Table

of Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Fascination of Jesus
Chapter 2: The Mystery of His Deity
Chapter 3: The Reality of His Humanity
Chapter 4: The Wisdom of His Teachings
Chapter 5: The Wonder of His Works
Chapter 6: The Challenge of His Sayings
Chapter 7: The Puzzle of His Conduct
Chapter 8: The Intensity of His Walk
Chapter 9: The of Tenderness His Love
Chapter 10: The Meaning of His Death
Chapter 11: The Power of His Resurrection
Chapter 12: The Efficacy of His High-priestly Ministry
Chapter 13: The Excitement of His Eternal Tomorrow
 DEDICATION

For Celia—
My wife and forever friend, who has stood by me through the most difficult
times
 INTRODUCTION

"What are you writing about?" The question came from one of my
colleagues when I mentioned that I was working on this project.
"About Jesus," I responded—then noticed the quizzical looks that
immediately appeared on the faces of others in the room. About Jesus? said their
unspoken queries. Isn't that too broad a subject—like writing on "the universe
and everything in it"? And besides, what can you really say about Jesus that
someone else hasn't already said?
It's a problem that faces anyone who attempts to tackle a subject as
monumentally popular as "Jesus." And from the start I decided that, regardless
of its pitfalls, I would simply allow the Gospels (and the Bible as a whole) to
talk to me, confident they were bound to do so in a different way than what
others had experienced, however slightly.
So instead of recycling what everybody else had said about Jesus, I decided to
approach the subject in a unique manner. The thought came to me: Why not
simply read the Gospels in the context of the rest of Scripture, and let its
messages talk to you afresh? And that's what you have here, I hope—
straightforward, uncomplicated stuff, coming from my own heart, my own
reading of the Gospels, my own reflections.
Of course, I could not turn my mind into a tabula rasa. I couldn't blank out of
my thoughts what was already there; nor did I put up any resistance to including
stuff that came from my daily reading in other areas as I worked on the
manuscript, or from the myriad of other interactions I have with life around me:
talks, sermons, news broadcasts, the newspapers— whatever. What I tried to do,
as much as possible, was to proceed as though there weren't millions of books on
the topic already in existence. I did not even allow myself to reread The Desire
of Ages, that all-time classic by Ellen G. White on the life of Jesus.
You will, of course, find citations from that work (and other writings by Mrs.
White) in the book, but they are references to materials already in my working
memory, and which came back to mind while I wrote. The same is true for other
citations you find throughout the book—stuff already present in my mental files,
which, once used, I had to acknowledge properly.
Accordingly, this is not a "scholarly" work. You won't find "big names"
everywhere, nor a slew of technical jargon or extensive footnotes. It's offered,
rather, in the belief that we should allow room simply to listen to the text for
ourselves, without the excessive baggage of what everyone else has written,
however brilliant. And if keen theological minds detect flaws or blunders or
untraditional conclusions here and there as a result of this approach, should this
not be part of the price we pay for a personal engagement with the text?
This method brought its own frustration, however. Continuing to work the
Gospels even after I'd finished the manuscript—and with no room left for
additional materials—I would daily find new stuff that hadn't grabbed me earlier,
each item clamoring for me to use it. Mark 12 was one such reference that urged
itself upon me the very day I was writing this introduction (which, in this case, I
composed last). Why, Mark 12 demanded to know, did I not include it in chapter
4—"The Wisdom of His Teachings"?
After all, Mark 12 provides a perfect setting to observe in action the wisdom
of Jesus' teachings. Here, for example, we find Jewish leaders, spellbound,
listening to His story about the tenants. Only when He finishes do they consider
seizing Him, "because they knew he had spoken the parable against them" (verse
12). They'd known it all along, but they'd found the story too engaging, too
gripping, to interrupt. (Who doesn't wish they could teach like Jesus!)
The statement "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's"—at
the heart of Mark 12 (see verses 13-17)—has become a staple around the world,
on the lips of Christians and non-Christians alike. But however easy and logical
it now sounds to us, Jesus spoke it in answer to a very delicate question, leaving
those who'd meant to trap Him "amazed at him." Also in Mark 12 Jesus fields
questions about marriage and the resurrection (verses 18-27) and about which is
the greatest commandment of the law (verses 28-31). Blown away by His
uncanny wisdom, His detractors went from amazement (verse 17) to silence
—"from then on no one dared ask him any more questions" (verse 34).
There's so much that I couldn't possibly cover in the pages that follow. Post-it
notes and other memos are everywhere around my study, reminders of what else
I wished that space had allowed me to include. Prepared in the midst of work
deadlines and all kinds of other pressures—internal and external—this book has
come together by the sheer mercies of God. And my prayer is that those same
mercies might accompany its use.
 CHAPTER 1

THE FASCINATION OF JESUS

Back around October 1999 an itinerant evangelist turned up in the
Pennsylvania coal-mining town of Hazleton (population 23,000). Unusual
things began to happen after his arrival. Hear it in the words of one
reporter:
"The priests in this mostly Catholic enclave say the pews are suddenly full,
sometimes with people they haven't seen in 20 years. Two local doctors say their
patients heal more quickly after this nomad prophet visits the hospital. 'I've never
felt so good,' said Marietta, one of the hundreds of callers who flooded a local
TV talk show to discuss the stranger's impact. 'He's given me more than anyone
in my life."1
The nomad was 39-year-old Carl J. Joseph, who in the previous nine years
had "wandered through 13 countries and 47 [U.S.] states. He walks, usually on
bare feet, and occasionally hitchhikes. He owns nothing but the robe and blanket
he wears on his back and never takes money for any reason. For food and
shelter, he relies on the goodwill of people he meets along the way." One woman
spotted him as she drove home one chilly late October day in 1999, walking
barefoot from Berwick, a town 65 miles west of Hazleton, wearing "a robe as
thin as a hospital gown."2
When he appeared on a local cable talk show, callers swamped the station's
seven phone lines. "I've done telethons, and I've never seen anything like it," TV
producer Sam Lesante said.3 The man had become an overnight sensation.
And the question is: Why? What was it about this stranger that captured the
imagination of so many? I believe the answer lay in his appearance—a dead
ringer of Jesus as commonly represented in Christian art: a "childlike face,"
"sandy beard," and a "head cocked always at an angle." He emanated calm,
"never raising his voice or losing his temper or laughing out loud."4
Setting aside for a moment the credulity of large numbers of people today—as
well as our penchant for the sensational—the incident, in its own twisted way,
provides telling evidence of the influence of Jesus after 2,000 years. To think
that a look-alike impersonator (willful or innocent) could have such a profound
effect on people, both educated and ordinary!
 It's what I'm calling the fascination of Jesus. Whether we love Him or hate
Him matters little. He commands attention. People have written countless books
about Him through the centuries. And from the very dawn of motion picture
technology, He has been an all-time favorite subject. The Life and Passion of
Jesus Christ, a French production around 1905, began an unending procession of
full-length movies focusing on Him. Subsequent years would see Cecil B.
DeMille's The King of Kings (1927); Henry Kosner's The Robe (1953); George
Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Godspell (1973); Andrew Lloyd
Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar (1973); Roberto Rossellini's The Messiah
(1976); Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977); and The Miracle Maker
(2000).1 The most recent blockbuster, of course, was Mel Gibson's The Passion
of the Christ (2004).
What it all comes down to is that in Jesus of Nazareth we have someone that
we cannot ignore or dismiss. Who was He? What's the significance of His life?
And why should we care?

The Evidence
Every generation asks its own questions, and every generation must accept or
reject the available answers. But it would be foolhardy for us to try to
manufacture our own evidence or to invent our own solutions to the problems of
Jesus' identity and significance. We have no option but to consult the best
available historical sources.
In this connection I ran into the following helpful summary:
"In the first few centuries following Jesus' death, the early Christians
produced various . . . written accounts of Jesus' career, some concentrating on
his childhood (infancy gospels), others on his teaching (sayings gospels), as well
as broader accounts of his adult ministry, passion, and resurrection. Currently we
have evidence of about thirty such 'gospels.' There may have been many more
that didn't survive."6
The reality is that most of us reading this chapter have seen only a small
fraction of those documents, and the natural question would be whether we're
not missing out on valuable information needed to form a complete picture of
who Jesus was. What we need to keep in mind, however, is that we're certainly
not the first upon the scene with an interest in these things, nor are we the first
honest ones to insist on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The
fact is that the early Christians, living at a time of false claims and a plethora of
documents of questionable origin, were intensely concerned about charlatans and
counterfeits. And working together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they
eventually came to what they considered to be a reliable body of writings
bearing the marks of authenticity.
Thus the author of the statement just quoted concluded: "Whatever the
complete tally [of "gospels"], by the end of the fourth century the four gospels—
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—had securely won the day among the majority
of church officials as the divinely inspired and duly authorized accounts of Jesus'
life and death. In short, they became part of the Christian canon.'"
Everyone is free to adopt their own approach, of course. But at this distance,
my inclination is to take the word of those closer to the events. The alternatives
all lead to massive speculation, conjecture, and subjectivism.
What do the accepted Gospels say about Jesus? What's the nature of the
testimony they bear?

Unique Pregnancy, Unique Child

As Joseph and Mary show up in the Temple to present Jesus to the priests—
ordinarily a nonevent—extraordinary things begin to happen right before their
startled eyes. An elderly Jerusalem man called Simeon, "righteous and devout,"
and waiting ardently for the coming of Messiah, suddenly appears upon the
scene, "moved by the Spirit" to visit the Temple at just that particular time (Luke
2:25-27).
Imagine his sense of expectation as he enters the sacred complex that day! For
years, perhaps decades, he'd been hoping for this moment. Now, at long last, it
had arrived. Think of the anticipation as parent after parent presented their infant
boys. Finally, as had happened when Samuel had laid eyes on David, the Spirit
said, as Mary and Joseph walked through the door bearing the infant Jesus: This
is the one!
Taking the baby in his arms, Simeon, his voice shaking in excitement, gave
praise to God: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your
servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have
prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for
the glory to your people Israel" (Luke 2:28-32).
Were Mary and Joseph surprised by those prophetic words? Not entirely,
perhaps. After all, an angel had briefed them on the identity of the child they
carried in their arms that day. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you," Gabriel
had said to Mary, a virgin. "So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of
God" (Luke 1:35; see verses 26-35). And Joseph for his part—planning to dump
Mary discreetly when he discovered she was with child—had received divine
intimation that Mary's pregnancy was supernatural, and that her child would
"save his people from their sins" (Matt 1:21; see verses 18-23).
Even so, they "marveled at what was said about [the child]" (Luke 2:33),
realizing more clearly now the significance of the divine messages that they'd
received earlier.
Nor was Simeon the only outsider to confirm the special nature of the infant
child. Hard on his heels came the 84-year-old prophet Anna, a woman who
"worshiped night and day" in the Temple, "fasting and praying" (verse 37).
Appearing on the scene, she lifted her voice in praise to God in front of "all who
were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem" (verse 38).
What has always struck me is the matter-of-factness of all the gospel reports,
the complete absence of hype. What bafflement must have filled the minds of
those who heard the unusual words from the two venerable elders! Yet Scripture
tells us nothing about any reaction to them, whether by the officiating priests or
the bystanders. Instead, the chapter ends with the lowkeyed statement that the
couple returned home. And in regard to Jesus, it simply says that "the child grew
and became strong," that "he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was
upon him" (verse 40). That's all!
Luke would return to Jesus' childhood just one more time—in connection with
His visit to the Temple at age 12. Apart from those two references, all we have
about His early years is silence. The Bible gives us nothing to satisfy our restless
curiosity; nothing to feed our perennial appetite for the sensational; nothing that
resembles the fantastic fabrications we find in the so-called Infancy Gospels, in
which the child Jesus causes clay birds to fly and raises up a dead boy who'd
fallen from the roof of a house, just so the lad could refute the charge that Jesus
had pushed him off.
What we see in the accepted Gospels is a total absence of any sensationalism
or special pleading. It is a no-nonsense presentation of the essentials.
He Knew Who He Was
Though the Gospels report considerable reticence on His part to deal with the
issue of His identity, Jesus did confront the subject head-on several times during
His ministry. When the Samaritan woman brought up the topic of the coming of
Messiah, He responded candidly: "I who speak to you am he" (John 4:26).
Finding the man born blind, whom He'd healed, Jesus asked him: "Do you
believe in the Son of Man?" (John 9:35). When the man inquired who that might
be, Jesus said: "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with
you" (verse 37). In His extended discourse in John 6 He said again and again
that He had come down from heaven (John 6:38, 41, 49-51). And as He
journeyed with the disciples through the region of Caesarea Philippi, He
confirmed Peter's confession of Him as "Christ, the Son of the Living God" (see
Matt. 16:15-17).
Even as a lad of 12 He knew who He was. "Why were you searching for me?"
He said to his parents when they finally caught up with Him in the Temple
among the scholars and teachers. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's
house?" (Luke 2:49). "I tell you the truth," He said to the Jews, "before Abraham
was born, I am" (John 8:58). And in a moving lament over their intransigence
just before His passion, He could use the first person singular: "How often I have
longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings" (Matt. 23:37). The "I" in that cry identifies Jesus with the person who'd
been pleading with Israel through the centuries. He knew exactly who He was.

They Took Offense

Matthew 13:53-58 carries the account of Jesus' return to His hometown.
Amazed at His words as He taught in the local synagogue, the people react in the
typical manner of those who think they have one's background covered. ""Where
did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?' . . . 'Isn't this the
carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers James,
Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren't all his sisters with us? Where then did this man
get all these things?'" (verses 54-56).
It's what I call the scandal of the particular—the belief that truly great and
important people could not possibly be local, could not possibly come from our
own hometown. They've got to be from somewhere else. Important people are
not supposed to be known to ordinary folks like you and me. That's what's
happening here. The hometown crowd knew Jesus—they were familiar with His
parents, His siblings, His homestead. So "they took offense at him" (verse 57).
Before we fault the townspeople too hastily, however, we'd do well to
consider the extraordinary realities that confronted them. They found themselves
challenged to believe that this person they'd known from childhood, someone
that they'd watched grow up, with whom they or their children had played
together—that this very person was the Son of the living God, God in human
flesh! Do these seem like claims you'd have jumped to accept?
Yet those are the raw facts. Appearing at a particular time in history, He was
born in a particular town and grew up in a particular Jewish family, in many
ways much like other first-century Jewish families. He had a regular occupation
—He was a carpenter. And He ate the same food as anybody else. Probably His
parents sent Him to the local market, like every other child, to buy groceries for
the family. Would the Son of the living God submit to such utterly mundane
activities and events?
The circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth also proved a stumbling block for
the locals, as we hear in the taunt or His opponents: "We were not born of
fornication" (John 8:41, NKJV). One can only imagine the snide remarks, the
snickering, the innuendos, further complicating the effort on the part of ordinary
townspeople to decide who He was.
The people were divided. And so were the leaders. When Nicodemus later
objected to certain sentiments that they expressed about Jesus, their response
reflected a widespread prejudice: "Are you from Galilee, too?" they asked him.
"Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee"
(John 7:52).

The Offense Continues

What historians find, as they sift through the sources and documents of Jesus'
time, are many of those very elements that so offended the locals who knew
Him: small town; poverty; obscurity; living on the margins of sophisticated
society; itinerant preacher with no formal education; a fly-by-night bursting
upon the scene like a meteor, then ignominiously disgraced by those who held
real power.
What do you make of a Savior like that?
The New Testament does not speculate about Jesus. It simply presents Him as
the divine Son of God. Nor does it answer the numerous concerns about His
being and person that would occupy succeeding generations of Christians.
Believers in the early centuries did discuss such concerns, of course. Just how
keenly Paul already sensed the scandal in his times comes through in his words
to the sophisticates of Corinth: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to
those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved it is the power of
God" (1 Cor. 1:18).
What we find in the records, however, is that throughout the early centuries of
Christianity and into the medieval period, there was always a basic acceptance of
the fundamental identity of Jesus as presented in the Gospels. But the so-called
Age of Enlightenment (c. 1650-1780) would change all that, introducing new
methods and criteria for the study of ancient documents, including the Bible.
Henceforth, every claim had to be subjected to rational analysis and criticism.
Supernaturalism, a foundational presupposition of biblical faith, scholars now
rejected out of hand. The traditional biblical view of a human race steeped in sin
and needing the intervention of a Savior vanished before a new belief in human
progress—an optimistic assessment of the human condition, later to be known in
Western philosophy as positivism.
The assault on faith was so strong, so sophisticated, that in many eyes it
looked like the end of Christianity. Intellectuals considered religion obsolete,
and reason, once the handmaid of theology, became its acknowledged mistress.
The focus now shifted from the Jesus described in the Gospels (a fictional
creation of later Christian piety, as the new trend described it) to what some
considered the "historical Jesus," the real Jesus as He existed in first-century
Palestine, without the accoutrements and trappings introduced by later Christian
piety.
Thus the so-called Life of Jesus movement came into being, operating on the
belief that notwithstanding the theological tampering by the early church, we can
still find in the Gospels sufficient data to reconstruct the portrait of Jesus as a
historical figure.
All these efforts (and many variations that followed them) failed, however—
as Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) demonstrated so brilliantly in his 1906
theological classic, The Quest of the Historical Jesus.8
But nothing could quell the perennial interest in Jesus. And today, whether
meant to be positive (The Passion of the Christ)9 or negative (The Da Vinci
Code),10 the fascination continues unabated.
Our own personal goal should be to have a tested, intelligent, solid faith,
unmoved by the sensationalism of our reckless times. Nothing we encounter out
there is new. During my own lifetime I've seen it all. In the wake of (so-called)
higher criticism of the Bible, many seminarians in the late sixties/early seventies
probably thought the entire fabric of Christian theology was about to collapse.
And it sometimes takes the perspective of the years to know that it isn't. The
founders of the Christian church and the early believers might have been
uneducated, but they were far from credulous.
Let's Go for the Solid Stuff
Jesus remains today the unrivaled champion of the centuries. And the
outrageous claim of Christianity is that there is no one comparable to Him.
Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad—they are all needy human beings, subjects of
His grace, owing their existence to Him. In the words of Isaiah, His name is
"Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isa.
9:6).
The designation "Mighty God" puts Jesus in a class all His own. With that in
mind, Peter could make the categorical claim that "salvation is found in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be
saved" (Acts 4:12).
That's heady stuff! We're talking here about a man who is God! Ellen G.
White commented that "through Christ had been communicated every ray of
divine light that had ever reached our fallen world." All the spiritual or mental
qualities we manifest are "but gleams from the shining of His glory."11 In the
words of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury: "It's as if all that
enormous force, the cosmic wind, the shaping energy in Hebrew Scripture, has
all gathered itself into a point in the life of Jesus."12
The perennial temptation that we face is to trivialize Jesus and the events that
surrounded Him. Sometime in 2006 I received the following note from Carole
Sargent, of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C: "Dear Roy Adams, I'm
not sure if this is for your readers, but I'll let you decide. Father Ron Murphy of
Georgetown University has a new book next month from Oxford. He believes he
has found the Holy Grail. Please contact me if you'd like to discuss this further."
It's utterly significant to me that the early disciples (whom many of our
contemporaries consider credulous) never indulged any penchant for the
incidentals of Jesus' ministry. We find no discussion of the location of the Last
Supper, for example, and none of the vessels used that evening merited even a
single word of comment thereafter. I would hazard that after their resurrection at
the Second Coming the disciples who had gathered that evening in that upper
room would shake their heads in astonished disbelief to learn about the age-old
"quest of the Holy Grail." They'd think: What utter shallowness!
 The fascination with Jesus and everything related to Him never ends. People
want to find relics from His life, perhaps bearing miracle-working powers. But
Jesus' reaction in front of the immoral and incredibly shallow Herod (Luke 23:6-
12) should tell us something. Luke says that Herod had "hoped to see [Jesus]
perform some miracle." Jesus' response, however, was
total and complete silence. And for those still today who confuse Him with some
magic-working figure, Jesus has already served notice: He does not "perform."
We must go after the solid stuff.
I read somewhere that Warner Sallman's 1941 portrait, Head of Christ, has
been reproduced 500 million times, and has become "one of the most
recognizable images of the twentieth century." It was that image that our
Hazleton, Pennsylvania, evangelist sought to imitate, donning a first-century
wardrobe and persona to evoke the memory and influence of Christ. But Jesus
just wore the outfit of His time. Undistinguishable from His disciples, He needed
to be kissed by Judas for identification.
Still unrecognized, He walks among us in the garb of the twenty-first century.
"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side,
He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word:
'Follow thou me!' and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He
commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He
will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass
through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their
own experience Who He is."13
1 Hanna Rosin, "Penniless 'Prophet' Lifts Hearts in Depressed Coal Town,"
Washington Post, online edition, Feb. 8, 2000; http://www.post-
gazette.com/regionstate/ 20000208nomad5.asp.
2 Ibid.

3 Fred Mogul, "Appalachian Apostle," Time, online edition, Feb. 14, 2000;

http://www.time.eom/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,996065,00.html.
4 Rosin.

5 See
http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/commentaries/toplOiesusmovies.html.
6 F. Scott Spencer, What Did Jesus Do? (New York: Trinity Press
International, 2003), p. 5.
 7 Ibid., pp. 5, 6.
8 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1968).
9 The 2004 movie directed by Mel Gibson.

10 The book by American novelist Dan Brown (New York: Anchor Books,

2003) and the movie based on it.

