing up and He was looking forward to this climactic event that was the context for this statement above.

Unfortunately, because we still miss the main reason for Jesus coming to this earth and for His public crucifixion, I'm afraid we largely miss the true impact of this statement ourselves. But there actually are strong clues in these verses that reveal much to us about the true reasons for all of these events if we are willing to listen and challenge our own paradigms of religion.

Jesus came to reveal the very unpopular idea that sin is a problem of our false assumptions about God that is entirely on our side of the great divide, not a problem where God's mind or heart must be changed. This vital point is one that is almost entirely missed by mainstream religion of every stripe. Almost all religions teach in some way or another that God must be appeased in some way in order for Him to be willing to forgive and for us to come into some sort of alignment with Him. This is the legal view and has been largely embraced and endorsed more or less by all religions on the planet. But it misses the much larger issues that emerged when Lucifer first initiated the rebellion up in heaven and launched a massive smear campaign to destroy trust in God. Ever since that time the great war has been going on primarily over one issue alone: Can God really be trusted? Parallel to that is the question that is yet to be proven: Can the government of heaven can safely operate on love alone?

When we view everything in the context of these much larger questions that lay at the foundation of the whole controversy between good and evil, it become much easier to see how each subordinate issue fits into its proper place. We can also begin to grasp much better the true mission of Jesus to this earth, the center of the ongoing conflict between truth and deceptions. Jesus did not come here to pay some sort of debt obligation demanded by an offended God as His enemies have convinced so many of us to believe. Jesus came to this earth to reveal that the breakdown in trust between us and God is totally a problem in our hearts and has nothing to do with some sense of offense in God's heart that must be subdued. When this issue starts to become clearer for us then we are prepared to better grasp the true meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ, its far greater implications and its power to transform, not just lost sinners captured by its amazing revelations but even for unfallen worlds who somehow long entertained questions about the government of God from ages past. It was not until the cross that the last remaining doubts about God's character and government were resolved outside this planet.

When this context is seen for the cross, it is easier to appreciate the growing apprehension and anticipation of that event that was growing in the mind of Jesus as He came closer and closer to that great climax. On the one hand His humanity would naturally shrink from such a horrific task, to allow sinners and demons to vent all of the hatred, rage and violence resulting from all the sin that would ever occur to be heaped upon Jesus without His resorting to any trace of resistance against it. That would be totally against the natural survival instincts wired into His humanity and would require supernatural strength to endure.

But at the same time He also instinctively knew because of His perspective from heaven's viewpoint, that this was the only way in which the truth about God's love and grace and righteousness could ever be effectively exposed. Allowing sin to display its malignity on Him would provide the breakthrough needed to win the great war with evil and blow open all the lies about God. Given this perspective Jesus had an eagerness about Him to reach that grand climax, that overwhelming demonstration of love in action under the worst possible conditions so as to once and for all provide a demonstration where every lie about God would be shattered and every deception and excuse would be exposed as fraudulent.

In passing through this traumatic series of events in which evil would be fully exposed by the light of the real truth about God acted out in direct conflict with evil, Jesus would show conclusively that love really is more powerful than force, that humility really is more powerful than desires for vengeance, that the ways of God are the only ways that will guarantee a universe free of sin and yet totally free of all coercion or intimidation at the same time.

The two phrases highlighted in these verses lie at the foundation of Jesus' secret to navigating the experience of the cross successfully. Jesus came as our example to show us that the only way to be salvaged back into a right relationship with God is to live a life completely free of all self-initiative when it comes to our salvation. That is not to say we have no choices to make; indeed, there are going to be some very difficult choices just as Jesus had to face dying to self and leaving everything up to His Father. But Jesus showed us by clear example that it is not up to us to make ourselves good enough for God to accept us but that the real issue is to believe that God is really good and that He already accepts us and wants us to come into a relationship of trust so implicitly with Him that we will allow Him total access to our hearts and our affections. God desires loyalty even above obedience as strange as that sounds to many religious people.

Secondly, Jesus provides the only solution as to how that can ever be accomplished, again by His own example. The only way that we can live a life of complete trust and dependence on our heavenly Father is by making Him our constant companion and intimate friend. He promises to never leave us or forsake us and Jesus demonstrated the truth of this by telling us that His Father never left Him alone. And although on the cross His emotions and pain led Him feel like God may have forsaken Him, the real truth was that God was in Christ at that very moment, sharing all of His pain and in the process reconciling the entire universe to Himself – just the opposite of what His feelings were telling Him.