11 Ellen G. White, Education (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub.
Assn., 1903), p. 73.
12 Quoted in Rupert Shortt, Rowan Williams: An Introduction (Harrisburg,
Pa.: Morehouse Publishing, 2003), p. 87.
13 Schweitzer, p. 403.
 CHAPTER 2

THE MYSTERY OF HIS DEITY

"Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a
body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among
the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory" (1 Tim.
3:16).
Why does the text speak about "the mystery of godliness" and not, rather, "the
mystery of God"? And what does it mean by saying that Christ "was seen by
angels"? Do not the angels in heaven always behold God's face (Matt. 18:10)?
So why was this angelic viewing important?
What we're dealing with here is the mystery of a man who is God—an
extraordinary concept in human thought. In the words of theologian and
comparative religion scholar Ernest Valea, "the only religions that admit a true
incarnation of Ultimate Reality in human form are Vaishnava Hinduism and
Christianity. They both assume that God descended into the world and dwelt
among humans in order to save them."
Valea notes several differences between the two religions, however— among
them the following: (1) Unlike Christianity's single incarnation event,
"Vaishnava Hinduism ascribes ten incarnations (avatars) to the god Vishnu." (2)
These incarnations are not human-specific, some having come in the form of
animals. (3) "In Vaishnava Hinduism none of the avatars has a perfect union of
the two natures." That's because the physical body in Hinduism is considered "a
mere garment that is put on and off," thus making it impossible that there could
be "any real association of Vishnu with a physical body." (4) None of the Hindu
incarnations, accordingly, has any historical basis.1
But Christianity stands or falls on the historicity of Jesus. It breaks into
history, presenting Jesus Christ as "a historical figure who was born, lived and
died nearly 2,000 years ago. If his life were not a unique historical event, His
whole teaching would be absurd." His claims, miracles, passion and resurrection,
if taken out of history, leave nothing to Christianity.2
I consider Valea's assessment completely on target. It indicates for me that
Christianity is the only world religion with a true mystery on its hands. For it
makes the extraordinary claim that the historical person called Jesus of Nazareth,
a figure who (as all reputable historians agree) actually lived in Palestine 2,000
years ago, was at the same time God incarnate, the eternal God in human flesh.
"He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit..., was taken up in glory"
(1 Tim. 3:16).
An enormous amount of scholarly energy over the centuries has gone into the
effort of cutting Jesus down to size. The New Testament's affirmation of His
deity has not gone over well with rationalists, even within Christianity itself. Yet
it is the unambiguous position of Scripture as a whole and the New Testament in
particular.

Echoes in the Old Testament

Way back in the book of Genesis we hear about a mysterious "seed," a
descendant of "the woman," who'd one day "crush" the head of that symbolic
serpent (Gen. 3:15). It's a promise repeated to the patriarch Abraham, albeit in a
different context (Gen. 22:18) and later applied by Paul to Christ and His work:
"The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed," he wrote. "The
Scripture does not say 'and to seeds,' meaning many people, but 'and to your
seed,' meaning one person, who is Christ" (Gal. 3:16). Bottom line: Jesus is that
long-looked-for divine Messiah.
And if Jesus was the fulfillment of a certain cryptic prophecy of Isaiah, then
God He certainly was. Said the ancient prophet, "For to us a child is born, to us a
son is given. . . . And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father" (Isa. 9:6).
Those transcendent words take our breath away. They transport us to a
different realm, and we know, instinctively, that they could never apply to an
ordinary human being. After all, they speak of a child who is also the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father. Pointing to an extraordinary personality unique not
only in human history but also (if we may put it that way) in the history of the
universe, they're so astonishingly outrageous as to be utterly nonsensical if not
true. But if true, they capture a mystery completely beyond the human mind to
comprehend.
And still other allusions in the Old Testament hint at this breathtaking
phenomenon. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, spoke of someone to be born in
Bethlehem Ephrathah "whose origins [Heb. "goings out"] are from of old, from
ancient times [or "from days of eternity"—margin]" (Micah 5:2).
If you think Micah had difficulty expressing himself here, then put yourself in
 If you think Micah had difficulty expressing himself here, then put yourself in
his place and imagine trying to describe the astonishing phenomenon of the God
of the universe coming in human flesh to a local town of your own country!
What language does one employ to express such mind-boggling mystery? The
prophet did the best he could, I suspect; and any trouble we have with the text
results from the fact that the subject matter in question is simply too huge for
human words or human parsing.

The Witness of the New Testament

As we come down to the New Testament, we find Matthew, its first book,
reverting back to the Old Testament as it focuses on the same divine mystery.
Referring to the birth of the Christ child, it says: "All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will be with child and
will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'— which means, 'God
with us'" (Matt. 1:22; cf. Isa. 7:14). And Luke reports the angel's word to the
young virgin, Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the
Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
The early believers who first proclaimed this startling message were not a
bunch of witless and incurious ignoramuses. Without debating the issue or
strenuously trying to explain it, they nevertheless understood something of its
complexity. Going head-on with the wisdom seekers of his time, the apostle Paul
declared: "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we
preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of
God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:22-24).
The reference to Jesus as a "stumbling block to Jews" goes far beneath the
surface of the words themselves. Paul was not simply describing Jesus as some
kind of nuisance or impediment to the Jews. Instead, he was striking at the heart
of what had made Christ objectionable to His own people, namely, His claims to
be both the Messiah and God. They were the central issues of controversy
between Jesus and the Jewish establishment, coming to a head in the courtroom
of a Roman governor at the end of His ministry.
Standing before Pilate, and facing the most serious accusations the Jews could
hurl against Him, Jesus had remained silent—"no reply, not even to a single
charge—to the great amazement of the governor" (Matt. 27:14). Profoundly
impressed, Pilate had sought to free Him, only to encounter the stiffest resistance
of the religious leadership and the crowd.
 Then came an unexpected development, one mentioned by Matthew only: an
urgent letter from his wife to the governor on the bench (Matt. 27:19). Talk
about high drama!
Commenting on the incident, Ellen G. White wrote:
"In answer to Christ's prayer, the wife of Pilate had been visited by an angel
from heaven, and in a dream she had beheld the Savior and conversed with
Him." In the dream she'd witnessed the bogus trial of Jesus and the outrageous
insults to His person. "Still another scene met her gaze," White continued. "She
saw Christ seated upon the great white cloud, while the earth reeled in space, and
His murderers fled from the presence of His glory. With a cry of horror she
awoke. . . . While Pilate was hesitating as to what he should do, a messenger
pressed through the crowd, and handed him the letter from his wife, which read:
'Have thou nothing to do with that just Man: for I have suffered many things this
day in a dream because of Him.' "3
With the cryptic warning in his hand, Pilate struggled even harder to find a
way to get Jesus off his hands, but "the Jews insisted, 'We have a law, and
according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God'"
(John 19:7). The expression "Son of God" (huios theou) was a technical one,
whose meaning was not lost on Pilate. He understood it to imply the alleged
divine origin of the person who'd been brought before him. Sobered by the
peculiar charge, he became "even more afraid, and ... went back inside the
palace" to put to Jesus the pointed query: "Where do you come from?" (verses 8,
9).
It was certainly not a question meant to elicit an answer such as "From
Nazareth," or "Jerusalem" or "Athens." No, one senses here something deeper in
the probe. And although we cannot know what particular answer Pilate expected,
his intention seems clear. He wanted to evaluate Jesus' response against the
background of the extraordinary allegation by the Jews that this person "claimed
to be the Son of God."
Pilate never got his answer. But the Jews themselves already knew it. For
sometime in the late hours of Thursday evening or the early hours of that very
Friday, the high priest had confronted Jesus with a direct question, under the
most solemn protocols of the Jewish legal system: "I charge you under oath by
the living God," he said. "Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God" (Matt.
26:63). Jesus' equally solemn response immediately followed: "Yes, it is as you
say." "But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (verse
the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (verse
64).
In admitting to be the Son of God (or "Son of Man"—another expression
filled with significance for the person and nature of Jesus), Jesus understood
(and He knew His listeners also recognized) the full significance of that claim. In
John 10, after He'd referred to God as "My Father," claiming that "I and the
Father are one," the Jews were ready to stone Him. "We are not stoning you for
any of [your miracles]," they said to Him, "but... because you, a mere man, claim
to be God" (John 10:33).
The evidence for Christ's deity in the gospels and the rest of the New
Testament is simply overwhelming, too much to cover here. "Before Abraham
was born, I am!" Jesus said to the religious authorities (John 8:58), invoking the
sacred designation for God in the Old Testament (see Ex. 3:13, 14). "Son, your
sins are forgiven," He told the paralyzed man. And Mark gives the reason He put
it that way: He wanted the Jewish leaders to "know that the Son of Man has
authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:5, 10). The Jews recognized that only
God had such a right.
In the same way, He had authority to receive worship. After He'd showed
Thomas evidences of His resurrection, the previously skeptical disciple
exclaimed: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). That was worship.
Jesus knew it. And He accepted it (cf. John 9:35-38). Demons recognized Him.
Said one of them: "I know who you are—the Holy One of God!" (Mark 1:24; cf.
verse 34.) Something about Him told agents of the underworld they'd seen Him
before.
Some of the strongest affirmations of Jesus' deity in the New Testament come
from the apostle Paul, formerly a formidable opponent of that very idea. In an
extended statement on the wrath of God he brought charge against those who'd
"exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and have worshiped and served created
things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen" (Rom. 1:25). He's
talking, of course, about the One we ordinarily call "God the Father." But in
chapter 9 he applies the same language to Jesus. "Theirs are the patriarchs," he
says of his fellow Jews, "and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ,
who is God over all, forever praised! Amen" (Rom. 9:5). The words constitute
one of the most unexpected affirmations of Jesus' deity in the New Testament.
But none is clearer that John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been
made" (John 1:1,2).

Beyond the New Testament

During the centuries after the New Testament, the church would struggle with
the implications of this astounding mystery. How could divinity and humanity
coexist in the same person? And we find the history of the Christian church
filled with those who've found such an extraordinary concept too much to
swallow.
The Gnostics of the early centuries were only the first wave of objectors that
would reach across the centuries until today. But though the questions came fast
and vigorous, what we see in the earlier centuries was a debate taking place, by
and large, within an atmosphere of belief and reverence. It was the specter of
Christian thinkers struggling to fathom concepts they already basically believed.
But as we mentioned in the previous chapter, all this would change with the
Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Overnight, as it
were, the thinking gained ground that "there were elements in the church's
picture of Jesus which, when examined critically, would prove to be later
embellishments." Many assumed that "their removal would reveal a figure
different from, perhaps even contradictory to" what traditional Christianity had
always believed Jesus to be.4
It was in this atmosphere that the so-called quest of the historical Jesus began.
Fundamentally, it was an effort to trim Jesus down to size, to present Him for
what the scholars of this school thought He was: an ordinary human being with
extraordinary gifts.
The history of the entire period is saturated with scholars falling all over
themselves to come up with what each regarded as a truer, more realistic portrait
of Jesus. And the influence of the movement was widespread, reaching well
beyond academia into the general society. Even a United States governmental
leader got into the action—Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president. His
approach was to modify the text of the Gospels to conform to Enlightenment
principles, resulting in what's become known as the Jefferson Bible.
In the Jefferson Bible, says Marilyn Mellowes, "there is no story of the
annunciation, the virgin birth or the appearance of the angels to the shepherds.
The resurrection is not even mentioned." What Jefferson thought he found was
"a great Teacher of Common Sense. His message was the morality of absolute
love and service. Its authenticity was not dependent upon the dogma of the
Trinity or even the claim that Jesus was uniquely inspired by God."5
Jefferson's Gospel ends as follows: "Now in the place where he was crucified
there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man
yet laid. There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the
sepulchre, and departed."6
In The Quest of the Historical Jesus Albert Schweitzer managed to discredit
the myopic and self-serving philosophy of this movement that had so dominated
scholarship in the previous period. But even so, the tendency in that direction
continues into our times, many finding it more acceptable to admire Jesus on the
human level, to see Him as one of us. Extremely gifted but not a celestial
personality, and especially not deity.
Controversial American theologian John Spong, in the first of his "Twelve
Theses," argues that "theism, as a way of defining God, is dead." "God," he says,
"can no longer be understood ... as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling
above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the
divine will." And "since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms," he
says in his second thesis, "it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as
the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt."7
Such denials notwithstanding, we must never lose the wonder of this great
mystery—that the One who lived among us 2,000 years ago was the eternal God.
"Precisely how this happened," says Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams,
"is a mystery on which the Church must remain reticent." "Getting all that
straight," he says, "is a nightmare job, and nobody has really done it."8
As Williams grappled with this impenetrable enigma, however, he seemed to
go adrift himself, defining the Incarnation as "a human life that erects no
obstacles to the activity of God at any time."' In putting it this way, he appears to
be reaching for a rationalistic comfort zone that gets us away from the starkly
supernatural. He made his position clearer in a 1998 response to Jack Spong.
According to Williams, historic Christianity "does not claim that the 'theistic'
God (i.e., a divine individual living outside the universe) turns himself into a
member of the human race."10
But that, precisely, is the contention of the New Testament, which matter-of-
factly regards Jesus as God and a proper object of worship and veneration. The
Word, who was God, became flesh, John says. "We have seen his glory, the
glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth"
(John 1:14). And Paul (in the reference cited above), after tracing the human
lineage of Jesus back to the patriarchs, immediately makes the scandalous
assertion that He is "God over all, forever praised!" (Rom. 9:5). And consider
the sheer audacity of Jesus' own response to Phillip when asked to show them
the Father: "Don't you know me, Philip," Jesus responded, "even after I have
been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the
Father" (John 14:9).
In that very chapter Jesus would later say that He is "going to the Father," thus
distinguishing between Himself and another divine personality. But here in verse
9 He clearly wants to emphasize that the person to whom Philip was talking
essentially belonged to another realm, that He had come from the very heart of
deity, and that He was the one the ancient prophet had in mind when he spoke of
a "child," a "son," who at the same time is "the Mighty God," the "Everlasting
Father" (Isa. 9:6).
It was against the background of such transcendent realities that Paul wrote
the words of 1 Timothy 3:16, cited at the beginning of this chapter. Many see it
an early Christian hymn of the Incarnation, referring first of all to the
phenomenon of Jesus coming in human flesh ("He appeared in a body").
Continuing, it declares that Jesus "was vindicated by the Spirit," referring, I
believe, to the occasion of His baptism, when the Spirit like a dove descended
upon Him and the voice of the Father expressed His pleasure in Him (Matt.
3:17). The hymn then refers to Jesus being "seen by angels"— that is, the angels
encountered Jesus in a totally different light, in a state that they'd never seen
Him before. They witnessed His privations, His temptations, His sufferings. The
angels saw Him in the grip of poverty and want— rejected and afflicted. And
finally, during His passion, they saw Him as the suffering God, a brand-new
reality for them—something previously unthinkable.
This message of the cross, according to this ancient anthem, did not belong to
Jews alone, but to all people—hence the statement that Christ was "preached
among the nations," His message finding acceptance far beyond the narrow
confines of the Jewish establishment. But the ultimate seal came when He was
taken "up in glory," a reference to His ascension (see Mark 16:19)—and to His
"enthronement," something one commentary regards as revealing "heaven's
verdict [on].. .His accomplished mission.""
But the down-to-earth validation of the effectiveness of Jesus' mission would
always be found in "the mystery of godliness"—"the triumph of God's grace
over the forces of evil"12 in the lives of human beings who surrender to the
cross.
This great mystery will be our study and song throughout the endless reaches
of eternity, because this One who walked among us was God in human flesh.
The contemplation of it literally overloads the present capacity of the human
mind. But it fills us, nevertheless, with a sublime hope, an ardent expectation of
what more will yet come. What a privilege to have this confidence!
1 Ernest Valea, "The Divine Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity";
http://www.comparativereligion.com/avatars.html (accessed Dec. 27, 2006).
2 Ibid.

3 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press
Pub. Assn., 1898), p. 732.
4 Allan Richardson, ed., A Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia:

Westminster Press, 1976), s.v. "The Jesus of History."

5
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/jefferson.html.
6 http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbl7.html. (Accessed

November 2006; page no longer exists.)

7 http://wvvw.thriceholy.net/spong/htm/.

8 In Rupert Shortt, Rowan Williams: An Introduction, p. 84.

9 Cited in Shortt.

10 Rowan Williams, "No Life Here—No Joy, Terror or Tears," Church Times,

July 17, 1998. In Shortt, p. 85.

11 International Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), p.

1479.
12 See The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Washington, D.C.

Review and Herald, 1957, 1980), vol. 7, p. 301.

 CHAPTER 3

THE REALITY OF HIS HUMANITY

I'm more and more amazed at what the human mind is able to grasp and
accomplish. Most of us can imagine only vaguely the technological precision
involved in launching a human-carrying vehicle into space at speeds of
more than 20 times that of sound, guiding it into the correct orbit, linking it
up with an inhabited space station (itself in orbital motion), using it to
deliver and receive passengers and cargo, then bringing it back to earth for
a velvet-soft landing.
That astounds me!
I don't understand how you make a machine capable of performing billions of
complicated mathematical calculations in a matter of split seconds. And did I say
split seconds? We used to measure time that way—in seconds; then in
milliseconds; then we moved to the nanosecond: a billionth of a second. (Can
your mind imagine that?) But now we've gone even beyond that. In the words of
James Gleick, "the extreme in ultrashort pulses has now reached down to the
femtosecond range—a millionth of a nanosecond." "In a femtosecond," he says,
"the Concorde flies less than the width of an atom."1
Such fantastic technological wizardry overwhelms me.
But when we approach the subject of the Incarnation of Jesus, we come up
against the greatest of all wonders. "In contemplating the incarnation of Christ in
humanity," Ellen G. White observes, "we stand baffled before an unfathomable
mystery, that the human mind cannot comprehend. The more we reflect upon it,
the more amazing does it appear. . . . How can we span the distance between the
mighty God and a helpless child?"2
Yet that, precisely, is the affirmation of the New Testament, something that no
writer does more eloquently than the apostle John. After speaking about the
Word, who is both God and Creator (John 1:1-5), the apostolic writer makes the
absolutely mind-boggling statement that "the Word became flesh and made his
dwelling among us" (verse 14).
The only reason this assertion does not leave us utterly dumb with wonder is
familiarity. We who are Christians have heard it so many times before that the
sheer enormity of it does not grab us. But sometimes in my quiet moments I try
to reflect on our place (that is, the significance of our planet) in the universal
scheme of things. We are a speck, actually—and a very tiny one at that.
However far our telescopes have penetrated into the vastness of outer space, all
the evidence suggests that there is more beyond—much more—and that we're
simply scratching the edges of what is an exceedingly huge, perhaps even
endless, universe.
Try, then, to imagine the kind of being that has the power both to create and to
hold all that together. Then consider the awesome concept that that very being
would condescend to visit our puny planet in human flesh, with all its limitations
and liabilities, and you find yourself utterly baffled in front of an impenetrable
mystery. Ellen G. White said it right: "The limited capacity of man cannot define
this wonderful mystery—the blending of the two natures, the divine and the
human. It can never be explained. Man must wonder and be silent."3

But It Was for Real

Docetism (from Greek dokeo, "to seem") describes the position of a group of
early Christians that argued that Jesus only seemed human—that He was not
really so. His humanity, the belief claimed, was only an illusion. Against such a
view stands a whole catalogue of passages in the New Testament to the contrary,
most of them arising from the natural flow of the particular stories, rather than
presented in a logical or explanatory mode.
Matthew 8:24 tells of an exhausted Jesus sleeping on a boat in a furious storm.
Matthew 21:18 describes Him as hungry before breakfast and heading hungry
into the city. In John 4:5, 6, "tired . . . from the journey," Jesus sits down by a
well to rest. And in that same chapter He's thirsty (John 4:7), just as we find Him
on the cross (John 19:28). "Christ did not make-believe take human nature; He
did verily take it. He did in reality possess human nature."4 And He took our
nature, moreover, after thousands of years of degeneration, a point I discuss at
length in an earlier work.5
The way the Gospels handle the delicate subject of Jesus' ancestry in a male-
dominated culture is intriguing. As one looks at the genealogy of Jesus in
Matthew L, for example, one notices what we might call "special mentions"—
the names of women sprinkled here and there. Matthew 1:3 lists Tamar, verse 5
cites Rahab and Ruth, and verse 6 refers to Bathsheba (without giving her
name). The fifth mention is to Mary in verse 16.
 But while the listing of the father as begetter precedes each of the first four
references to women, in the case of Mary we notice a slight but critical variation.
Here the text speaks about "Joseph, the husband of...," not "Joseph the father
of...." In other words, every time the text cites a woman's name, the clear
implication is that of cohabitation between her and a human male. The reference
to Mary makes no such inference. In a subtle bypass it merely lists Joseph as
"the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ" (Matt.
1:16). The physical connection is to Mary, not to Joseph.
Technically, then, Jesus does not formally feature in Matthew's genealogy,
which mentions only the line of Joseph, with whom (as noted) Jesus has no
physical connection. Luke's genealogy is even more unhelpful in terms of
establishing a human genealogy for Jesus. He does not mention Mary at all, the
text speaking rather about Jesus "the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of
Heli, the son of Matthat," etc. (Luke 3:23, 24). One might even say that to take
seriously Luke's caveat ("so it was thought") means that the rest of the genealogy
has no relevance for Jesus' humanity.
The clear testimony of both Matthew and Luke, however, is that Jesus came
from Mary. And Mary, obviously, did not drop out of a tree. She belonged to
one of the tribes of Israel. And Paul affirms that "as to his human nature [Jesus]
was a descendant of David" (Rom. 1:3; cf. Rom 9:5; Acts 2:30; 13:22, 23; 2
Tim. 2:8).
The biblical portrait of Jesus is that He was fully divine and fully human, one
of the clearest evidences of His humanity occurring as He headed out to Calvary
that Friday afternoon of the Passion Week. Simon of Cyrene, on his way out of
the country, comes face to face with the event of a lifetime. Suddenly and
unexpectedly, rough hands grab him, and no-nonsense Roman soldiers order him
to carry Jesus' cross (Luke 23:26).
Why was Simon, a passing stranger, seized? Was it because he was of a
different (and conspicuous) race? Or was it because of a demonstration of
sympathy on his part for the plight of this particular prisoner? Whatever the
reason, the point here is that the rough-hewn Roman soldiers realized that they
had a fainting human being on their hands, and concluded that he needed help
and not more beatings.
What a scene! The eternal God who'd flung worlds and universes into their
appointed orbits, upholding them by His mighty power, now lacked sufficient
strength to carry His own cross. He'd come to be with us, to be like us, to share
our physical weaknesses and liabilities, so that He could lift us up to the highest
heavens.

They Knew Him as the Carpenter

Alone in my office before the start of the workday, I paused in my Bible
reading at the sixth chapter of Mark. Suddenly one of the questions in verse 3
caught my attention: "Isn't this the carpenter?" Up to that point it was Matthew's
rendition that had stuck in my head: "Isn't this the carpenter's son?" (Matt.
13:55). But here Mark revealed that Jesus was Himself known in His local
community as the carpenter. It was like a bolt of lightning to me, and three
impressions instantly formed in my mind:
1. God's incredible humility
The thought of the eternal God living among humanity as a common carpenter
simply blew me away. Did neighbors hire Him to fix a leaking roof or to build a
chicken coop? Did they sometimes find Him buying nails at the hardware store?
The locals had difficulty swallowing all that. After all, they knew all about
His humble background. They'd have gone for someone more prestigious, more
grandiose, more ostentatious. Someone from Greece, certainly. Or Rome. But
not from down the street!
2. God's gracious "recklessness"
Heaven's most powerful gifts often come wrapped in ordinary—even
mundane—packages, packages that might easily get discarded as worthless
when they arrive. We marvel at how commonplace they are—and how fragile.
Who else in their right mind would have sent a gift so precious, so vulnerable,
so fraught with destiny, to such a place as ours? Yet into this dangerous world
"where Satan claimed dominion God permitted His Son to come, a helpless
babe." He must "fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the
risk of failure and eternal loss."h
3. God's scandalous localness
When it came time to leave, I gave the man my favorite hammer—my only
hammer, in fact. He'd been very helpful to me around the house while my family
lived in this particular country far away from where I now write. For several
minutes he just stood there admiring the tool. "My first hammer made in the
United States," he whispered.
 Why that reaction? I suspect it had something to do with the lure of the exotic
—the feeling that things foreign are better. The locals in Nazareth knew Jesus—
knew all about His family. How could someone local amount to anything? If
He'd come from Athens... or Alexandria... or Carthage... or even Jerusalem! But
a blue-collar laborer from right here in Nazareth? Can't be! And imagine the
response from Alexandria or Carthage or Athens. Their intellectual legacy ran all
the way back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the cerebral giants of Ionia. Is a
common carpenter the best that Israel had to offer?
The same attitudes dog us today.

What It Means for Us

What are the practical implications of the coming of God in human flesh?
What lessons does Scripture itself draw from the event?
The Bible makes three points:
1. Jesus came as our supreme example
After He'd washed their feet, Jesus told His disciples, "I have set you an
example that you should do as I have done for you" (John 13:15). And
throughout His earthly ministry—whether directly or indirectly—He rolemodels
and sets the pace for us. Said John, "He that saith he abideth in him ought
himself also so to walk, even as he walked" (1 John 2:6, KJV).
That also was part of Peter's burden as he sought to lift the spirits of Christian
slaves facing hardship and persecution in the first century: You should count it a
privilege to suffer for doing good, he told them, for "to this you were called,
because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow
in his steps" (1 Peter 2:20, 21). "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not
retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats" (verses 23, 24). For everyone
facing estrangement, abandonment, ostracism, persecution, ridicule, or any other
evil or deprivation for God's sake, Jesus stands as the supreme example.
The idea of example can be easily misunderstood, however. So let's tighten it
a bit by considering it under the two categories depicted in Scripture.
First, we find the idea of a witnessing (or beckoning) example—a role model
that calls us (beckons us) to a higher moral or spiritual plane, but without
providing the power to get us there. Under this category falls what we find in
Hebrews 11. The chapter presents a whole catalogue of spiritual heroes "who
through faith conquered kingdoms; . . . shut the mouths of lions, quenched the
fury of the flames," etc. (verses 33, 34). Such examples witness to us, beckon us,
encourage us, and issue a moral summons to us to press forward, to look higher,
and to trust deeper. But that's all they do—in fact, that's all they can do.
In Jesus we also find a second kind of example, one that we may refer to as an
enabling example. Jesus not only serves as a witness to us, not only beckons us
to higher ground, but He also provides the enabling power to get us there. We
see this as Hebrews 11 comes down to its proper climax in the opening verses of
chapter 12. "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith" (verses 1, 2, KJV). Here Jesus is presented
as both the initiator and completer of all our strivings. In other words, He is our
enabling example.
2. Jesus came to teach us humility
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very
nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but
made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human
likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and
became obedient to death—even death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:5-8).
What are the implications of such condescension? Is it simply a theory to
expound? Or does it have practical consequences for believers?
What immediately comes to mind as I write are those (seemingly) endless
television awards shows, with the prideful excesses that accompany them. A few
years ago someone calculated that the show-business organizations had given
out some 4,025 trophies in 565 ceremonies the previous year.
There's nothing wrong with recognizing outstanding achievement, of course,
but allowed to go to excess, it creates a climate of unhealthy competition, of
prideful status, and of vainglorious celebrity. And however well received in the
world, such attitudes can have devastating consequences within the church.
That's why it's terribly important to keep in mind that Paul's deeply theological
statement in the Philippians passage cited above had a radically practical goal,
namely, the attitude of Christians in community with others, referring, in
particular, to the element of humility, as exemplified in the astonishing
condescension of Christ.
Christ is "in very nature God," he says, using a powerful Greek word to make
his point. (The word is morphe, denoting that He possessed "all the essential
characteristics and attributes of God.") But, suspending all the trappings of deity,
so to speak, He came to this dismal place as one among us. Then stooping even
further, He became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
It was a message needed in the church of Paul's day and urgently necessary in
ours. Anyone perceptive enough will notice what all too often transpires in
certain sectors of the church, where power seekers, like crabs in a barrel,
shamelessly (and sometimes viciously) climb the backs of others to the top. The
vainglorious glamour-seeking celebrities have nothing on us! The practical
message of Jesus' condescension is that in a world gone mad with egotism,
selfishness, greed, and pride we must each take stock of our own motives: Why
do I do what I do? Is it simply to enhance my own interests, my own career? Is it
to broaden my own power base? Do I go just to places where the cameras are
pointed? Or am I prepared to be nothing so Christ can be everything? "The
noblest service," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., once said, "comes from nameless
hands. And the best servant does his work unseen."
3. Jesus came to open up a way for us—to give us assurance and hope
We cannot deduce the reasons for Jesus' coming in human flesh from human
reason or from our own imagination. Purely rational answers of our own
devising will not do. There exists no independent discipline in philosophy,
science, sociology, or whatever, that would lead us to a valid answer, apart from
Scripture. And it would be unhelpful—even dangerous—to rely on our own
intuition. The passages we're about to consider from the early section of
Hebrews go to the heart of the question before us, giving us answers quite
different from the pietistic rationalism that has invaded some sectors of
Christianity, including Seventh-day Adventism. I have found that the safest way
to proceed is to listen to the inspired sources.
What we discover in the passages in Hebrews is that the focus is always on
Jesus, never on us. "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the
angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the
grace of God should taste death for every man" (Heb. 2:9, KJV).
That's the biblical reason for His becoming lower than the angels. It was so
that He could taste death for my sake. We must not pad it or add to it. That's it.
Then note how other passages from the book follow in the same vein. In each
case I've placed in italics the biblical, nonspeculative reason—for His coming in
human flesh. So watch the italics:
1. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also
himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (verse 14, KJV).
2. "Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren,
that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God,
to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (verse 17, KJV).
3. He was "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" and was "in all points
tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Now notice the unexpected application:
"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain
mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb. 4:15, 16, KJV).
4. "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto
all them that obey him" (Heb. 5:8, 9, KJV).
It's all about Jesus and what He did for us. Every aspect of His condescension
was for our sake. No wonder that Ellen G. White could say that "the humanity of
the Son of God is everything to us. It is the golden chain that binds our souls to
Christ, and through Christ to God,"8
I Stand Amazed
I'm satisfied that God had to come to be like us to save us, but I want to say to
Him: "After you've done all that, then I'll be content for You to return to what
You were before. I'd feel neither hurt nor abandoned."
But God, from a love that surpasses understanding, would have none of that.
"Christ ascended to heaven, bearing a sanctified, holy humanity. He took this
humanity with Him into the heavenly courts, and through the eternal ages He
will bear it, as the One who has redeemed every human being in the city of
God."9 I confess that this has been the toughest aspect of the Incarnation for me
to accept. "In taking our nature, the Savior has bound Himself to humanity by a
tie that is never to be broken.... To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace,
God gave His only-begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to
retain His human nature. . . . God has adopted human nature in the person of His
Son, and has carried the same into the highest heaven. It is the 'Son of man' who
shares the throne of the universe."10
I can only stand confounded in the presence of such amazing love.

1 James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 62.
2 Ellen G. White, in Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896 (see also Lift Him Up
[Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1988], p. 75).
3 Letter 5, 1889 (see also The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol.
7, p. 904).
4 White, Lift Him Up, p. 74.

5 Roy Adams, The Nature of Christ: Help for a Church Divided Over
Perfection (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1994), chap. 4.
6 White, The Desire of Ages, p. 49. (Italics supplied.)

7 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 154.

8 Ellen G. White, Selected Messages (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald,

1958), book 1, p. 244.

9 White, in Review and Herald, Mar. 9, 1905 (see also The Seventh-day

Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments [Washington, D.C.:

Review and Herald, 1956, 1980], vol. 6, p. 1054.
10 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 25.
 CHAPTER 4

THE WISDOM OF HIS TEACHINGS

"When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at
his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their
teachers of the law" (Matt. 7:28). With these words Matthew summarizes
the mood of Jesus' audience as He delivered that immortal discourse we
know today as the Sermon on the Mount.
As I contemplated this chapter on the wisdom of Jesus' teachings, I let my
mind wander across the centuries in search of the world's great teachers and
philosophers, wondering whom among this group we might consider in a league
with Jesus. Ignoring small fries (Kant, Hegel, Erasmus, Santayana, etc.), I
focused on the bigger fishes, thinkers who for sheer historical stature some
might consider on a par with Christ: Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.);
Confucius (551-479 B.C.); Socrates (469-399 B.C.); Plato (427-347 B.C.);
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).
What dawned on me was that Jesus stands alone, in a class by Himself.
Indeed, even to think of mentioning any others in the same breath with Him feels
like blasphemy.
No other philosopher could claim to be "the way, and the truth and the life," as
Jesus did (John 14:6). Nor could any other guru say, "I am the bread of life"
(John 6:35) or "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). "We can trace the line of
the world's teachers as far back as human records extend; but the Light was
before them. As the moon and the stars of our solar system shine by the reflected
light of the sun, so, as far as their teaching is true, do the world's great thinkers
reflect the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Every gleam of thought, every flash
of the intellect, is from the Light of the world."1
That day on the mountainside Jesus addressed a crowd of ordinary people in
terms both amazingly simple and utterly profound, presenting sentiments that
have challenged social and religious thinkers across the centuries. "The
mountain on which Christ delivered the Sermon . . . has been called the 'Sinai of
the New Testament,' inasmuch as it holds the same relationship to the Christian
church as Mt. Sinai did to the Jewish nation. It was on Sinai that God proclaimed
the divine law. It was on the unknown mountain of Galilee that Jesus reaffirmed
the divine law, explaining its true meaning in greater detail and applying its
the divine law, explaining its true meaning in greater detail and applying its
precepts to the problems of daily life."2
His was a wide-ranging message that day, covering a broad theological and
social landscape. He spoke about our influence in society (Matt. 5:1316); about
the law of God (verses 17-20); divorce (verses 31, 32); oaths (verses 33-37);
retaliation (verses 38-42); relationships (verses 43-48); prayer (Matt. 6:5-13);
fasting (verses 16-18); giving (verses 19-24); anxiety (verses 25-34); the narrow
way of a true spiritual life (Matt. 7:13, 14); and the list goes on. And that's only
what we find in the Sermon on the Mount! Everywhere one turns in the Gospels,
Jesus is teaching. I've selected just three areas of His broad range of subjects.
1. His teaching about God
If you've ever taken time to probe into the implications of a Supreme Being
and how we come to knowledge of such an entity, then you understand a little
about the incredible complexity of the issue.
Where can we go for reliable knowledge about such an impenetrable mystery?
For those of us who are Christians, it's through the Scriptures. Take away the
Bible, and we're left groping in darkness. It's in Scripture that we find
trustworthy answers about God—His existence, His power, His character.
Taking up the question, the author of Hebrews notes that in the past the prophets
had spoken about God. But now, "in these last days," God is speaking to us "by
his Son ... through whom he made the universe" (Heb. 1:1,2). "No one has ever
seen God," John adds, "but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side,
has made him known" (John 1:18).
Through Jesus, in other words, we have the ultimate disclosure of the
Supreme Being. In the opening paragraphs of the Sermon on the Mount He
provides information, however indirect, of the kind of God that we have. He is a
deity who bequeaths the kingdom to "the poor in spirit," who comforts those
who mourn, who reserves an eternal place for those who are gentle, who satisfies
our hunger for righteousness, who delights in mercy and purity and peace, and
who in the end has a special regard for those persecuted and maligned for His
sake. It's all there in Matthew 5:3-11. While Jesus here admonished the people as
to what they should become, He at the same time was indirectly painting a
picture of the divine character. He was in effect saying: this is what God is like.
During the rest of His ministry we would catch other insights into the nature
and character of the mysterious Being called God. We'd discover Him to be a
God of kindness and compassion, concerned about equity and justice; a God
who cares for society's poor and marginalized; a God who does not defer to
people with status and position; an approachable God, full of love and grace. In
people with status and position; an approachable God, full of love and grace. In
other words, a deity like Jesus.
Jesus reveals a God who commissions angels to watch over little children (see
Matt. 18:10). And when His disciples try to give these little people the brush-off
and save a busy Jesus from what they see as unnecessary intrusion, He
intervenes. "Let the little children come to me," He says, "and do not hinder
them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (Matt. 19:14).
We have a God, Jesus taught, who is not fooled by our pretense, by the
ostentation of our worship. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will
enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is
in heaven" (Matt. 7:21). Although we may prophesy in His name, perform
miracles, or even cast out demons, only heart obedience matters in the end. That
was Jesus' message to the woman of Samaria in their dialog about worship.
Exactly where we worship matters little, He said, for "a time is coming . .. when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the
kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23).
One of Jesus' most powerful revelations about God to His often overzealous
(not to say bigoted) compatriots came in His attempts to recover the true
meaning and spirit of the Sabbath from the distortion to which they had
subjected it. It was to correct their crass disfigurement of God's loving character
that Jesus performed His Sabbath miracles.
The story in Luke 13:10-17 is a good example.
It's Sabbath, and a sick woman is present, "crippled by a spirit for eighteen
years," Luke says. "Bent over," she cannot straighten up. "When Jesus saw her,
he called her forward and said to her, 'Woman, you are set free from your
infirmity.'" Immediately the woman straightens up, and begins praising God
(verses 10-13). But her healing offends the ruler of the synagogue. "Indignant
because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath," he issues a stern warning: "There are
six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath"
(verse 14).
Imagine the callousness, the coldness, of the synagogue official! Instead of
breaking out in hallelujahs and calling for the doxology, he takes the harsh
position of "Let's have none of this in the future!"
If we had a visual record of Jesus' response, I think we'd have seen fire in His
eyes, with His every word dripping with the deepest outrage at such a revolting
misrepresentation of the meaning of the Sabbath and the character of God. We
come to the rescue of an ox or a donkey on Sabbath, don't we? "Then should not
this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen
long years, be set free on the Sabbath day?" (verse 16).
Imagine the impact of those words, spoken perhaps with the woman standing
upright by His side in all her bubbling joy, a glorious exhibit of the love and
power of God. When Jesus finished, Luke says, "All his opponents were
humiliated" (verse 17).
Jesus always sought to portray a God who is perpetually at work for our
physical and spiritual restoration, who never stops, day and night, weekday or
Sabbath, "My Father is always at his work to this very day," He said during
another Sabbath encounter, "and I, too, am working" (John 5:17).
Jesus revealed a God who never stops caring for us!
2. His teaching about the unpardonable sin
"And so I tell you," Jesus said, "every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who
speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to
come" (Matt. 12:31, 32). That person "will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an
eternal sin" (Mark 3:29).
The difficulty in this particular statement stems from the fact that it seems so
unlike Jesus, whose mission, as He said Himself, was "to seek and to save what
was lost" (Luke 19:10). And here is the very same person declaring that it's
possible for some of us to wander beyond the pale of His mercy and grace.
That's scary!
Perhaps every pastor has run into at least one parishioner who thinks they've
committed the unpardonable sin. The feeling can arise from an oversensitive
conscience or from a person's willful and prolonged indulgence in some immoral
behavior—to the extent that it becomes chronic and out of control. Feeling
powerless to extricate themselves from the particular vice (or vices), they
conclude that they've been abandoned to it, that God has given up on them, that
they've committed the unpardonable sin.
Such attitudes find strength in the unguarded statements we sometimes make
on the subject—the following, for example: "When someone refuses to respond
to the goodness of God, which is designed to lead unto repentance (Rom. 2:4),
this continued refusal to accept God's overtures of grace will finally result in the
commission of the unpardonable sin." "The unpardonable sin.. .is persistent
rejection of light, the persistent rejection of what Christ has done for us."' Then
follows the suggestion (without any credible scriptural support) that "someone
who fears he or she has committed that sin [is] someone who clearly has not
committed it."4
The fact is that millions of people (Christians included) have, for protracted
periods of their lives, refused to respond to the goodness of God. The above
statement, therefore, taken at face value, would leave multitudes in fear that they
have run (or are in danger of running) afoul of this dreadful sin, with the fact that
they're worrying about it their only solace that they've not yet committed it.
If we stick to the context of Scripture, however, a different picture emerges,
one that neither causes unwarranted anxiety nor compromises the fundamental
mission of Jesus to save and forgive. In the concise, tightly wound Gospel of
Mark, the reference to this sin appears in Mark 3:28, 29. But the contextual
thread begins already in chapter 1, and Mark wants us to see all this background
before coming to the particular incident that tipped the scales for the intransigent
ecclesiastics about whom Jesus made that frightening statement.
Follow the events for yourself, beginning with the supernatural
demonstrations that accompanied the baptism of Jesus (in chapter 1) and ending
(in chapter 3) with the incident that leads to Jesus' pronouncement. The setting is
a synagogue, and it's Sabbath. "A man with a shriveled hand was there," Mark
reports (3:1). The Pharisees knew his condition, having watched him suffer. On
this particular day, however, Jesus encounters and restores him before their
startled eyes. But instead of sharing the joy, the religious leaders "went out and
began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus" (verse 6)! And to
demonize him ahead of their deadly act, the teachers of the law down from
Jerusalem offered their professional judgment of the activities of the Savior—a
damning public indictment meant to damage the ministry of Jesus: "He is
possessed by Beelzebub!" they said. "By the prince of demons he is driving out
demons" (verse 22).
It's at this particular juncture (and we can trace a similar buildup ahead of the
same statement in Matthew 9:34) that Jesus uttered His famous remark about the
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He said this because they were saying, 'He
has an evil spirit'" (Mark 3:30). In charging Jesus with demon possession and
willfully and maliciously attributing the work of the Spirit of God to Satan, the
religious leaders had finally crossed a line and committed what Jesus called the
sin against the Holy Spirit.
 What we see here, then, is that the unpardonable sin has two specific and
important elements running together: high spiritual privilege renounced, on the
one hand, and the public, sacrilegious denial of the clear manifestations of the
Spirit of God, on the other. They are the conditions of the unpardonable sin.
What I take from the Gospels is that the sin against the Holy Spirit occurs when
the response of someone is equally as radical as that of these Jewish leaders, and
is preceded by supernatural events similarly compelling. "To ignore the Spirit of
God, to charge it with being the spirit of the devil, placed [the Jewish leaders] in
a position where God had no power to reach their souls."" The sin against the
Holy Spirit lies in "the firm, determined resistance of truth and evidence.''6
Put it this way: the sin against the Holy Spirit is preceded by willful sacrilege,
malignant and protracted insubordination, and open contempt for the divine
agencies that lead to repentance. We would not normally find people headed
down that road sitting in the pews on a Sabbath morning, unless they're there to
mock the believers or disrupt the service.
I often get the impression that much of what we say about the unpardonable
sin amounts to scare tactics that terribly distort the message of God's patient
grace.
3. His teaching about grace
"By grace are you saved, through faith." "The just shall live by faith."
Both are wonderful statements, but you don't find them on the lips of Jesus.
This causes some subconsciously to wonder whether Jesus believed in
righteousness by faith, that central tenet of Christendom proclaimed in His
name. Did He hold that we're saved by grace?
To be sure, He did. But His approach was entirely different. In Him we see
grace in action and in graphic parables, not in propositional doctrine as such.
Jesus came as the epitome of the gift of grace. He was the gift of grace
personified. To encounter Him was to encounter grace. "We have seen his
glory," John wrote, "the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father,
full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
Of the many incidents in the life of Jesus that speak of grace, I focus briefly
here on four.
(a) The parable of the vineyard workers (Matt. 20:1-5) brings out the "that's
not fair!" in all of us—and that's precisely its point. Laborers who arrived on the
job at the eleventh hour get paid the same as those who'd borne the burden and
heat of the day. It's an arrangement calculated to send trade unionists and all
other labor-sensitive people screaming foul—precisely what happened in the
story. Outraged at such strange calculus, the firsthired "began to grumble against
the landowner" (verse 11). It's not fair, they said, to make them "equal to us who
have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day" (verse 12). As if to
rub the sore deliberately, the landowner said in response: "I want to give the man
who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right. . . ? Or are you
envious because I am generous?" (verses 14, 15).
The reward for accepting Jesus is eternal life, a gift that each one receives
whether they labored in the Lord's vineyard a hundred years or accepted Jesus at
the eleventh hour. It's what we might call scandalous grace, grace that surpasses
human norms and logic.
(b) "A woman who had lived a sinful life in that town" (Luke 7:37) showed up
at a feast in Simon's house, with an alabaster jar in hand; and some (including
Simon) took objection when she opened her lavish gift and poured it on the
Savior's head and feet (cf. Matt. 26:6-16). But that offering had come from a
heart bubbling over with gratitude for what Jesus had done for her soul. And it
was in response to the objections that Jesus told His brief but revealing parable,
two lines of which I cite here to make the point:
"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender.... Neither of them had the
money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both" (Luke 7:41,42).
That's the situation of the entire human family. All of us owe the Master, and
none of us has the wherewithal to make good on our debt. So God has canceled
it for all of us—for all of us who accept Him. That's grace—covering grace.
Jesus' cross has taken care of our debt.
(c) Jesus told a provocative parable about grace "to some who were confident
of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else" (Luke 18:9). In
the story a Pharisee and a tax collector go up to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee
thanks the Lord that he's different from others—not a robber, not an evil-doer,
not an adulterer, and not even like the tax collector he was probably seeing out
of the corner of his proud eyes, "I fast twice a week," he adds for good measure,
"and give a tenth of all I get" (verse 12). Feeling good about himself, he was sure
there had to be something wrong if heaven did not also share the same opinion.
Meanwhile, the poor tax collector "stood at a distance," feeling unworthy to
come close. "He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said,
'God, have mercy on me, a sinner'" (verse 13).
 Now comes the startling verdict: "I tell you that this man, rather than the
other, went home justified before God" (verse 14).
The bottom line is that it's our brokenness of spirit that counts with God. "The
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you
will not despise" (Ps. 51:17). The hymn-writer, some 1,700 years later, took the
words right out of that tax-collector's mouth:
"Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress, Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Saviour, or I die"
—Augustus M. Toplady, 1776
(d) The parable of the lost son—some would say "the lost sons" (Luke 15:11-
31)—stands out as an immortal monument of grace. Here's a lad who, after
demanding an early inheritance, blows the whole thing "in wild living" (verse
13). Dirt-poor now, and with no possessions but the tattered, filthy clothes upon
his unkempt body, he heads for home to what he expects to be a cold and angry
reception.
But his father, his heart broken since the day his reckless son left home, has
been yearning for the boy's return. For months—perhaps years—he's peered
down the lonely road leading to the farmhouse, with each day ending in
disappointment. Then one day the figure of a disheveled wretch appears in the
distance. And "while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was
filled with compassion for him." "He ran to his son," the passage says, "threw his
arms around him and kissed him" (verse 20). The father has the fatted calf killed,
and an enormous party gets under way. His wandering son is home again!
That's forgiving grace, grace that is greater than all our sins.
Nor should we forget the way that Father handles the older son—the sensitive,
gracious way he deals with this boy of his who, having borne the burden and
heat of the day (like the early laborers in Jesus' other parable), takes deep
umbrage at the outlandish party then in full swing. The story ends abruptly with
the father and the older boy still outside that festive room, and with a tantalizing
tagline for all the universe to see: "To be continued . . . in heaven!"

"Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!"
 No One Else Like Him
I hope that in this brief section I have demonstrated something of the wisdom
behind the teachings of Jesus. Wisdom not in a worldly sense, however, but
spiritual—a wisdom different from that of other (so-called) wisdom teachers
across the centuries.
They said it best who, having been sent to apprehend Him, instead found their
hands tied and their hearts strangely warmed. All they could offer their superiors
for their shocking dereliction of duty was the immortal acknowledgment: "No
man ever spoke like this Man!" (John 7:46, NKJV).

1 Ellen G. White, Education, pp. 13, 14.

2 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Washington, D.C.: Review

and Herald, 1956, 1980), vol. 5, p. 323.
3 Adult Teachers Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, April-June 2006, p. 142.

4 Ibid., p. 146.

5 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments,

vol. 5, p. 1092.
6 Ibid., p. 1093. (Italics supplied.)
 CHAPTER 5

THE WONDER OF HIS WORKS

In December 1989 the leaders of the world's two superpowers, Mikhail
Gorbachev of the Soviet Union and George H. W. Bush of the United States,
met on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea for what the media
billed as a "nonsummit." Reporting on the event, one nationwide television
anchorman in the U.S. caught my attention and left me beaming with joy.
As some readers may recall, a horrendous storm, lashing seven-foot waves,
descended on the area, and not even superpowers could stop the wind and rain.
Said the CBS announcer (and I'm just about quoting verbatim): "It was one of
those Mediterranean storms that grounded the ship carrying the apostle Paul in
the first century off the coast of Malta, leading to the establishment of
Christianity on the island." Spoken in the matter-of-fact style of news reporting,
that sentence was like music to my ears.
I am a Jesus fan—I admit it; and I thrill every time something happens,
especially in a secular context, to bring Him praise. Who would have expected
any mention of Christianity in a news item of that kind? The thing that delighted
me most, I think, was what the statement implied. Given the context, it was a
tacit recognition that in the Bible we are dealing, not with fables and fiction, but
with real events and real people.
And it's with that same matter-of-factness that we should approach the works
of Jesus in the Gospels, laced at every turn with miracles and wonders—none for
His own sake, but all for others.
Back Down in the Valley
We tend to associate mountains with planning and dreaming and valleys with
work and activity—the place where the rubber meets the road, as we say. And
judging from the way Matthew arranges the early chapters of his book, he seems
to have that distinction in mind. For in chapters 5-7 we find Jesus on the
mountainside talking and teaching—in a sense, dreaming— about the kingdom.
But abruptly, as we come to chapter 8, He's down in the valley, headlong into the
furrow of the world's needs.
As He descends the mountain, large crowds follow Him (Matt. 8:1). One
individual is perhaps more needy than all the rest. A man with leprosy kneels
before him: "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean" (verse 2). Defying
accepted norms, Jesus reaches out, touches him, and makes him whole (verse 3).
A centurion approaches. His servant is sick. Can Jesus help? He can, He does,
and the centurion goes home to find His servant well (verses 5-13).
Then it's on to Peter's house, where his mother-in-law lies ill. Jesus heals her,
and she goes on to fix supper. It's Saturday night, but no hitting the town for
Him! Instead, the people gather after sunset—"many who were demon-
possessed" (verse 16). He drives out evil spirits with a word and heals all who
are sick (verses 14-16).
And so it goes throughout Matthew 8 and 9, fast-moving events with Jesus in
the lead: the calming of the storm (Matt. 8:23-27); the healing of the demoniacs
(verses 28-34); the curing of the paralytic (Matt. 9:1-8); the restoring of a
hemorrhaging woman (verses 20-22); the resurrection of a dead girl (verses 18,
19, 23-26); the healing of the two blind men and a blind mute (verses 27-33).
The whole account presents Jesus as the one mentioned in the ancient writings,
who would take our infirmities and carry our diseases (see Matt. 8:17; cf. Isa.
53:4). At the end of this sweeping portrayal of the opening scenes of Jesus'
ministry, in a passage that never fails to move me, Matthew presents a poignant
summary: "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their
synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease
and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because
they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matt. 9:35, 36).
Compassion and intensity—those twin elements characterized the mission of
Jesus. To travel with Him was to experience a never-ending series of wonders.
The following selection presents a sampling: /. When they broke in from the top
You're sitting way at the back of the plane as it lands—late. You have a tight
connection. But everyone in front of you is standing, seemingly equally eager to
exit. Bodies in the way—impenetrable like walls. Frustration.
That's how they felt, these friends of a paralyzed man who wanted to come to
Jesus. Getting through the door was impossible—people in the way, everyone
pressing to get close. So they broke in from the top and lowered the suffering
man into the presence of Jesus. Wow! "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the
paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven'" (Mark 2:5).
But they hadn't brought the man there for forgiveness, good as that was.
Physical healing was what they came for—that's why they took the trouble.
What disappointment to hear him offered forgiveness instead!
But Jesus, master teacher that He was, had some important points to get across
to an audience that included "teachers of the law" (verse 6). And He succeeded.
"Why does this fellow talk like that?" they asked themselves. "He's
blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (verse 7).
An excellent observation on their part, we must admit—and an excellent
question. And indeed, the point Jesus wanted to make was that, however
scandalous it might appear, Messiah had arrived. The eternal God was among
them. And, Jesus said in response to their unspoken query, here's proof to take
home with you: "Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,'
or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'?" (verse 9).
Even a child would have seen His point. Talk is cheap, He was saying to
them, and anyone able to speak could have uttered those same words that I just
did. But as evidence that they were not just idle talk or blasphemy, and as proof
that "the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," here's what I'm
going to do ... At that point, after a pause, He says to the paralytic: "I tell you,
get up, take your mat and go home" (verse 11). And the man did just that.
It left everyone dumbfounded. "We have never seen anything like this!" they
exclaimed (verse 12).
2. When He faced a human nightmare
"Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and
Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see" (Matt. 12:22).
The man who came to Jesus that day had three problems: he couldn't see, he
couldn't talk, and a demon possessed him. Perhaps it's hard to imagine him
demon-possessed. But close your eyes and put a finger across your lips as if to
seal it. Then try, if you will, to imagine not being able to either see or speak. It's
just about as bad as it gets—a nightmare! Of course, he could still do some
things—he could hear, walk, use his hands, etc. But he couldn't see anything,
and he had no voice to describe anything he heard. And what little he tried to do
would get messed up anyhow by the demon holding him.
But now that he'd met Jesus, he could both see and speak. And the demon was
gone! Now he could repeat things that he'd been hearing all his life in his mute
condition. And he could see the people speaking to him. The birds whose
melody he'd enjoyed he could now watch in their singing. The flowers and the
hills and the rain and the clouds all smiled back at him in all their luscious
beauty. Talk about new life! It was a symbol of what Jesus wants to do for all of
us, blind and disabled as we are by the tragedy of sin.
3. The day He fixed a messed-up hand
"He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, 'Stretch out your
hand.' He did so, and his hand was completely restored" (Luke 6:10).
I remember the setting well: early on a Sabbath morning at a Hilton hotel in
downtown Toronto, November 2002. I'd been reading Luke 6 down to verse 11.
Then the story would not let me go any further (see verses 6-11). What got to me
that day was the depth of malice on the part of the Pharisees and teachers of the
law.
There was a man with a withered hand in the synagogue. How long he'd been
suffering with that condition the Gospels do not tell us. But it was clear that the
Pharisees not only could not cure him (undoubtedly never even gave the matter a
second thought)—they could not have cared less about his situation. That
morning their only interest in him was as bait. They'd been gathering evidence
against Jesus, and this man would help their case. "So they watched Jesus]
closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath" (Luke 6:7).
I think what got to me that morning in Toronto was the sheer heartlessness,
the complete absence of compassion, among the group. No shame (or, at least,
regret) that they themselves could not heal the unfortunate soul during the
decades that they'd known him. And no embarrassment at having to encounter
him in his suffering year after year. Their only concern that morning was to trap
Jesus.
How well they knew Him—His compassion! And how well they understood
that He could not stomach seeing people suffer. With the sick man and Jesus in
the same room, they knew they'd catch Him in the act—the act of mercy.
But even if that was their original intention, how was it possible that they did
not experience a change of heart in the wake of the astounding miracle when it
actually happened? According to the text, when the man stretched out his hand
they saw it "completely restored" (verse 10). And instead of "hallelujahs" and
shouts of "Praise the Lord!" they instead "were furious and began to discuss with
one another what they might do to Jesus" (verse 11). Matthew says that they
"went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus" (Matt. 12:14).
It shows what happens when we let our own cultivated prejudice completely
blind us. How might we today be guilty of that same willful malice?
 4. The night He put a man's ear back
Sent by the chief priests and elders, they arrive in Gethsemane that evening
armed with swords and clubs. But as they arrest Jesus, an outraged Peter swings
toward the neck of one of the high priest's servants and misses, slicing off the
man's ear instead (see Luke 22:49-51).
Luke's comment on Jesus' response to the incident is brief and to the point: "
[Jesus] touched the man's ear and healed him" (verse 51).
I try to imagine the pain and the shock of having one's ear severed, the gasp
on the part of those near by, the blood beginning to spurt, the commotion, the
confusion. Coming to the rescue, Jesus simply releases His alreadybound hands,
retrieves the severed organ from the ground (as I imagine it), and puts it back in
place again, as easily as we return a fallen book to its spot on the shelf.
Wow!
What thoughts go through that servant's head? What emotions? How does he
regard Jesus now? Does he continue to participate in the arrest of this person
from whom he's just received such extraordinary kindness? And what's the effect
on those around him? Why doesn't the miracle stop them short? Why weren't
they simply dumbstruck with astonishment and wonder? And why was this not a
reason to abandon their mission?
But back to the man again—what story did he tell when he finally got home?
How did he explain to his wife his new interest in his ears? What lasting effect
did the incident that evening have on him? Did he eventually become a follower
of Jesus?
What stories eternity will reveal of the ultimate influence of the wonderful
works of Jesus!
5. The time He raised a man four days dead
The raising of Lazarus (John 11) is perhaps the crowning miracle of Jesus'
public career, occurring as it did in Bethany in Judea, in the very shadow of
Jerusalem (just two miles away), the hotbed of opposition to Him. Jesus receives
news of Lazarus' death and deliberately delays His arrival, finally appearing
upon the scene after the dead man's body has lain in the grave for four days.
Lazarus's sister Martha protests when Jesus commands the removal of the stone
from the entrance of the burial cave. No, she objects, by this time there'd be a
stench—after all, it's been four days!
 But Jesus insists. Someone removes the stone. And then the dramatic call:
"Lazarus, come forth!" (verse 43, NKJV). And "he who had died came out
bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face . . . wrapped with a cloth."
Then came those final words of Jesus: "Loose him, and let him go" (verse 44,
NKJV).
We read about this event, and our familiarity with it takes its toll. Our pulses
do not race, our hearts aren't beating faster; no added excitement fills our voices.
But in those rare moments when we take the time for deep reflection we
recognize it for what it was: an utterly astonishing event, unprecedented in the
entire biblical account. Imagine the buzz created by this fantastic development,
the astonishment sweeping the surrounding regions. People would come from far
and near to see this wonder man—the one who'd been dead and was alive again!
According to the text, "many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had
seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him" (verse 45). But it says also that "some
of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done" (verse 46).
So what would be the reaction of the religious leaders? Amazement? Awe at
the great power of God? Not at all. Far from being filled with wonder, they
"called a meeting of the Sanhedrin" (verse 47). "'What are we accomplishing?'
they asked. 'Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him
go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and
take away both our place and our nation'" (verse 48).
Incredible! What parallels in history come close to such revolting callousness?
What words exist in our vocabulary to adequately describe it? It's chronic
intransigence and prejudice of the highest order—blind and out of control.
Then just when you think it couldn't get any worse, it does. Jesus goes to
Bethany to attend a dinner in His honor. Many people, getting wind of the visit,
gather at the place—"not only because of [JesusJ but also to see Lazarus, whom
he had raised from the dead" (John 12:9). Here's the clincher: "So the chief
priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the
Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him" (verses 10, 11).
We are beyond astonishment, our mouths open and wordless!

Man of Wonder
A whole slew of other spectacular acts of Christ would merit comment here,
but space does not allow. A child's lunch mysteriously multiplies in the hands of
Jesus to feed a hungry multitude (John 6:5-13). Left behind across the lake,
Jesus joins His followers at midnight, walking upon the water (verses 16-20).
When the revenue agents come calling, a financially impoverished Savior sends
Peter to the fishes of the sea for help. "Go to the lake and throw out your line,"
He says to him. "Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a
four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours" (Matt.
17:27).
Human words cannot capture the majesty and power of such breathtaking
ministry. Describing the run-up to Jesus' sermon on the mount, Luke gives us
something of the composition and motivation of the crowd that had assembled to
hear the Savior. "A great number of people from all over Judea," he says, "from
Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon" (Luke 6:17; cf. verses 12-16).
And why had they come? "To hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those
troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because
power was coming from him and healing them all" (verses 18, 19).
Matthew, describing a similar scene, said that "people brought all their sick to
[Jesus] and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all
who touched him were healed" (Matt. 14:35, 36). "Great crowds came to him,
bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid
them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw
the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind
seeing. And they praised the God of Israel" (Matt. 15:30, 31; cf Mark 6:53-56).
That's powerful stuff!
Ellen G. White tells us that "there were whole villages where there was not a
moan of sickness in any house; for He had passed through them, and healed all
their sick."1

What to Take Away

Is it enough that we revel in what Jesus did, with no reference to our own
mission and responsibilities?
As far as Jesus Himself was concerned, His church was to expect big things:
"I tell you the truth," He says in John 14:12, "anyone who has faith in me will do
what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am
going to the Father." Indeed, as He dispatched the disciples on their mission, His
marching orders to them related to things He Himself was doing: "As you go,
preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the
dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons" (Matt. 10:7, 8).
And what we see all through the book of Acts is a continuation of the
wonderful works of Jesus, beginning with the healing of the crippled man at the
Temple gate by Peter (Acts 3:1-10). "Stretch out your hand to heal and perform
miraculous signs and wonders," the disciple prayed, "through the name of your
holy servant Jesus" (Acts 4:30). And God did just that. Luke reports that "the
apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people"
(Acts 5:12). "As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them
on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he
passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing
their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed"
(verses 15, 16).
Are we content to preach about such events as pointing to the power of God in
the long ago, but having no direct bearing on the church today? Like the rest of
you, I know the fallbacks. We know that we should not base our faith on
miracles. John the Baptist, whom Jesus described as among the greatest of the
prophets, "never performed a miraculous sign" (John 10:41). And we know also
that Paul, who had the privilege of seeing "extraordinary miracles" take place
through him, with handkerchief and aprons that he'd touched bringing healing to
people (Acts 19:11, 12), nevertheless "left Trophimus sick at Miletus" (2 Tim.
4:20).
Such fallbacks, as I call them, lessen the blow of our comparative
powerlessness today. And they are valid, I think.
Yet a nagging impression refuses entirely to go away—the feeling that God
wants more. I sense this most keenly when facing situations of illness and
trauma that almost literally tear the heart apart. "God's will" often becomes our
last resort, never mind the fact that Jesus had a 100 percent success rate in His
prayers for the healing of others. How is it that He never found it necessary to
invoke "the will of God" to explain why a certain healing had not occurred?
How is it that every case He tackled was successful? I often think about these
things.
I have the sense that God has promised power to His followers till the end of
time. "The great work of the gospel is not to close with less manifestation of the
power of God than marked its opening," Ellen White wrote. "By thousands of
voices, all over the earth, the warning will be given. Miracles will be wrought,
2
the sick will be healed, and signs and wonders will follow the believers."2
I long to see it!

1 Ellen G. White, Pastoral Ministry (Silver Spring, Md.: Ministerial

Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1995), p. 283.
(Italics supplied.)
2 Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific
Press, 1911), pp. 611, 612. (Italics supplied.)
 CHAPTER 6

THE CHALLENGE OF HIS SAYINGS

Let's face it, Jesus said some difficult things; things that puzzle us; hard
to understand. And that's what this chapter is about—the hard words of
Jesus, the challenge of His sayings. In some cases I will suggest answers,
while in others I will leave the issues unresolved.
In Matthew 11:20-24, as Jesus upbraids certain cities of Judah, whose
inhabitants, notwithstanding the miracles He'd performed in their midst, had
failed to repent, He makes comparisons with ancient cities that had experienced
the judgment of God. Jesus declares of Korazin and Bethsaida that "if the
miracles that were performed in [them] had been performed in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (verse 21). And if the
miracles done in Capernaum "had been performed in Sodom, [Sodom] would
have remained to this day" (verse 23). Does it mean that God did not do all He
could to bring those places to repentance—that He could have done more?
When Jesus came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, a man brought to
Him his sick son whom the disciples were unable to heal. Later the disciples
wanted to know why they'd failed. "Because you have so little faith," Jesus told
them (Matt. 17:20). Then He added: "If you have faith as small as a mustard
seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you."
On the face of it, the two parts of Jesus' response seem in conflict with each
other. "Because you have so little faith" suggests, of course, that the faith of the
disciples was too limited. And one would have expected Jesus to go on to
recommend that they seek a larger faith. Instead, He suggested that faith as
small as a mustard seed would have done the trick.
So which is needed—small faith or large faith? Or was Jesus saying that the
disciples' faith was not even as large as a mustard seed?
Then what should we make of His statement that with even that small amount
of faith, "nothing will be impossible" for them? It's reasonable to assume that
through the centuries since Jesus' day at least a small fraction of Christians—let's
say .0001 percent—would have experienced that kind of faith (I'm keeping it
low to make the point). And of that number, certainly a mere 1,000 of them, let's
say, at one time or another would have found some mountain standing as an
obstacle in their way. Yet so far as anyone knows, there has never been any
capricious geographical reconfigurations anywhere on the planet. And countless
Christians have faced obstacles that they desperately wanted removed. Then why
don't more of them disappear? Is the faith of so many of us that small?
Puzzling, isn't it?
Jesus said: "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if someone wants to . . . take your tunic, let him have your cloak as
well" (Matt. 5:38-40).
These are difficult statements—almost completely impractical, when you stop
to think about it. Imagine somebody striking you in the face, and instead of
responding instantly with a counterpunch, you instead say: "Here's the other
side. How about a second whacking? Go right ahead!"
Is that what Jesus meant? Was He that radical? Or do we misunderstand Him?
If we take Him literally, then how far do we apply the admonition? What if
someone wants the $50 bill they just saw you receive back from the cashier? Do
you hand over your purse as well—containing your credit cards and driver's
license? And should they demand your car for no good reason, do you let them
have your house as well?
These are tough questions, and answers are not always readily forthcoming.
But while we're at it, let's consider three other issues that give us pause: charging
for Christian service; radical benevolence; and forgiveness.
1. On charging for Christian service
When Jesus sent out His disciples, His instructions to them were not exactly
how we'd put things today. "As you go," He said, "preach this message: 'The
kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have
leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give" (Matt. 10:7, 8).
What should the instructions mean for us today? How is it possible to conduct
mission in the contemporary world on that basis?
So far as the direct preaching of the gospel is concerned, the church has
maintained a "freely give" policy, with no charge to those on the receiving end.
And for whatever reason, the church no longer specializes in raising the dead or
driving out demons, and thus the question of billing people for such services
becomes moot. So leaving those elements aside, we focus on the remaining
issue, namely, healing—an area in which the Adventist Church, for one,
historically has taken a keen interest, even considering medical ministry "the
historically has taken a keen interest, even considering medical ministry "the
right arm" of its message and mission.1
What are the implications of this (and similar) passages in the Gospels for the
way we do medical ministry today? If we take the United States as an example,
anyone who has ever tried to check into any hospital, including those run by
Adventists, knows that except for emergencies, you can hardly get through the
door without providing proof of insurance or some other solid indication as to
how you plan to pay. "Freely give" does not seem to apply.
One can argue, of course, that no one in the church charges for miraculous
healing, which, to be quite literal about it, was the focus of Jesus' remarks here.
So if we imagine a situation in which He needed to employ medication supplied
by first-century pharmaceuticals, then would He have been able to dispense free
healing without massive donations from philanthropic organizations? And what
would He have done if the situation called not only for medication but also for
machines and equipment costing in the millions, plus a full-time staff to run
them—a staff, moreover, with their own financial needs and obligations? On top
of all this, add the modern concerns of liability and litigation, and the situation
becomes exceedingly complex.
Such considerations, valid as they are, should not entirely free us from
struggling with the underlying philosophical question of the distance between
Jesus' sayings and our contemporary practice. At the very least, given the nature
of the present medical scene, Adventists ought to reflect seriously on the
meaning of the traditional concept of "the right arm of the message." They may
need to consider whether it might not be more correct to think of the typical
Adventist medical enterprise today as simply a Christian business with a mission
orientation, rather than as a strictly church enterprise. Might that not be a more
credible approach?
The issues are enormously difficult. But our almost total failure to grapple in
depth with them seems unsatisfactory. The fundamental question centers on how
we apply the words of Jesus today. Or have they become unworkable in the
modern world?
2. Radical benevolence
The story is familiar. A wealthy "ruler" approaches Jesus to inquire about
what to do to have eternal life. After listening to the young man's recitation of
his accomplishments, Jesus tells him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything
you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come,
follow me" (Luke 18:22).
The explanation many of us have given is that Jesus does not issue that
particular directive to everyone. As a prophet, He possessed special insight into
the specific spiritual needs of the young ruler standing in front of Him that day,
and saw that the one big obstacle between him and salvation was his wealth—
thus His command to sell and give away. But for you and me, the test may be
different, inasmuch as the obstacle in our path may be different.
I believe that explanation has validity to it.
But a new thought came to me one morning back in January of 2001 while
reflecting on a chapter in John H. Yoder's The Politics of Jesus. For the first time
the impact of Luke 12:33 registered with me. That text happens to be part of
Luke's account of Jesus' sermon on the mount, and therefore we cannot regard
the admonitions and injunctions given there as isolated, or as specific to a single
person.
So here's the Luke 12:33 passage: "Sell your possessions and give to the poor.
Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that
will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." Jesus
seems to be applying to everyone who has wealth the same injunction He gives
to the young ruler in chapter 18.
What did He mean? If I sell all I have and give to the poor, then do I not
immediately become poor myself, and thus require someone else, following the
same principle, to come to my rescue? But then that person, in turn, becomes
poor. And it's not hard to visualize how such a process might in time lead to
severe and unexpected complications.
In dealing with this issue, I find it helpful to look at what happened in the
early church, as depicted in the book of Acts. They, after all, were the Christians
closest to the life setting of Jesus' statement. Acts 4:32-35 says that "all the
believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions
was his own, but they shared everything they had. . . . There were no needy
persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses
sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it
was distributed to anyone as he had need." What we're watching here is the
portrait of an integrated community, a united family of believers.
But the incident with Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-10), however tragic,
shows something of the dynamics driving the church's wealth distribution
program: it was voluntary, uncoerced, unrequired. Not everything is explicit in
the story, but it appears that the couple, seeing perhaps the wide approval that
Barnabas received after he'd given the entire proceeds from a land sale to the
church (see Acts 4:36, 37), wanted to receive the same accolades from a lesser
sacrifice.2 What we learn from Peter's confrontation with them is that the couple
had full authority to do with their property whatever they pleased—there was no
obligation for them to sell it. "And [even] after it was sold," Peter told Ananias,
"wasn't the money at your disposal?" (Acts 5:4). In other words, they could have
given to the church whatever portion of the proceeds they wished. It was the
selfish misrepresentation of the transaction that landed them in tragedy.
Another consideration is the idea that Yoder proposes in the chapter I was
reading that morning. Connecting the Luke 12:33 text with Jesus'
pronouncement in Luke 4:18, 19 (which he sees as a clear reference to the
property realignment scheme involved in the ancient Jubilee year), he champions
the view that Christ's statement in Luke 12 was not directed simply to a special
group of ultradedicated individuals, nor was it "a constitutional law to found a
utopian state of Israel." Rather, he said, "it was a jubilee ordinance which was to
be put into practice here and now, once, in A.D. 26, as a 'refreshment,'
prefiguring the 'reestablishment of all things.'"3
So Yoder places the emphasis on something that was to happen as part of
Jesus' messianic mission, without any necessary application to today. Thus
contemporary Christians are off the hook. I see such an interpretation as
inadequate, however, and believe that a more natural way to understand the text
is to see it as applying universally and in all times. However radical that may
sound, its application, as we saw in the case of the early church, is much less so.
We have, moreover, a case in point that demonstrates that very thing during the
ministry of Jesus Himself. When Zacchaeus surrendered his life to the Master,
he voluntarily offered to give "half of my possessions to the poor"—not
"everything," as Jesus had stipulated to the rich ruler. (Nor, incidentally, does
Luke 12:33 suggest we sell everything.) And "if I have cheated anybody,"
Zacchaeus added, "I will pay back four times the amount" (Luke 19:8). Jesus,
accepting the arrangement, said: "Today salvation has come to this house" (verse
9).
Beyond all this, Jesus' burden in regard to wealth was to point out its attendant
danger. He did not intend His statement comparing a rich person's chances of
heaven and a camel going through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:18-25) to be
funny, as the entire context makes clear. Rather, He sought to indicate how
serious an impediment riches can pose to our salvation. Nevertheless, Jesus
added encouragingly, "All things are possible with God" (verse 27).
added encouragingly, "All things are possible with God" (verse 27).
3. Regarding forgiveness
Again the story is familiar. Peter asks Jesus: "'Lord, how often shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him,
'I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven'" (Matt.
18:21,22, NKJV).
The spiritual, emotional, and psychological benefits of forgiveness are well
known, and people have written numerous books and articles on the subject. My
heart beats in unison with all such sentiments, sentiments that I myself have
expressed countless times and will again. Yet I've always had a lingering
concern as regards the adequacy of the popular understanding of Jesus'
statement.
The New International Version's rendition of the critical clause is "seventy-
seven times." Whichever translation we adopt, we're talking here about a large
number of offenses. And since no normal person would take the time to keep
such a record, the common (and, I believe, correct) understanding of Jesus'
meaning is that such forgiveness should have no limit. Someone insults us,
humiliates us, speaks harshly to us, tells a hurtful lie about us or our family,
makes public fun of us, damages our reputation—simply scores of such incidents
arise in the course of daily life, and we do ourselves a huge favor if we can put
such slights and hurts aside, forgive them, and, if possible, forget them.
Paul probably had such things in mind as he wrote to the believers in Colosse:
"Therefore, as God's chosen people, . . . clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive
whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord
forgave you" (Col. 3:12, 13).
In His question to Jesus, Peter was no doubt speaking in the same vein—about
the run-of-the-mill infractions that occur during the course of normal human
interaction among ordinary people. Accordingly, we should not overextrapolate
from Jesus' response and make universal applications to all aspects of the human
situation. If we're prepared to go deeper than surface level, we are bound to ask
whether Jesus' response applies equally in such cases as the following:
1. A family sacrifices decades of hard-earned money to build or purchase a
home, and there they store all their priceless and irreplaceable belongings—
books, papers, tapes, computers with vital family information, irreplaceable
photographs (of weddings, births, graduations, and other special occasions).
Along comes an arsonist, and everything goes up in smoke.
When the authorities find the arsonist, then what? If we say, "Let's forgive,"
what would we mean? Would the idea be that that person gets to walk away with
impunity? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the individual does. Then
what if that same person the very next day burns down the apartment where the
burned-out family had just taken up temporary residence? What to do now? And
we're only at incident number two! Did Peter—and Jesus—really have such
atrocities in mind?
2. In October 2005 a man walks into a convenience store in Maryland where
his estranged wife works at the checkout counter, douses her with gasoline, and
sets her ablaze, disfiguring her for the rest of her life. Today she's a ghost of her
former beautiful self.
But go back with me to the scene of the incident and imagine that immediately
following it, the woman is conscious enough to forgive him. And then suppose
further that after she's forgiven him, he proceeds to follow the ambulance to the
hospital and (however fantastic this sounds, stay with me for a moment) worms
his way into the emergency room with a bottle of acid in his hands. In a second
demonic attack he empties the liquid into what remains of her face. Is there
anyone, anywhere, who'd have the gall to charge this woman with disobedience
to Christ if she finds it difficult to forgive such a person? And even more to the
point, was Jesus talking about incidents like that?
3. On June 7, 2003, Brian and Daphne Gipson are heading home to
Pennsylvania from a Florida honeymoon. As their vehicle goes under an
overpass, someone drops a 70-pound boulder through the windshield into
Daphne's face. Weeks later Brian is still waiting for the day he'll hear his new
wife speak again. "He waits and he prays and he obsesses about how someone
could drop a rock, change so many lives, and still sleep at night." After spending
months in a hospital, Daphne emerges a broken person.4
Let's say that Daphne meets the person who did the wretched act and forgives
them. Can you imagine her forgiving a similar act from that same person the
second time, the third time—the twentieth? Do we not misunderstand Jesus
when we use His words to lay guilt trips on people who in the face of
unspeakable evil and brutality find forgiveness difficult and seek justice instead?
4. The husband of the 32-year-old Pakistani woman accuses her of having an
affair with his brother, and one day the husband takes his revenge. A report out
of Gujar Khan, Pakistan, carries the gruesome result: "Zahida Perveen's head is
shrouded in a white cotton veil, which she self-consciously tightens every few
moments. But when she reaches down to pick up her baby daughter, the veil falls
away to reveal" the terrible trauma that she's suffered. "Perveen's eyes are empty
sockets of unseeing flesh, her earlobes have been sliced off, and her nose is a
gaping, reddened stump of bone. Sixteen months ago her husband, in a fit of
rage over her alleged affair bound her hands and feet and slashed her with a
razor and knife. She was three months pregnant at the time."5
The issue is not whether that wife should forgive her husband. Rather, it's
whether anyone seriously thinks that either Jesus or Peter had such atrocities in
mind that day 2,000 years ago.
These are some of the considerations that make Jesus' statement on
forgiveness difficult. How do we apply His words, for example, in cases of
repeated sexual and physical abuse of children within the home? Earlier in
Matthew 18, speaking about children. He declared: "If anyone causes one of
these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a
large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea"
(verse 6). Though His primary reference here was to divine judgment, it would
be disingenuous to argue that we should ever take lightly— by offering "easy"
and repeated forgiveness—what God regards so seriously.
My attempt in this section was to probe a little deeper than we usually do into
Jesus' response to Peter—not at all to encourage attitudes of unforgiveness and
revenge, for such attitudes (as mentioned earlier) bring their own emotional
destruction. But it's critical to recognize, I think, that simplistic approaches that
lump the common offenses of everyday life in the same bag with the grievous,
life-changing atrocities that maim, disfigure, and kill make a mockery of Jesus'
words and wickedly lay guilt trips on those dealing with ghastly and unspeakable
crimes against their persons or property. Clearly Jesus Himself seems to make a
difference with certain particularly egregious offences, as in the following
ominous warning to Judas the night of His betrayal: "The Son of Man will go
just as it is written about him, but woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man!
It would be better for him if he had not been born" (Mark 14:21).
The issue of forgiveness is exceedingly sensitive and complex. And that's
what makes Jesus' statement about it so challenging.

In Conclusion
Let's face it—Jesus said some difficult things that puzzle us. Scattered
throughout the Gospels are some of the most challenging ethical sayings one can
read anywhere. They will demand our continual study and struggle. In this
chapter we've barely scratched the surface.

1 See Ellen G. White, Counsels on Health (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific

Press, 1951), p. 331.
2 See The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 176.

3 John H. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), p. 76.

4 Lonnae O'Neal Parker, "Fight to Regain Life After 1-95 Attack,"

Washington Post, Aug. 4, 2003, pp. A1, A3.
5 Pamela Constable, "In Pakistan, Women Pay the Price of'Honor,'"
Washington Post, May8, 2000, p. Al.
 CHAPTER 7

THE PUZZLE OF HIS CONDUCT

One way or another, the vast majority of Christians believe that Jesus'
conduct provides or should provide a model for ours. The widespread
notion, in fact, became a slogan in recent years, with thousands of
Christians wearing "What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD) buttons as a
statement of witness and commitment.
However well-meaning, such sloganeering fails to take into account the
complexity we find in Jesus' life. For while in numerous areas His actions should
provide a pattern for our own, the situations are equally numerous in which a
one-on-one correspondence between His behavior and ours would be either
difficult or inadvisable.
For starters, what should I do if, after I'd stayed back in camp praying, I
discovered that the rest of the team has taken off across the lake without me?
When that happened to Jesus, He proceeded across the water on foot! But how
about me—how would the WWJD slogan help in such a situation? And what
would we do if a leper came running in our direction for healing?
A WWJD attitude is better, of course, than one that regards Jesus' life as
totally irrelevant to our actions and behavior today. For indeed there is a sense in
which we're called upon to imitate Him, letting His life be an example for ours.
But we'd probably all agree that Jesus did some things strictly in His role as
Messiah/Savior.
When we talk about "the puzzle of His conduct," we're referring not so much
to His role as Messiah/Savior, but to those areas in which we have reason to
think that He's modeling for us. In fact, while the calming of the storm or His
walking on the water amaze us, they don't puzzle us. What sometimes baffle us,
however momentarily, are some of the other things He did or did not do.
In what follows I select four such incidents as examples.
1. Showing apparent racial prejudice
As Jesus visits near the ancient city of Tyre "a Greek [woman], born in Syrian
Phoenicia" (Mark 7:26) comes to Him for help. "Lord, Son of David," the
woman shouts, "have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from
demon-possession" (Matt. 15:22; cf. Mark 7:24-30).
Jesus' initial response: total silence!
When the woman, undeterred, keeps on pleading, His disciples suggest that
He "send her away" (Matt. 15:23). She's bothering us, they insist. And as if to
endorse their annoyance, Jesus states that He'd been "sent only to the lost sheep
of Israel" (verse 24).
At this point the woman, more desperate now than ever, falls at His feet and
begs Him, "Lord, help me" (verse 25). Will He take her case? Eyes open wide
and all ears cock to register His response, and here it comes—a reply that has
startled Bible readers across the centuries: "First let the children eat all they
want" he tells her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to
their dogs" (Mark 7:27).
Cold, callous, insulting—that's how those words come across to us. They don't
sound like Jesus. The Savior of the world belittling a poor, hurting woman who
comes to Him for help?
A man once came to speak to the staff at the Adventist headquarters in Silver
Spring. A religion professor at a well-known university, he centered his theme
on racial and cultural diversity; and as he got into his talk, he zeroed in on this
story. Jesus, according to our speaker, was clearly insensitive to the woman.
Like the rest of us, the speaker said, He needed to grow in His appreciation of
racial diversity and human worth.
What struck me was not so much the speaker's assertion, however shocking.
Nor was it the fact that no one challenged his claim, even though a question
period followed. It was the disturbing sense that probably few gave any further
thought to his devastating indictment of the Savior. For what the speaker did,
however inadvertently, amounted to a denial of the Messiahship of Jesus. It's not
possible for someone, of their own conviction, to call a human being a dog and
be the Messiah at the same time. Nor was the kind of "growth" the speaker
envisioned for Jesus consistent with the characteristics of the one who came to
be our Savior. As a human being, He had need for growth, certainly (see Luke
2:52). But if at an age past 30, the Savior of the world still had to advance in His
appreciation and understanding of basic human worth, then we don't have a
Savior. It's as simple as that.
In the case before us, it should have been obvious that the speaker's
interpretation was clearly inconsistent with what we know of Jesus from the rest
of the Gospels; inconsistent with the woman's own response; inconsistent with
Jesus' follow-up statement; and inconsistent with the eventual outcome of the
Jesus' follow-up statement; and inconsistent with the eventual outcome of the
encounter.
All this should alert us to the fact that He did not intend to have His statement
taken at face value, but that, as Ellen G. White explains, He was mouthing a
common prejudice to make a point.1 Evidently the woman understood that, for
she had a critical advantage not accessible to us: she was able to hear the tone in
His voice as He spoke and see the expression on His face. Because she could
read His body language, she understood what He was doing. "Beneath the
apparent refusal of Jesus, she saw a compassion that He could not hide."2 So,
borrowing Jesus' own words, perhaps with a wink in her own eyes, she pressed
her case, never doubting for a minute His willingness to help: '"Yes, Lord,' she
replied, 'but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs'" (Mark
7:28).
Now follows the glorious climax: "Then he told her, 'For such a reply, you
may go; the demon has left your daughter.' She went home and found her child
lying on the bed, and the demon gone" (verses 29, 30). Picture that thrilling
moment, if you can, and think who among us would have the temerity to say to
that poor mother, absolutely bubbling now with joy, that the man who'd spoken
to her needed to grow in His appreciation of diversity and basic human worth.
No, the woman knew better. And so did the disciples who heard Jesus that
day. "Christ did not immediately reply to the woman's request. He received this
representative of a despised race as the Jews would have done. In this He
designed that His disciples should be impressed with the cold and heartless
manner in which the Jews would treat such a case, as evinced by His reception
of the woman, and the compassionate manner in which He would have them deal
with such distress, as manifested by His subsequent granting of her petition."3
2. Hanging out with undesirables
As Jesus was having dinner at the house of Matthew, a former taxman, a
number of Matthew's old tax-collector buddies showed up—invited, of course.
Together with an assortment of "sinners," they "came and ate with [Jesus] and
his disciples" (Matt. 9:10). The gathering raised eyebrows among the ever-
watchful Pharisees. "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
'sinners'?" they wanted to know (verse 11).
Keep in mind that the tax collectors were among the most hated species of
humanity in New Testament Jewish culture. We really don't have any equivalent
today—at least, not in Western society. Much as many of us despise the tax-
collection agencies of our particular country, few of us ever encounter an actual
agent. Not so in Jesus' time. They personally collected the tax, often in a manner
hardly different from a shakedown—a shakedown, moreover, for their own
pockets and, scandal of scandals, for an occupying power. Most people in Jesus'
time regarded tax collectors as very close to vermin.
As for "sinners" in this particular context, the concept had a special sting in
the parlance of the time, pointing to people "classed as being outside the Jewish
pale."4 "Tax collectors and 'sinners'" (sometimes "tax collectors and prostitutes"
[see Matt. 21:31)—"the Pharisees shunned such people as outcasts and expected
Jesus would do no less."5
But they were the people with whom Jesus reclined at table that day, in the
intimate atmosphere of Middle Eastern dinner fellowship. We have no easy
comparable contemporary parallels. It would be like a prominent religious leader
today fraternizing with known operatives or former operatives of organized
crime, with call girls thrown in for good measure. But evidently that was
common for Jesus. For it had to have taken more than a few such instances to let
stick the widespread accusation we hear from His own lips, that He was "a
glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners'" (Matt. 11:19).
But how should we picture this association? We tend to visualize a kind of
pub or nightclub setting, with Jesus in the company of people of questionable
morals. There's eating and drinking—and the beverage is certainly not water or
7-Up. Loud and raucous music plays as drug pushers ply their trade around Him
and practicing prostitutes lurk in the shadows.
The issue here is not that Christian ministry shouldn't take place in such
settings. Rather, it's whether that description is a correct portrait of what Jesus
did and thus whether we really have biblical warrant for that picture of the
witnessing strategy of Jesus. If we take the occasion in Matthew's house, for
example—the incident that riled the Pharisees—we can see immediately that that
was not a pub or nightclub setting. What we have here, really, was a converted
tax collector inviting all his friends to meet the special Friend he'd found. In the
words of R.C.H. Lenski: "These publicans and sinners knew why they were
invited, namely in order that Jesus might free them from their sins. It was he
who had control of the entire situation and kept control of it, doing his necessary
and blessed work upon them. This is an entirely different thing from being
drawn into questionable company where we stoop to the low level of those
present and allow them to use us for their purposes."6
 I believe Lenski is correct. Those who would follow Christ's example should
always keep in mind the motive for His mingling When He attended a function,
He did not become one of the crowd or just melt away into the audience. No,
people knew He was there. His presence sent its own message. Gregariously
gifted Christians who go through decades of socializing, so to speak, with
nothing to show for it—who are afraid to unfurl their true colors—are really not
following the example of Jesus.
"Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The
Savior mingled with [people] as one who desired their good. He showed His
sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then
He bade them, 'Follow Me.''7
3. Displaying anger
When Jesus descended the Mount of Transfiguration, a man emerged from a
crowd at its base with a request that Jesus heal His son. He'd taken the boy to the
disciples, he explained, but they had been unable to cure him.
The puzzling element in the story is Jesus' response. As it comes across in
translation, it gives the impression that the request somehow peeved Him. "O
unbelieving and perverse generation," He said. "How long shall I put up with
you? Bring the boy here to me" (Matt. 17:17).
Notice the parts of the text in italics. The words seem uncharacteristically
harsh coming from Jesus. How can we explain His tone? One seems to hear
echoes of Moses' frustration when he struck the rock (instead of speaking to it),
the angry words proceeding from his quivering lips: "Listen, you rebels, must we
bring you water out of this rock?" (Num. 20:10).
So what's going on here? What does Jesus have in mind when He refers to the
people as a "perverse generation"? What does He mean when He asks the
question: "How long shall I put up with you?"
It is a tough one to call, and I leave it unresolved. I suspect that something's
going on in the passage that's not evident on the surface.
The Gospels mention at least three other occasions that Jesus appeared not
only peeved but also (apparently) downright angry (see Matt. 21:12, 13; 21:18-
21; and Mark 3:1-5).
One of them came at the conclusion of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem just
before His death. As He entered the Temple area He "drove out all who were
buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the
benches of those selling doves" (Matt. 21:12), charging that these merchants had
turned God's house into a "den of robbers" (verse 13).
The dispersal of profit-hungry merchants from their lucrative haunts was not a
job for softies, and we cannot construe the overturning of tables as a mild
activity—not by the longest shot. We're talking force here, with a considerable
display of severity and outrage bordering on anger.
The second incident, to mention just one more, took place in a synagogue one
Sabbath. The story (discussed in chapter 5 of this book) is about the man with a
withered hand. Jesus, ready to rescue him from his misery, puts a sounding
question to the observing audience: Is it proper to perform such an act on the
Sabbath day?
The answer should have been obvious; but instead He's greeted by total
silence. Those who'd come looking for a reason to accuse Him held their peace,
eager for Him to do what they knew He intended, while others held their
tongues, perhaps afraid of that first group. With cowardice on the one hand and
malice on the other, it all got to Jesus. And Mark says: "He looked around at
them in anger," "deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts" (Mark 3:5).
The Greek word used here, orge, means "anger, indignation, wrath,"" and
determining which term works best depends on the context. Our English word
"indignation" means anger, but (according to Webster) "anger aroused by
something unjust, unworthy, or mean." Based on that definition, it's clear that
"indignation" goes best with Mark's description of Jesus as being "deeply
distressed at their stubborn hearts." It was downright mean of Jesus' opponents
even to think of opposing the healing of such a sufferer. Hence Jesus' anger. Not
a "lawless anger caused by jealousy," but "the divine reaction toward evil."9 He
was indignant at the people's cowardice, on the one hand, and their malice, on
the other. We might legitimately call it "righteous anger."
In regard to all the above instances, particularly the incident at the foot of the
Mount of Transfiguration, I believe that the following from Ellen G. White is
apropos: "In His intercourse with others, He exercised the greatest tact, and He
was always kind and thoughtful. He was never rude, never needlessly spoke a
severe word, never gave unnecessary pain to a sensitive soul. He did not censure
human weakness. . . . Every soul was precious in His sight."10
4. Neglecting an embattled coworker
Matthew 4:12, 13 tells how Jesus reacted upon hearing that Herod had thrown
John the Baptist into prison: He returned to Galilee, keeping away from the
hotbed of Judea.
In Matthew 11:2-19 the incarcerated John, hearing of Jesus' work, dispatches
a delegation of his own disciples to the Master with a question: "Are you the one
who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" (verse 2). Jesus responds
by calling the attention of John's emissaries to His miraculous works and to the
preaching of the gospel to the poor. Then follows the most glowing description
Jesus ever gave of any human being in all the Gospels as He extols the ministry
of this intrepid messenger of God. John is "more than a prophet" (verse 9), Jesus
declares. He is the "messenger" sent ahead to prepare the Messiah's way (verse
10).
In His dramatic portrayal of the final judgment, Jesus would emphasize the
importance of prison ministry (Matt. 25:36,43). Yet He does not set foot
anywhere close to John's jailhouse. Did John find that puzzling? We will never
know.
Finally John is beheaded. Hearing about it, Jesus simply withdraws "by boat
privately to a solitary place" (Matt. 14:13; cf. 14:1-12; Mark 6:17-29).
What are we to make of Jesus' responses?
I believe a possible clue to Jesus' (seemingly) curious (not to say strange)
behavior here centers on the status of His own mission at this point. Based on the
timeline proposed for the ministry of the Baptist and Jesus in The Seventh-day
Adventist Bible Commentary,11 it would seem that during the period of the
Baptist's imprisonment, Jesus' own ministry was just getting off the ground, with
only about 15 months (if that much) behind Him and the bulk of His work still
ahead. Well aware that the forces that had quieted the Baptist were also out to
get Him, Jesus took steps to ensure that the work He'd come to do did not get
aborted.
Jesus could have acted heroically, of course, and gone in search of John—
indeed, He had enough followers to instigate a riot and storm the prison. But
such an action would have compromised His mission. A divine timetable (see
John 7:6, 8) guided His entire ministry, and with the bulk of His mission still in
the future, the time to confront the authorities had not yet come. He would not
give them opportunity to decommission both John and Him in a single blow.
And why didn't Jesus rescue John from beheading? A statement He made in
Gethsemane perhaps throws light on the issue. Admonishing Peter, who'd drawn
a weapon in His defense, Jesus said: "Do you think I cannot call on my Father,
and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But
how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"
(Matt. 26:53, 54). What we see here is that Jesus took no steps to marshal
supernatural forces in His own defense. In the same way, He did not consider it
prudent to summon heavenly assistance in behalf of the embattled reformer, or
otherwise come to his aid.
However difficult to understand, that development should bring enormous
encouragement to all who suffer in God's name. Jesus' commendation of John
couldn't be higher. The wild prophet of a man enjoyed heaven's full confidence.
Yet he suffered alone, encountering a most tragic death, while the Savior of the
world—God in human flesh and physically present within shouting distance—
stood aloof.
It all helps to answer the persistent question: "Where is God when we hurt?"
In the experience of John, we have a partial answer—in terms of Jesus' conduct.
They "have done to him everything they wished," He said (Mark 9:13). With this
observation He broadened the meaning of the Baptist's death. It was not simply
Herod—the entire nation was responsible for his death. "In the same way," Jesus
said ominously, "the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands" (Matt. 17:12).
Thus He linked His own death to John's, thereby attributing to the latter cosmic
significance.
In the kingdom, as I picture it, its inhabitants will ask the Baptist three
questions: One, Do you remember the occasion of your death? He'll answer Yes.
Two, Did it hurt? He'll answer, For a second. And three, How do you feel now?
And he'll say: That one will take forever to tell! God is so good!

1 See Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 400.

2 Ibid., p. 401.

3 Ibid., p. 400.

4 R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew's Gospel (Minneapolis:

Augsburg Publishing House, 1943), p. 363.

5 Ibid., p. 364.

6 Ibid.

7 Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 143.

 8 See W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 578.
9 I borrow these words, out of context, from Arndt and Gingrich, pp. 578, 579.

10 Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers, p. 117.

11 See The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, pp. 229-231.

 CHAPTER 8

THE INTENSITY OF HIS WALK

Enoch walked with God. Moses for 40 years dreamed of eternity on the
plains of Midian. Job, "blameless and upright" (Job 1:1) would sacrifice
"early in the morning" (verse 5), lifting up his children before the Lord,
David, amid the stillness of the Judean hills, reached out to God in prayer
and sacred song. Isaiah, during the year that King Uzziah died, caught a
vision of the exalted Lord seated on His throne, His robe filling the heavenly
temple. So close was Jeremiah with the Lord that in the midst of his most
intense trial and discouragement he could feel God's word in his heart like
"a fire shut up in [his] bones" (Jer. 20:9), a passion he could not keep from
sharing. Daniel, defying the king's decree and unafraid of the watchful eyes
of his adversaries, lifted his petitions to heaven three times a day, his
windows open toward Jerusalem, his beloved city.
And Zephaniah, from his own rich experience with God, could give to Israel
one of the most hopeful assurances penned anywhere in Scripture:

"The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.

He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing" (Zeph. 3:17).

All these Old Testament giants lived close to God, making it a habit to spend
time in His sacred presence. But none of them, nor all of them combined, could
match the intensity of Jesus' walk with His Father.
Those hidden years in Nazareth are virtually unknown to us, but if every tree
grows as it's bent, then we're correct in assuming that He had devoted those
years preceding his public ministry to the most concentrated preparation for any
assignment our planet has ever witnessed.
Even so, His first order of business following His baptism was to seek God
even more intensely. Thus we find Him heading into the Judean desert for a 40-
day interval of communion, prayer, and testing. For many of us— perhaps all of
us—this episode in Jesus' life represents an undertaking completely beyond our
frame of reference.
In his biography of the late Episcopalian bishop James A. Pike, David M.
Robertson provides a vivid description of the kind of terrain that Jesus would
have encountered during His desert retreat: "Daytime temperatures can soar as
high as 130 degrees Fahrenheit..., and the only shade available comes from
overhanging rocks. These small areas of relief must also be shared with the
traditional inhabitants of the desert, the scorpion and the serpent. The only other
frequently seen signs of animal life are the small and intensely energetic clouds
of black flies, immediately drawn to the sweat or the urine of the traveler."1
Ironically, Pike and his new wife, Diane Kennedy Pike, had ventured into the
forbidding region in search of evidence that would disprove certain cardinal
tenets of the Christian faith: the Incarnation, the virgin birth, and the Trinity. But
the story of their struggle for survival after the journey of one brief afternoon in
that desolate place only adds to the mystique of Jesus. Diane escaped with her
life—just barely—but her husband perished. A search party of Israeli soldiers
and police, backed up by helicopters and search dogs, found his body several
days later. He'd apparently plunged some 60 feet to his death while attempting to
climb out of a wadi.2
"It was . . . into this wilderness," Robinson notes, "that Jesus of Nazareth was
said to have retreated alone, to pray and fast."' Into this Godforsaken region that
had proved the undoing of the controversial bishop, Jesus had gone following
His baptism to reflect upon the mission before Him. And not for one brief
afternoon, but for 40 days!
What is it that kept Him struggling in that wretched site after 10 days? after 20
days? after 30? It was an intensity quite foreign to our own experience—a
spiritual concentration utterly beyond our knowledge, a pursuit of mystical
intimacy that leaves us wordless with wonder.
How was He able to function in active struggle (not listless passivity) that
long without food in such an inhospitable setting? Moses went 40 days, but he
happened to have been in the very presence of the living God, and it would not
be unreasonable to assume some kind of supernatural sustenance. The Bible says
that Jesus "ate nothing during those days" (Luke 4:2). In those hostile
surroundings He faced hunger, extreme heat, and danger from reptiles and other
predators. Did He drink water from some solitary spring? We don't know that.
But if He did, then that would have been all that passed His lips.
I suspect we shall never know all that happened to Jesus in that isolated spot.
And as to the reason for it, that too is beyond us. Who of us can understand the
kind of spiritual intensity that dwelt in the breast of Jesus? Who of us can fully
conceive what it meant to have a mission such as His? And who of us can know
conceive what it meant to have a mission such as His? And who of us can know
what change comes to the whole psyche of one who carries on His shoulder such
a cosmic burden? Here we must be content to operate in the dark, with no other
examples to make comparisons.
How was He protected from the creatures of the wild—the venomous snakes,
the serpents, the beasts of prey? We don't have all the answers. But one
statement in Mark is informative: "He was with the wild animals, and angels
attended him" (Mark 1:13). Jesus would have experienced no particular benefit
to have been attacked by such creatures. If we might put it this way, it was not in
God's plans for the Savior of the world to die from snakebite, or from a lion
attack, or from starvation, or as a result of a fall from some precipice. Angels
saw to that, making sure that He remained intact to face the real test, namely, the
spiritual one.
But perhaps such creatures did not touch Him for still another reason—and
here I enter into a little speculation, harmlessly so, I trust. Remember His
triumphal entry into Jerusalem before His death? Though Matthew leaves us
puzzled about the particular beast Jesus rode that day (see Matt. 21:7; cf. verses
1-6), Mark makes it clear: "When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their
cloaks over it, he sat on it" (Mark 11:7).
From personal experiences that once came close to tragic, I know what it
means to ride a colt, the foal of a donkey, "which no one has ever ridden" (verse
2). It's a wild and dangerous affair! And anyone who's taken on one of these
beasts before they've been "broken in" understands that the colt Jesus rode that
Sunday did not behave in the usual manner. Nor, I suspect, did the wild creatures
in the desert around Him. I don't think we know anything about the deterrent
force accompanying the kind of spiritual energy and intensity that Jesus took
with Him into the wilderness.
For 30 years He'd imbibed the message of the prophets; for 30 years it had
been sinking into His psyche what was at stake in the redemption of the world;
and for 30 years the revelation had been building that He was the one sent from
God to execute the critical mission for the salvation of the world. And following
His baptism, He felt with a superhuman intensity the need for power
commensurate to the awesome task.
Now He headed into the desert, his entire being caught up in a power beyond
Himself, His entire psyche captured by an unearthly force, causing the creatures
of the wild to keep their distance.
 At the Risk of Failure
The explicit reason for His wilderness foray was for testing (Matt. 4:1; cf.
Luke 4:2), and the archdeceiver was on hand to take advantage. Using the
Savior's extreme hunger as his tool, he desperately tried to drive a wedge
between Him and His Father, to wrench His firm grasp on God, to intrude upon
their intimate closeness.
Every other human being who ever lived on earth has succumbed to the
enemy's bait, one way or another. But Jesus must not go down that road. He was,
and had to remain, the "spotless" Son of God. Were He to stumble in a single
particular, the game was over for the human race—and with terrifying
consequences for the entire universe as well. It was an unspeakably taxing
mission. He was to struggle as we do, be tempted as we are, yet remain
immaculate. We might compare it to going through 33 years with your computer
—writing articles, doing homework, answering letters—and never making a
single mistake, never needing to use the delete key or the undo feature; like
driving for 33 years without a single infraction of any kind; like going through a
course in algebra or physics and getting every problem right; like playing the
piano for 33 years without ever once hitting the wrong note.
That was Jesus' lot. He came not just to set an example in selfless living, but
to die as the sinless one, and thereby bring salvation to the world. Hence His
total concentration, the utter intensity of His walk with God—nothing could be
taken for granted, nothing left to chance. The fate of an entire planet—and, in a
sense, the universe itself—was at stake. Those 40 days in the desert represented
Jesus' final preparation for His mission.
"Satan in heaven had hated Christ for His position in the courts of God. He
hated Him the more when he himself was dethroned. He hated Him who pledged
Himself to redeem a race of sinners. Yet into the world where Satan claimed
dominion God permitted His Son to come, a helpless babe, subject to the
weakness of humanity. He permitted Him to meet life's peril in common with
every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at
the risk of failure and eternal loss.'"4

Intensity for God

The time in the wilderness, however important, could not guarantee victory
for the struggles ahead. Thus throughout His ministry, we find Jesus pursuing
constant contact and communion with His Father. Prayer filled His life. Mark
1:35 gives us what perhaps was His usual pattern: "Very early in the morning,
1:35 gives us what perhaps was His usual pattern: "Very early in the morning,
while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary
place, where he prayed."
But critical times called for special seasons. Thus Luke informs us that before
selecting the 12 disciples, Jesus "went out to the mountain to pray, and continued
all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12, NKJV; cf. verse 13). And we are
familiar, of course, with His time of excruciating agony and supplication in
Gethsemane on the eve of the crucifixion.
Returning to His regular pattern of communion, the following statement
provides insight: "[Jesus] studied the Word of God, and His hours of greatest
happiness were found when He could turn aside from the scene of His labors to
go into the fields, to meditate in the quiet valleys, to hold communion with God
on the mountainside or amid the trees of the forest. The early morning often
found Him in some secluded place, meditating, searching the Scriptures, or in
prayer. With the voice of singing He welcomed the morning light."5
I like that reference to the morning hours. When the day is fresh, the mind is
clear and life's cares have yet to emerge or the calendar become crowded—that's
the ideal time to meet with God, to pour out our souls to Him, to plead for
strength and guidance for the coming day. It was in the morning that the manna
fell in ancient Israel. It was in the morning that the thunder and lightning
signaled the descent of the living God on Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:16). And it was
early in the morning that God opened the eyes of Elisha's servant so he could see
"the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha" (2 Kings 6:17).
Yes, morning is a good time to meet with God. Said the ancient prophet,
"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions
never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lam. 3:22,
23).
The idea of a "word of prayer" has become the universal staple at Christian
meetings, symptomatic of our abbreviated encounters with God. But while such
brevity may be appropriate for public gatherings, I've found in my own
experience that it takes about the first half hour for my restless mind to settle
down with God in prayer. For me, it's sometime near the end of the first hour
that the connection lines completely open, so to speak, and the pulse of the soul
begins to beat in unison with that of the unseen world. It's around that time that
we become immersed in the atmosphere of heaven, with an easy flow of
thoughts moving back and forth between us and God. You rise from such
periods feeling that you've had a taste of God.
 And the point of this chapter is that Jesus, instead of being able to count such
sessions on the fingers of His hands, experienced such intimacy every day.
You sense this spiritual closeness, this spiritual familiarity with God, as you
concentrate on His great prayer in John 17, a prayer spoken in the very shadow
of the cross, and the best example we have of the way He communed with His
Father. "I have glorified You on the earth," He prayed near the beginning of His
supplication. "I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And
now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had
with You before the world was" (verses 4, 5, NKJV). And then toward the end:
"Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am,
that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me
before the foundation of the world" (verse 24, NJKV).
Intimacy and intensity—these are the words that get to the heart of Jesus' great
pastoral (some would say high-priestly) prayer.

Intensity for Mission

I've heard it said of some people who had their lives cut short—by disease,
accident, whatever—that they lived with an intensity born of an instinctive
premonition their time on earth was short, Jesus, in a sense, had that. He
understood full well that the time to accomplish the gargantuan task before Him
was brief, that the window of opportunity was small.
And thus He performed every activity, every task, with a sense of urgency. "I
must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day," He said. "The night is
coming when no one can work" (John 9:4, NKJV). The woman of Samaria,
abandoning her water jar and hurrying back to her village in full excitement
mode, reported on the most focused character she'd ever met. Meanwhile the
disciples return to an erstwhile hungry Savior, bringing food, only to find Him
silent and pensive, praying for something they did not understand. No, He'd not
eaten, as they thought. "My food," He explained, "is to do the will of him who
sent me and to finish his work" (John 4:34).
We have the following in Luke 21:37, 38: "Each day Jesus was teaching in the
temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the
Mount of Olives; and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the
temple."
You read this, stop to imagine such a lifestyle, and shudder at the basic
starkness of it. Where did He and his disciples sleep? What kind of bedding, if
any, did they have? How did they handle their bodily needs? What did they do
for grooming (toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving, etc.)? for breakfast? for laundry?
The text says that the people returned to the Temple "early in the morning" to
hear Him. Did they come early to get a good place? Or was it because He was
actually there that early to begin His teaching?
The Son of man, as Jesus said to Judas when they first met, had nowhere to
lay His head. However grandiose our view of the human Jesus today, He really
was an itinerant preacher, living hand to mouth with His disciples. He worked
early morning, at noon, during the afternoon, and at night. It was at night that
Nicodemus came to Him, and that's when He uttered those words repeated
literally billions of times across the succeeding centuries: "For God so loved the
world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Jesus ministered to poor and rich; to single individuals and to the multitudes;
to families in their homes and to crowds in the Temple. And He had an eye for
those who were sick and suffering. That's what led Him to the man born blind,
whose intriguing story we find in John 9. Taking umbrage that the man's healing
had violated the Sabbath, and peeved by his defense of the One who'd healed
him, the Pharisees "threw him out" (John 9:34).
What follows next speaks volumes about Jesus' intensity for mission. "Jesus
heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him . . ." (verse 35), the
clear implication being that Jesus had gone looking for him! And when He'd
found him, "he said, 'Do you believe in the Son of Man?' 'Who is he, sir?' the
man asked. 'Tell me so that I may believe in him.' Jesus said, 'You have now
seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.' Then the man said, 'Lord, I
believe,' and he worshiped him" (verses 35-38).
Jesus had gone looking for Him! Imagine that!
We must copy His intimacy with God, the intensity of His walk, and His
passion for mission. How close are we with God? How intimate our
communion? How much time do we spend nurturing that closeness? When do
we ever slow down long enough to actually hear God speak to us? Russian
novelist-historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that hastiness and superficiality
were the psychic diseases of the twentieth century—a situation already
considerably worse in the opening years of the twenty-first century.
The counsel of the Lord through Isaiah hits home: "For thus says the Lord
God, the Holy One of Israel: 'In returning and rest you shall be saved; in
quietness and confidence shall be your strength'" (Isa. 30:15, NKJV). The
psalmist adds: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). And we hear the
voice of Jesus reaching down the centuries to our harried times: "Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matt.
11:28-30).
"All who are under the training of God need the quiet hour for communion
with their own hearts, with nature, and with God... We must individually hear
Him speaking to the heart. When every other voice is hushed, and in quietness
we wait before Him, the silence of the soul makes more distinct the voice of
God."6 Said the disciple who walked closest to Jesus, "This is how we know we
are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did" (1 John 2:5,
6).

1 David M Robertson, A Passionate Pilgrim (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2004), p. 4.
2 Ibid., pp. 6-8, 226.

3 Ibid, p. 4.

4 E. G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 49.

5 White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 52.

6 Ibid., p. 58.
 CHAPTER 9

THE OF TENDERNESS HIS LOVE

I was sitting in my study at home, looking out the window at a cardinal, a
splash of bright red against the brown drab of tree branches just recovering
from the cold of winter. It was a morning that, for some reason, anxious
thoughts had been going through my mind. And there sat the cardinal
reminding me that the same God who cares for it and had clothed it so
gorgeously also has concern for me.
The following morning the cardinal returned. But before noticing him, I'd
spotted another feathered creature—smaller and almost completely camouflaged
among the auburn branches. And the thought of the previous morning came back
to me—about the unimaginable love of God. I thought about how small that
cardinal appeared from my window, just 20 yards away; and how infinitesimally
tiny (in fact, how totally invisible) it would be if I were flying in a jet at 35,000
feet. Then I imagined how exceedingly more difficult it would be to see the
other bird—the brown one. Yet God sees them both across the limitless light-
years of space. And He cares about them!
In Jesus we find someone who loves and cares like that. Speaking to the
common people gathered on a hillside in Galilee, He spoke words that His life
among them would soon put into practice: "Look at the birds of the air; they do
not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable than they?" (Matt. 6:26).
The Gospels are chock-full of illustrations of the tender love of Jesus. In what
follows I have space for just a few.
Love for a Cornered Woman
The story appears in John 8:1-11. The woman had been caught in adultery—in
the very act, said the men who'd dragged her into Jesus' presence. And they
knew their Moses well. The great prophet of Sinai had said that such offenders
should be stoned in public. What's your verdict? they demanded.
Jesus might have excused Himself. After all, He was not part of the legal
establishment and was not vested with judicial powers recognized in any Judean
court of law. So why would they come to Him? It would have been entirely
proper for Him to pass.
 But He wouldn't. For cowering before Him was a distraught woman,
nightmares of a horrible death filling every corner of her tortured mind. Her
heart pounding, her pulse racing, the tears of shame flowing down her haggard
face, she expects the stones to start striking her fragile body any minute. Then,
horror of horrors, she hears from Jesus' lips what would surely be her death
sentence: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at
her" (verse 7, RSV). Regarding all her accusers as flawless adherents of the law
—and faultless—she fully expects Jesus' words to seal her doom and send a
barrage of rocks hurtling down upon her all at once.
She braces herself, her face in her hands (as I picture it), her anxiety level at
maximum. Moments pass. Nothing—only silence. Daring at last to look up from
her crouch, she finds herself alone with Jesus. "Where are those accusers of
yours?" Jesus asks her gently. "Has no one condemned you?" (verse 10, NKJV).
"No one, sir," she replies. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declares.
"Go now and leave your life of sin" (verse 11).
The woman does not skip as she departs—perhaps considering that reaction
inappropriate for the situation. Nor does she shout—that would have been
unseemly for the culture. Instead she quietly walks away, her heart exploding
with joy, the tears flowing—only now they're tears of joy. Her every step singing
with new hope, she can live again, because she'd come face to face with love
personified—the most tender love she never knew existed.
"Arise and go to your Father. He will meet you a great way off. If you take
even one step toward Him in repentance, He will hasten to enfold you in His
arms of infinite love. His ear is open to the cry of the contrite soul. The very first
reaching out of the heart after God is known to Him. Never a prayer is offered,
however faltering, never a tear is shed, however secret, never a sincere desire
after God is cherished, however feeble, but the Spirit of God goes forth to meet
it. Even before the prayer is uttered or the yearning of the heart made known,
grace from Christ goes forth to meet the grace that is working upon the human
soul."1

Love for a Bragging Turncoat

Jesus had a tender love for all His disciples (John 13:1). Amid all the
tenseness and confusion the night of His betrayal in Gethsemane, He was still
protective of them. "If you are looking for me," He said to those ready to arrest
Him, "then let these men go" (John 18:8).
 The way He dealt with Peter spoke volumes, and portrayed His love for all the
others. The bragging disciple had pledged his unwavering support for Jesus that
very evening of the arrest. Even if all others abandon you, he'd said to Jesus, I
never will! (See Matt. 26:31-33.) But as the hours of the night wore on, he would
shamefully cower under the accusing eyes of ordinary bystanders and deny in
the strongest language that he'd ever set eyes upon a man named Jesus. When for
the third time they tried to nail him, he'd call down curses upon himself,
swearing: "I don't know the man!" (verse 74).
At that precise moment a rooster crowed and, according to Luke, "the Lord
turned and looked straight at Peter" (Luke 22:61). "Then," says the passage,
"Peter remembered. . . . And he went outside and wept bitterly" (verses 61, 62).
What message did Jesus' expression send to His turncoat disciple? Here's this
insight from a classic on the life of Jesus: "While the degrading oaths were fresh
upon Peter's lips, and the shrill crowing of the cock was still ringing in his ears,
the Savior turned from the frowning judges, and looked full upon His poor
disciple. At the same time Peter's eyes were drawn to his Master. In that gentle
countenance he read deep pity and sorrow, but there was no anger there."2
Extraordinary! Jesus had given Peter every advantage, every privilege—
making him part of the inner circle, so to speak. The disciple should have known
better, should have done better. And Jesus had every right to be profoundly
disappointed—and, indeed, He was. But as their eyes met that night in the
judgment place, the disciple saw no anger in Jesus' face, no sign of retaliation or
revenge.
"The sight of that pale, suffering face, those quivering lips, that look of
compassion and forgiveness, pierced [Peter's] heart like an arrow. Conscience
was aroused. ... A tide of memories rushed over him. The Savior's tender mercy,
His kindness and long-suffering, His gentleness and patience toward His erring
disciples—all was remembered.... He reflected with horror upon his own
ingratitude, his falsehood, his perjury. Once more he looked at his Master, and
saw a sacrilegious hand raised to smite Him in the face. Unable longer to endure
the scene, he rushed, heartbroken, from the hall. ... At last he found himself in
Gethsemane. . . . On the very spot where Jesus had poured out His soul in agony
to His Father, Peter fell upon his face, and wished that he might die."3
It's not the fire and brimstone that's most powerful in leading people to
repentance, nor the scolding, the shaming, and the browbeating. Rather it's love,
sheer love, the tender love of Christ. That's what Peter saw that night in the eyes
of Jesus. That's what he felt in that critical moment. That's what broke his heart.
of Jesus. That's what he felt in that critical moment. That's what broke his heart.
And that's what'll break ours as well. It can happen at any time—during a
religious meeting, in a class on physics, while you drive to work, or as you read
the Bible. And it can occur when sitting in your study looking out the window at
cardinals. His tender love knows no barriers and no bounds. It speaks to us
wherever we might be, and it reaches us wherever we go.

"O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!
It shall for evermore endure
The saints' and angels' song."4

For a Lonely Woman of Another Race

We can see the tenderness of Jesus' love in the way He handled the people
whose lives He touched along the way, regardless of race or ethnic origin.
Consider the woman of Samaria, for example John 4:4-26). Ignoring societal
strictures, He first of all took time to recognize her for what she was—a human
being created in the image of God. He gave her the time of day—stunning her—
and even asked a favor. His sheer love for her had broken the ice. All He could
see before Him was a valued woman in desperate need of the grace that He'd
come to bring. "If you knew the gift of God," He said to her, His heart yearning
for her spiritual welfare, "and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have
asked him and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10).
As their conversation continued, Jesus would deftly handle the emotional
issue of the difference in worship between Jews and Samaritans, and broach in
the tenderest manner possible the delicate situation of her social life.
The woman was not a prostitute, not according to John's account. She'd lived
with five men, but they were "husbands," Jesus said (verses 17, 18). The story of
that portion of her life—how and why these husbands came and went—we do
not know. Nor do we know why she'd now chosen to live in a common-law
relationship. But it was clear to Jesus that it had all taken its toll, making her a
pariah in the community, perhaps evidenced (as some have pointed out) by the
lonely time of day she chose to fetch her water.
Totally immersed in His conversation with the needy woman, Jesus lost all
sense of time and of the gripping hunger that He'd previously been feeling. True,
it showed His intensity for His mission (as noted in the previous chapter), but it
also displayed a love both personal and tender. Touched by His utter
graciousness, the woman found herself craving the water He had to give,
yearning for the spiritual worship He described, and asking about Messiah.
When the Messiah comes, she said to Him—I believe with a glint of expectation
in her eyes that she'd indeed chanced upon the long-hopedfor Person—He will
tell us everything.
That was too much for Jesus! Breaking His accustomed reticence on the
subject of His identity, He told her plainly: "I who speak to you am he" (verse
26).
As the woman, abandoning her waterpots in her excitement upon receiving
this astonishing revelation, rushed back into town, her words to her townspeople
spoke volumes about the tender manner in which Jesus had dealt with her that
day. I find it significant that of all the things He had talked to her about, the part
she mentioned to them turned out to be the very things of which she'd been most
ashamed: "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the
Christ?" (verse 29).
Who else but Jesus could bring my sordid past to my attention in such a way
that I'm thereby drawn to Him in love and adoration? Who else can make the
dark events of yesterday become for me a window of hope for tomorrow? And
who else can love me with such tender compassion! In Jesus we have a picture
of indiscriminate, unconditional, scandalous love—love for every human being
that He met.

Love for a Rebellious Nation

As the triumphal procession approached Jerusalem that Sunday of Passion
Week, Jesus halted on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem to utter a
lament on Israel's coming calamity: "If you . . . had only known on this day what
would bring you peace. . . . The days will come . . . when your enemies will . . .
hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the
children within your walls" (Luke 19:42-44).
The lament in Luke connects thematically to that in Matthew 23:33-36, and
exposes the tenderness, the heartbreak, that lay beneath the pronouncement of
impending judgment: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . , how often I have longed to
gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but
you were not willing" (Matt. 23:37).
The story of Absalom in the Old Testament (2 Sam. 13-15) comes as close as
any to a human model of God's tender love for us in our rebellion. The narrative
documents the strained relationship between the young man and his royal father,
David (a tension provoked by Absalom's murder of his half brother Amnon for
sexually violating Absalom's sister, Tamar). The account takes us through
Absalom's self-imposed exile; his return following an ingenuous scheme devised
by the head of David's army; his temporary reconciliation with his father; and,
finally, his attempted coup. The story describes how David, accompanied by the
rest of the royal household, hastily abandons the palace and the capital in the
wake of his son's rebellion. It crushed and devastated the king to know that the
one now hunting him down was not his jealous predecessor, but his own son.
As the fighting commenced, however, David charged his generals to protect
Absalom's life and keep him safe from harm: "Be gentle with the young man
Absalom for my sake" (2 Sam. 18:5). Nevertheless, Absalom is killed. And
given the trauma the young prince had brought upon the nation and his father,
what astonishes us is David's reaction upon learning of his death. "The king was
shaken," the text says. "He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As
he went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had
died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!"' (2 Sam. 18:33).
It's a cry that finds an echo in Jesus' agonizing lament over Jerusalem that
historic day: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ..." No wonder the people called Jesus
"Son of David." We hear it from the lips of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, outside
Jericho (Mark 10:47), and we hear it from the Canaanite woman who came to
Him (Matt. 15:22). It's "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Never "Jesus,
Son of Adam," or "Jesus, Son of Abraham," or "Jesus, Son of Elijah." No,
almost invariably it was "Jesus, Son of David" (see Matt. 9:27; 20:30; Luke
18:38), and always in the context of mercy and compassion.
Whatever else this pattern says, I believe it speaks of One whose love and
tender mercy reminded people of David's attitude of tenderness and mercy to an
undeserving son. We might speculate as to what would have happened had the
royal forces captured Absalom alive and how his father would have treated him.
Unfortunately, we shall never know for sure. But we can reasonably infer, based
on all the other details of the story, that that father's heart would not have loved
him any less.
In that respect he resembles Jesus, who, while knowing how evil we are, yet
chooses to love us and accept us. Which brings to mind a heartrending story that
appeared in one of my local papers in the fall of 2006.
 Here's how it began: "A talkative 9-year-old boy came to Helen Briggs on
Valentine's Day 2000. She was a foster mother with years of tough love and
scores of troubled kids behind her. But she grew to love this boy. Within the
year, she'd talked her husband into adopting him.
"Now, six years later, Briggs and her husband, James ... are taking the highly
unusual step of trying to unadopt him."5
The trouble commenced for them in 2003, when the boy, then 12, "sexually
molested a 6-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl still in diapers."6 As the issue
went to court, the adoptive parents discovered other troubling details that led to
their petition to relinquish custody. Among other things, abuse by his alcohol-
and drug-addicted biological parents had injured the boy's
brain stem and affected his ability to gauge the passage of time. Seven times he
had undergone hospitalization in psychiatric institutions and was possibly
psychotically bipolar. In addition, he'd threatened to kill himself and had begun
hearing voices.7
In short, the adoptive parents discovered they had a damaged product on their
hands. "You don't want to throw somebody away," his adoptive mother said.
"But sometimes you have to."
That Virginia couple didn't know what they were getting into, and all
reasonable people would readily understand their predicament. But when He
chose us, God fully knew how wretched we were, yet did it anyway. And to
come into contact with the tender love of Jesus is to know that we'll never find
ourselves unadopted.

"O Love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe, That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.""

Love That Goes Deep and Personal

When I worked in Canada as a pastor, two big names dominated the media:
Pierre Burton and Charles Templeton. Templeton, once an associate of Billy
Graham, had left the church, becoming a confirmed atheist and a bitter critic of
religion. In his book The Case for Faith, evangelical writer Lee Strobel tells
about his meeting with Templeton in the man's Toronto apartment.
As their conversation proceeded, Strobel asked Templeton what he thought of
Jesus. And here's part of what followed, as Strobel tells it. For me it
demonstrates the lasting power of Christ's tender love, a power that touches us in
our inner core even when we think we're fully rid of it.
"Templeton's body language softened. It was as if he suddenly felt relaxed and
comfortable in talking about an old and dear friend.... lHe was,' Templeton
began, 'the greatest human being who has ever lived.' . . .
"'You sound like you really care about him.'
'"Well, yes, he's the most important thing in my life.' ... 'I ... I ... I,' he
stuttered, searching for the right word, 'I know it may sound strange, but I have
to say ... I adore him!'"
"I wasn't sure how to respond. 'You say that with some emotion,' I said.
'"Well, yes. Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything
pure I know, I learned from Jesus.'. . .
"Abruptly, Templeton cut short his thoughts. There was a brief pause, almost
as if he was uncertain whether he should continue.
"'Uh...but...no,' he said slowly, 'he's the most....' He stopped, then started
again. 'In my view,' he declared, 'he is the most important human being who has
ever existed.'"
"That's when Templeton uttered the words I never expected to hear from him.
'And if I may put it this way,' he said as his voice began to crack, 'I . . . miss . . .
him!'"9
In that last reaction I sense a universal yearning—the longing for a love that's
bigger than ourselves, one that transcends our rebellion and our estrangement
and is stable, unchangeable, and unconditional. The love we find in Jesus is all
that. It's the tenderest that human hearts can know.

1 Ellen G. White, Christ's Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and

Herald, 1941), p. 206.

2 White, The Desire of Ages, pp. 712, 713.

3 Ibid., p. 713.

4 F. M. Lehman, "The Love of God," 1917.

5 Brigid Schulte, "Virginia Parents Trying to Unadopt Troubled Boy,"

Washington Post, Oct. 9, 2006, p. Al.
6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., pp. A1, All.

8 George Matheson, "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go," 1882.

9 Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest
Objections to Christianity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 17, 18.
 CHAPTER 10

THE MEANING OF HIS DEATH

Raymond Brown, regarded as a heavyweight on the meaning of Jesus'
death, and the author of a 1,608-page, two-volume work on the subject,
makes a surprisingly simplistic statement about Jesus' attitude toward His
own death. "What readers often fail to notice," he says in reference to
Jesus' agony in Gethsemane, "is that Jesus is asking God to deliver him
from the same fate that his disciples will refuse to share—and for which he
soundly rebukes them."1
It's a severely unfortunate misrepresentation of the case. How could anyone
who's taken so much time to study the Gospels conclude that there was ever a
moment when, in regard to death, Jesus and His disciples faced "the same fate"!
It's a huge misunderstanding of who Jesus was as well as the significance of His
death.
That Friday afternoon, as Jesus hung dying on a Roman cross, the entire world
forsook Him, and even God seemed to abandon Him. "Eloi, Eloi," he cried out in
the most intense agony imaginable, "lama sabachthani?" ("My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?") (Matt. 27:46). His was a feeling of utter shame
and abandonment, a passion that a million Mel Gibsons could never re-create. In
fact, to emphasize the blood and the gore is almost entirely to miss the point of
the true sufferings of the Savior. History presents us with a whole catalogue of
individuals who, from a purely physical standpoint, suffered much more
intensely than Jesus ever did. But no one—and not the 6 billion of us who walk
the earth today, combined—could ever begin to equal the emotional and psychic
trauma that engulfed Him in that critical hour.

Centerpiece of the Atonement

In theology the death of Jesus falls under the heading of the atonement, a
subject that has occupied the thinking of theologians across the centuries,
leading to various "theories" as to the meaning and significance of His
crucifixion. Such details cannot detain us here,2 but to lead into what follows
below, I call attention to a statement by Byron E. Shafer of New York's Rutgers
Presbyterian Church, commenting on the meaning of Jesus' death, and in
reaction to Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie, The Passion of the Christ.
According to Shafer, "the mission and purpose of Jesus' life and ministry was,
first, to model for humankind the fullness of mercy and forgiveness that God
offers to us sinners and, second, to model for us the perfection of love that God
is and that those who accept God's forgiveness are invited, by God's grace, to
become." "It is not Jesus' death that can save us but his life!"3
While they are pious sentiments, indeed, still at their core they suggest that
Jesus' death, as such, accomplished nothing in regard to human salvation.
Rather, it was His life that mattered. At bottom, it's the old role-model or
exemplarist theory of the atonement, pioneered by Peter Abelard in the medieval
period. As David Van Biema summarized it for Time readers, "Abelard
understood Jesus' death less as a payment to God for the remission of human sin
than as the crowning example of his perfect love. It was in imitation of this love
that humanity could overcome its alienation from the Father."4
Many have noticed a relationship between the various explanations of the
atonement and the particular cultural settings that gave prominence to them.
Without putting too fine a point on it, we can say that as a general rule,
rolemodel theories of the atonement emerge from more affluent cultures with
well-off, economically independent people who've never had to scratch dry
ground to make ends meet. Unacquainted with conditions of abject need and
confident of their own abilities, they subconsciously transfer these attitudes to
the spiritual dimension, finding it easy to imagine (amid their own sufficiency)
that all they need is a good example and just the bare minimum of help to raise
themselves to the required level of spiritual attainment.
But the Bible takes an utterly unflattering view of the human condition,
regardless of education, culture, or affluence. No human being is righteous, Paul
proclaims in a veritable broadside on our sinful predicament. We've all "turned
away"; all of us have "become worthless"; our "throats are open graves," our
tongues "practice deceit"; we are "full of cursing and bitterness"; and "there is no
fear of God" in us. The whole world has become "accountable to God" (see
Rom. 3:9-19).
For Paul, the human condition is chronic, requiring much more than a good
example to make us whole, to put us back together again—a concept that
radically goes against the grain in Western culture since the Enlightenment.
Permeated (consciously or unconsciously) by the evolutionary outlook a la
Charles Darwin, we prefer to see ourselves as making good progress naturally,
thank you. And if Jesus comes along as an added incentive, so much the better!

The Bible Gives a Different Picture

According to Scripture, we are depraved, desperate, and helpless—as
desperate and as helpless as that Virginia man I read about a while back, who
fell into his latrine one beautiful summer afternoon.
According to the story, retired janitor Coolidge Winesett of rural Virginia
returned home one pleasant day, and before settling down on his porch to enjoy
the weather, went into his backyard to use the outdoor toilet. But the floor of the
50-year-old structure collapsed, trapping him for almost three days at the bottom
of that terrible pit.
Suspended over the "bad stuff by a subfloor, "his body...contorted and
immobilized," and with nails from the collapsed structure digging into his flesh,
Winesett experienced the added horror of having to deal with maggots, snakes,
spiders, and rats. In desperation he prayed, "God, don't let me die like this."
"I screamed till I run out of voice," he said, but all of it was to no avail. "Then,
when he was at his weakest, he heard the footfalls of Jimmy Jackson." Letter
carrier Jackson, noticing Winesett's mail accumulating, had gone into the elderly
man's backyard to investigate. Following the direction of a weak sound, he found
the partially paralyzed man "doubled over and hallucinating in the pit," and
summoned help.5
Like Coolidge Winesett, we were all of us sinking in a dismal pit—paralyzed,
helpless, and completely unable to extricate ourselves by our own strength. Our
situation desperate, we required more than example. Rather, we needed, if you
please, tangible help from outside ourselves, and that's what Jesus died to bring.
Like Jackson the mail carrier, Jesus came to us in our extremity and, like that
rescue team he summoned, reached down to us in our abject situation and pulled
us up from the stinking pit.
It took strong action to rescue us, Paul says. In fact, it demanded
"redemption," "redemption that came by Christ Jesus." And to kill any thought
that Jesus was simply a moral exemplar, Paul proclaimed: "God presented him
as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood" (Rom. 3:24, 25).
That's what we needed. And that's what Caiaphas, in his own twisted way,
recognized when he said, "You do not realize that it is better for you that one
man die for the people than that the whole nation perish" (John 11:50). Then
followed John's inspired comment on the agitated leader's cryptic words: "He did
not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus
would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the
scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one" (verses
51, 52).
The entire episode makes it explicit that Jesus' death was vicarious—offered
in place of ours. And the irony here is that the affirmation came from the lips of
a high religious official who stood in direct opposition to the message and
mission of Jesus. Whatever else the incident teaches, there's no intimation here
that Jesus' death was to provide simply a demonstration of His supreme
obedience to God. So far as the passage is concerned, Jesus dies for the people
—in place of the people—so they don't have to face that fate themselves.

How the Bible Puts It

In one sense we are, indeed, saved by Jesus' life. "For if, when we were
enemies," Paul says, "we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much
more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" (Rom. 5:10, KJV). But I'm
sure that Shafer (and all others who defend the Abelardian view) would not be
comfortable with the first part of that very text. For there Paul couldn't be
plainer: "When we were enemies," he says in the first line, "we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son."
With those words before us, it's difficult to maintain that Jesus' death, as such,
accomplished nothing. No, Paul announces, "we have now been justified by
[Jesus'] blood" (verse 9).
Far from being an isolated idea, that sentiment virtually permeates all of
Scripture. And while it's important to accept the notion of Jesus as role model or
exemplar, we cannot ignore the passages that present Him as substitute and still
remain faithful to all of Scripture. Here's a sampling—notice the italics:
"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed" (Isa. 53:5). "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised
to life for our justification" (Rom. 4:25). "But God demonstrates his own love
for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). "For
what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ diedfor our
sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3). "Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13). Christ "diedfor us" (1
Thess. 5:10). "Christ was sacrificed ...to take away the sins of many people"
(Heb. 9:28). "[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we
might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been
healed" (1 Peter 2:24). "These are they who have come out of the great
tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb" (Rev. 7:14).
We struggle to offer rational explanations for this transcendent transaction—
explanations for the way that God saves us. But there really are none. There are
no logical reasons for the cross. And we go astray when we allow our scientific
logic to deny the clear affirmation of Scripture. The message of the atonement
that we find in Scripture is unique in the universe. Nothing else compares with it.
The Bible is our only source. And what we find is that, far from being an
inconsequential sideshow, Jesus' death lies at the heart of the transaction.
Moreover, Scripture leads us to think that even the very manner of His death
holds significance—how else to understand the statement in Hebrews 9:22 that
"without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (cf. verses
23-26)? Clearly the apostle wants us to view the death of Jesus through the prism
of the ancient sacrificial system, a religious structure that pointed to the kind of
death He was to die.
People have through the centuries ridiculed that divine transaction— even
Christians. "I don't think we need a theory of atonement at all," said a participant
in a national feminist conference. "I don't think we need folks hanging on
crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff."6
However, it really has nothing to do with what we think we need, but with
what God knows we do. He has made the provision, and everyone remains free
to accept or reject it. But consulting our own wisdom and cultural prejudices
seems an inappropriate (even dangerous) way to proceed.

Born to Die
As human beings we've become accustomed to death. One out of one dies. It's
our lot. But none of us was born to die. Quite the contrary, we were born to live!
And we consider it tragic when someone dies "before their time," as we say—cut
down in their prime.
Jesus was different. He was born to die, volunteering to come in human flesh
precisely so that He could die for us. As He headed to Jerusalem for the last
time, He "began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and
suffer... at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that
he must be killed" (Matt. 16:21; cf. Mark 8:31). The Greek word dei (here
translated "must") is a forceful term, used to express necessity. Here, Bible
commentator R.C.H Lenski reminds us, it points to something willed by God for
the mission of the Savior. "These things 'must' take place," and Jesus Himself
wants them to—"for without them he could not redeem the world."7
Thus Jesus no longer avoids Jerusalem, as He'd done in the past. On the
contrary, He now purposefully heads there. We see the "must-ness" of that final
journey in the words of Luke: "As the time approached for him to be taken up to
heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51). We see here a sense
of destiny. Events must reach their climax—that's why He'd come in the first
place. "Jerusalem would be the place of his sacrifice."8
In his great Pentecostal sermon Peter made the statement that Jesus "was
handed over to [the Jewish leaders] ... by God's set purpose and foreknowledge"
(Acts 2:23). The implication is that the trial and death ofjesus, far from being
accidental, had been divinely preordained.
But Jesus' death is as mysterious as His life. And in this connection, His
struggle in Gethsemane is utterly significant. "My soul is overwhelmed with
sorrow to the point of death," He says to Peter, James, and John (Matt. 26:38).
"And being in an anguish," Luke adds, "he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat
was like drops of blood falling on the ground" (Luke 22:44).
What was it that hung so heavy on the Savior during His time of crushing
agony? We will never comprehend what happened that night beneath those olive
trees. But it is there that He surrendered to God's inscrutable will. And that's
where, before a single blow from human hands had inflicted any physical pain
upon Him, He'd begun to die. Said Ellen G. White in a statement brimful with
theological depth: "Having made the [final] decision, He fell dying to the
ground""—right there in the grove! And it means that although Roman hands
later killed Him, the fatal blow had come much earlier, delivered by one giant,
corporate hand. Our collective sin had done Him in. The drinking of that terrible
cup points to a reality far beyond Roman nails or human battering—to
something of cosmic dimension, something mystical, something transcending
the ordinary events of space and time.
He was born to die, and He knew it. But it was not to be some secret event in
His bed at home or on some lonely hill. "Unlike some other religious figures,
such as the Buddha, how Jesus died matters greatly to Christians. It would be a
very different religion if Jesus had suffered a fatal heart attack on the shores of
the Sea of Galilee."10 No, His death was to be open to the world, a public
statement before the universe. "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,"
He'd said to Nicodemus, "so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone
who believes in him may have eternal life'" (John 3:14).

What His Death Accomplished

l. Restoration of harmony
The writers of the New Testament used a variety of metaphors, images, and
pictures in their attempts to express the saving work of God in Christ. We hear
about sacrifice, about offering, about substitute: Christ "gave Himself up for us
as a fragrant offering [prosphonm] and sacrifice l thusian] to God," Paul says in
Ephesians 5:2. He came "to do away with sin by the sacrifice [ thusias] of
himself," the author of Hebrews declares (Heb. 9:26; cf. 10:14).
The idea in those passages is that of vicarious death or substitutionary death
(and we've covered many of the relevant passages earlier under the heading
"How the Bible Puts It"). Other concepts suggest that by means of Jesus' death,
our sins have been covered or erased (Heb. 2:17).
Perhaps the most encouraging metaphor of all is that conveyed in the word
katallage, "reconciliation." The idea inherent in it is that because of sin, the
entire human race had become estranged from God, enemies of His kingdom.
But Christ's death has restored harmony between us and God. Atoneness has
come, And the critical point to note here is that it was God who took the
initiative (Rom. 5:8-11). "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ" (2
Cor. 5:19).
2. Eternal security
Considered in a general sense, the death of Jesus accomplished the eternal
security of the universe (that's what the book of Revelation is all about). And in
the following extraordinary statement, Ellen G. White makes that point:
"The significance of the death of Christ will be seen by saints and angels.
Fallen men could not have a home in the paradise of God without the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. . . . The angels ascribe honor and glory to
Christ, for even they are not secure except by looking to the sufferings of the
Son of God. It is through the efficacy of the cross that the angels of heaven are
guarded from apostasy. Without the cross they would be no more secure against
evil than were the angels before the fall of Satan.... All who wish for security in
earth or heaven must look to the Lamb of God. The plan of salvation, making
manifest the justice and love of God, provides an eternal safeguard against
defection in unfallen worlds, as well as among those who shall be redeemed by
the blood of the Lamb.""
3. Eternal hope
Golda Meir, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson, Thurgood Marshall,
Konrad Adenauer, Nikita Khrushchev, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Indira Gandhi—if you're more than 30 you
certainly remember one or more of these world personalities in their heyday.
They wielded great power in their time and were often in the spotlight. When
they appeared, people took notice, and when they spoke, others paid attention.
But what they now have in common is that they're all dead. Death has claimed
them all.

And it reminds us of Shakespeare's description of life as—

"a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more."

"All our yesterdays," he said, "have lighted fools the way to dusty death."12
Death. There's something obscene about it. It could not be that we were created
as the hapless victims of this cruel monster. Rather, Christ became like us "that
by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the
devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of
death" (Heb. 2:14, 15). By His death Jesus kicked death in the teeth, and the day
is coming when this wretched enemy will be no more (1 Cor. 15:26). Through
the prism of the cross we may look beyond the horizon of this dark place we
now call home to a future bright with hope.

1 Cited in Kenneth L. Woodward, "The Death ofJesus," Newsweek, Apr. 4,

1994, p. 40.
2 I've written on this theme elsewhere. See Roy Adams, The Sanctuary:

Understanding the Heart of Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and

Herald, 1993), pp. 131-149.
3
 3 In David Van 13iema, "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?" Time, Apr. 12, 2004,
p. 59.
4 Ibid., p. 61.

5 Graeme Zielinski, "God, Don't Let Me Die Like This," Washington Post,
Aug. 18, 2000. p. 1.
6 Van Biema, p. 59.

7 R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew's Gospel, p. 634.

8 Ibid., p. 635.

9 E. G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 693.

10 Woodward, p. 39.

11 Ellen G. White, in Signs of the Times, Dec. 30, 1889 (see also The Seventh-

day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, vol. 5, p. 1132).

12 Macbeth, Act V, scene 5.
 CHAPTER 11

THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION

On a visit to Bangkok, Thailand, during March of 2003,I took the Royal
Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha tour. The Royal Chapel, part of the
complex, is an impressive, gilded edifice, and shelters the 5.5-ton Emerald
Buddha.
Among the thousands upon thousands of visitors who crowd the compound
every day are some who come to worship at the temple. And during my visit I
watched as devotee after devotee made obeisance to the Buddha. As I observed
one man prostrating himself in front of the image with particular fervor, I wished
I could talk to him. I longed to say to him: "Sir, there's no one home! That image
cannot hear you. Nor do you yourself claim that the Buddha is anything but
dead. To whom, then, are you praying, sir? And what do you expect will
happen?"
The whole exercise seemed so utterly useless—genuflecting in front of a
lifeless representation of a dead religious figure! Yet that's the story of just about
every non-Christian religion in the world. Only Christianity anchors its faith in a
living Savior.

Heart of the Christian Message

The concept of a living Savior places the resurrection at the very heart of the
Christian message, making it a magnet for the most violent attacks on the part of
detractors and enemies. Already in his day, Paul felt the need to contend with
those who would abandon the central tenet of the Christian faith. And in 1
Corinthians 15, his most sustained treatment of the subject in all his writings, he
marshals every argument in defense of the doctrine. "For what I received I
passed on to you as of first importance," he said, "that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
day according to the Scriptures" (verses 3, 4). "If Christ has not been raised,"
Paul argued, "our preaching is useless," "[our] faith is futile; [we] are still in
[our] sins," and "those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost" (verses 14-
18). It's that serious.
But despite all the apostle's arguments, many modern theologians have chosen
to follow the way of Christianity's ancient critics and virtually deny the reality of
a physical resurrection. "The willingness of certain influential theologians in our
own times to compromise with post-Enlightenment historiography," Alan
Richardson observes, "is a sign of the disintegration of contemporary
Protestantism."1
The idea of "the disintegration of contemporary Protestantism" is clearly an
overstatement, but one has to wonder whether there might not be a relationship
between the denial of the Resurrection (and other basic tenets of the Christian
faith) and the phenomenon of empty churches that we see in certain historic
Christian countries today.
In a piece written from Canterbury, England, back in 2001, Washington Post
Foreign Service reporter T. R. Reid, recalling the English literary giant Geoffrey
Chaucer, reminded readers of the pilgrims who "in multitudes" once flocked "to
the majestic cathedral in this ancient town, trekking from all over Europe."2
"But," Reid observed darkly, "the faith that drove those pilgrims is severely
diminished today. At morning prayer last Sunday, the great vaulted ceiling of
Canterbury Cathedral looked down upon a grand total of 13 worshipers. A
midday Communion service did better, with about 300 people on hand, counting
the choirboys in their white ruffled collars and a phalanx of tourists with video
cameras. But that still left 80 percent of the seats unused."3
It's a similar story all across Western Europe, he says. "In Amsterdam the
Dutch Reformed hierarchy is converting churches into luxury apartments to pay
its bills."4 "Considering that the power of religious conviction spawned bloody
wars, inspired timeless works of art and spurred thousands of people to spend
decades erecting mighty cathedrals like Canterbury's," Reid concluded
reflectively, "it is surprising how little of that fervor lingers in modern Europe."5
And the question is: If Christians would take seriously the fact of the
resurrection of Jesus, how can they stay away? How can we remain cold and
indifferent in the face of that earth-shattering phenomenon? That a man named
Jesus existed in the first century is beyond historical question. That that man was
killed, that He rose from the dead, and that He is alive today is so absolutely
mind-boggling in its implications that no one who really accepts it can remain
callous and unmoved.

Credible and Unconcocted

 The gospel story of the Resurrection breathes credibility, even in regard to
details that occasionally don't exactly dovetail with each other. What I look for is
the way the biblical authors tell the story: the absence of pretense, of
obfuscation, of nonsense—or what scholars would call "special pleading"
(gratuitous details included to lend credence to the account). One gets the
impression that the gospel writers simply called the shots as they saw them, even
to the potential embarrassment of those who would have been the church's top
leaders at the time.
Consider the following six points, as examples:
1. The lead-up to the Crucifixion
Everything about the pre-Crucifixion developments seems to follow as natural
a pattern as one might expect—the betrayal by Judas; the arrest in the night (a
time when unpredictable crowds would be virtually absent); the hastiness of the
trial, with all its political and religious ramifications in play (Herod and Pilate
made up over the whole deal—who manufactures a story and takes account of a
detail like that?); the abuse from the Roman military (we're hearing from equal-
opportunity narrators who, with no chip on the shoulder for the Jewish
authorities, seem to be describing events exactly as they developed); the journey
to Calvary and the physical reaction of Jesus to the burden of the cross.
One gets the impression that nothing in the account is "fixed" or calculated.
The entire band of Jesus' 12 disciples do not come out smelling like roses—no,
they all forsook Jesus in His most vulnerable hour. Even Peter, the champion of
Pentecost and a prominent leader of the early church, comes across in the text
with all his warts and foibles exposed for all the world to see. We find here no
manipulation of the story, no spin. This is candid stuff, real, genuine. In a male-
dominated world, what kind of narrator would concoct a story in which the
macho leaders of the group have gone into hiding, their tails between their legs,
while the women take their places beside their dying hero on a Roman cross?
No, this is authentic stuff.
2. The mention of the curtain incident
The moment Jesus breathed His last, Matthew reports, "the curtain of the
temple was torn in two from top to bottom" (Matt. 27:51). In the same verse the
Gospel author mentions the incident of an earthquake, an occurrence some could
say they felt, while others could claim they didn't. But the rending of the veil
would have been a tangible, continuing piece of evidence that all concerned
could verify. You don't put down in writing a detail like that if it isn't true. The
bogus faith healer may pretend to heal a gallbladder or an intestinal tumor that
we cannot see, but they don't fool around with a broken arm or leg, or an eye
shut down tight in blindness. The Temple curtain incident was something
concrete, would have been witnessed by scores—if not hundreds—of people at
that midafternoon hour. The priests would eventually have had to replace it, and
the artisans who manufactured a new curtain would have known of it. The
incident would have been eminently refutable by solid proof if it hadn't actually
happened.
If, as suggested by many biblical commentaries, the book of Matthew
emerged prior to A.D. 70—that is, before the fall of Jerusalem—then the Temple
would have been available as exhibit A, to prove or disprove the Gospel writer's
assertion.
3. The eleventh-hour Sabbath request from the Jewish authorities
Disregarding their Sabbath strictures, the chief priests and the Pharisees went
to Pilate to urge him to secure the burial place of Jesus. They remembered, they
said to the governor, that Jesus had talked about rising again after three days. "So
give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his
disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised
from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first" (Matt. 27:64).
It was no doubt a smart move for anyone who doubted that Jesus could do
what He'd said. For if this popular Galilean movement was a fake, then it would
be only prudent to take steps to secure the dead body of their leader, thereby
preventing further mischief from false resurrection reports. A fictitious
resurrection claim would trigger dangerous confusion and instability in
Jerusalem and throughout the region.
But like someone watching a play, who knows something the play's own
characters don't, we feel a morbid sense of amusement over the religious leaders'
suggestion. Had they had a better handle on the pulse of the city—or, at least,
better intelligence of the current mood among the followers of that pesky
Nazarene—they'd have noticed their almost total absence at Jesus' trial. And had
they the curiosity to wonder why, they'd have learned that notwithstanding the
boldness of a sword-carrying Peter in Gethsemane, the entire band of men had
taken to their heels in fear. Armed with such information, would they really have
expected such a frightened bunch to have the audacity to raid the tomb of Jesus
and use His stolen body as a pretext to mount a stand against an entrenched
religious establishment?
However improbable the idea, the national religious leaders evidently had
 However improbable the idea, the national religious leaders evidently had
nightmares about its possibility. And it did not occur to them that their call for a
beefed-up security would inadvertently contribute to the credibility of the
Resurrection if it did occur after all. The posting of an official guard detachment
at the site would provide nonpartisan, firsthand eyewitnesses to the most
glorious event in human history. Oblivious of this potential, and receiving the
green light from the governor, "they went and made the tomb secure by putting a
seal on the stone and posting the guard" (verse 66).
4. The unembellished telling of the story
One can imagine that an impostor handling this story would probably have
taken a shot at describing the actual event of the Resurrection—how exactly it
came about. That detail is missing in all the Gospels. What the Gospel writers
record are incidents surrounding the Resurrection, and not the event itself. The
appearance of an angel at the site precipitated a violent earthquake, Matthew's
account reports. Rolling back the stone that sealed the tomb, the angel, ablaze in
dazzling light, sent the guards trembling with terror. "They shook and became
like dead men" (Matt. 28:4).
5. The behavior of the women
The report is utterly credible, both in its description of the reaction of the
women, and in its apparent discrepancy in detail.
In regard to the women's reaction, that's exactly what one might expect in that
emotion-packed moment. At the tomb angels tell them that Jesus has risen, as
He'd said, and showed them the spot where His body had lain. Matthew reports
that as they hurried away, they were "afraid yet filled with joy" (Matt. 28:8),
exactly the emotions one would assume under the circumstances. They'd come to
anoint a dead body, but are now facing a development beyond their wildest
dreams! No wonder they "hurried away" from the place and "ran to tell his
disciples." Who could keep the lid on such astonishing news?
But if their heads were already swirling because of the enormity of the events,
the most astonishing was yet to come. Jesus meets and greets them. Completely
overcome with astonishment, they fall down before Him, clasping His feet and
worshipping Him (verse 9).
The accounts of the experience of the women in the four Gospels do not
dovetail in every particular. Each has variations, apparent discrepancies. Was the
angel sitting outside on the stone when they arrived (Matthew)? Or was the
heavenly messenger inside the tomb and sitting to the right (Mark)? Was there
just one angel (Matthew, Mark)? Or were there two (Luke, John)? Did Peter and
John make an early visit to the tomb after hearing a report from Mary Magdalene
(John)? Or did they first hear the story from the two women at the same time as
the other nine, a story that "seemed to them like nonsense" (Luke 24:9-11)? And
there is more.
Anyone who's ever listened to credible eyewitness testimony would have an
appreciation for what's happening here. Investigators point out that when
witnesses of some incident agree in every detail, it raises the suspicion that they
are in collusion with each other—that they have manufactured their tales
together. People simply do not describe an event the same way in every detail.
But through all the Gospel accounts, one thing is rock-solid with no variation,
absolutely no discrepancy: He is not here! The tomb is empty! That's the
essential story they want to tell.
6. The bribery of the guards
Some of the guards, recovered but probably still shaking from their early-
morning trauma, hurried into the city "and reported to the chief priests
everything that had happened" (Matt. 28:11). If they had any appreciation for the
sensitiveness of the information they were carrying, all such concerns
evaporated under the earthshaking immensity of what they'd seen in those
predawn hours.
Quickly sensing that the Roman soldiers possessed a story that, if
disseminated, could rock their carefully nurtured power at its very foundations,
the chief priests and elders order the guards to compromise their integrity in
return for "a large sum of money" (verse 12). "You are to say, 'His disciples
came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep'" (verse 13). "So
the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed" (verse 15).
Again, these are very concrete allegations, something not made unless they
had substance behind them. Allegations, moreover, that others could easily
refute if untrue. The hush money did not keep the lid on the story, however.
Matthew reports that it "has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very
day" (verse 15), that is, as he was writing some three decades later.
Those six points underline, I believe, the credibility of the Resurrection story.
For me—and, I think, for a billion other Christians—one of the most glorious
sentences in the entire Resurrection account came from the angel at the tomb, as
wondrous as the angelic announcement at the birth of Jesus. Addressing the
women who'd come to anoint the body of Jesus, the angel spoke the immortal
words: "He is not here" (verse 6). Those were the very words the religious
leaders dreaded—hence the sealing of the tomb and the posting of a guard. But
the absence of Jesus' body did not result from any cloak-and-dagger mission by
His followers in the dark of night. From the standpoint of the Jewish leaders, it
was infinitely worse. Said the angel: "He is not here: for he is risen, as he said"
(verse 7, KJV).
Absolutely awesome!

Our Ultimate Hope

Of all Jesus' statements of assurance to us, none is stronger than the one found
in John 10:27, 28: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow
Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish" (NKJV).
The Greek verb "give" is in the present tense. When we come in faith to Jesus,
He gives to us eternal life, so that "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20,
NKJV). In other words, eternal life becomes a gift to Christians right here and
now—the moment they truly accept Jesus Christ as Savior.
At present our "eternal life" is qualitative, not quantitative. But it is,
nevertheless, eternal life in fact! Unless the Second Coming takes place first, we
shall all die. But if we die in Christ, our death will be but a brief interruption of
the life that we now have in Jesus. We shall awake to the glorious call of the
Life-giver, as the eternal life begun here transforms into everlasting life that has
no end—eternal life in quantity.
What a glorious day when "this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and
this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54, 55,
KJV).Then that mother, forced to place her precious little bundle under the cold
sod; that lonely spouse, whose companion of many years has succumbed to the
cruel hand of death; parentless children left alone and grieving—they shall all
sing then, they shall all laugh then, they shall all shout together in one universal
taunt "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (verse 55,
KJV).
Jesus gives His sheep eternal life, and declares: "They shall never perish"
(John 10:28).
The universal fear in the human heart is not so much of death as it of
perishing, of nonexistence. It's a fear that the most secular among us cannot
escape. Deep down in the human heart is a desire for continued existence—if not
here, somewhere else. That is why we find so much misinformation and
superstition surrounding the phenomenon of death. Spiritualism thrives on this
deepseated longing in the heart of all of us to transcend the reality of death.
I remember a sign in Rochester, New York, the city regarded by many as the
birthplace of modern spiritualism. Standing on the spot where the house of the
Fox sisters once stood, it read: "There is no death. There are no dead." A
deliberate, if also desperate, attempt to deny the cruel reality of death. When
we're talking about death, we're into the most critical area of human experience.
The stakes could not be higher, and we'd better be sure we get it right.
Some years ago I had the privilege of visiting Athens. Wandering about the
wooded area near the Acropolis, I came upon the prison of Socrates. The local
authorities, after condemning the philosopher on the false charge of "corrupting
the youth of Athens," held him in that formidable underground fortress until the
day when he would drink the poison sentenced by the state.
Plato, who by his own account was out of Athens at the time, tells of how
Crito and the other disciples of Socrates present in the capital sorrowfully
gathered around their master on that final day, only to find the great philosopher
joyful and happy and exuberant. To him, death was merely a passage from this
miserable world to the one of true reality, where he'd join the great thinkers
who'd gone before, and hold converse with the gods.
In complete contrast to Plato, Jesus faced death as something terrible, a
dreadful enemy—"with strong crying and tears" (Heb. 5:7, KJV). He
encountered this dreadful villain in all its horrible reality, so that you and I might
have the confidence to face it unafraid. And He says to us as we peer into the
dreadful portals of the grave: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I
am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev.
1:18, KJV).
As a boy in the Anglican Church, I'd wake up early Easter Sunday to
accompany my mother and other siblings to the 4:00 a.m service in celebration
of the Resurrection. And I remember still one of the hymns we sang:

"The strife is o'er, the battle done;

Now is the Victor's triumph won;
O let the song of praise be sung.
 Alleluia!

"Death's mightiest powers have done their worst,

And Jesus hath His foes dispersed;
Let shouts of praise and joy outburst.
Alleluia! . . .

"Lord, by the stripes which wounded Thee,

From death's dread sting Thy servants free,
That we may live, and sing to Thee
Alleluia!"6

1 A Dictionary of Christian Theology, s.v. A. Richardson, ed., "Resurrection

of Christ."
2 T. R. Reid, "Hollow Halls in Europe's Churches," Washington Post, May 6,
2001, p. Al.
3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., A1, A22.

5 Ibid., A22.

6 The Book of Common Prayer: Canada (Toronto and London: Musson Book
Company, Ltd., n.d.), Hymn no. 163.
 CHAPTER 12

THE EFFICACY OF HIS HIGH-PRIESTLY MINISTRY

I was heading to California to give a talk on a topic that my hosts had
requested: "The Future of Adventist Sanctuary Theology." On the plane I
fell into conversation with a man next to me. After we'd exchanged the
usual general information (where we lived, what we did, where we were
heading), we came to the subject of the purpose for our respective trips. I
would be making a presentation, I told him.
The conversation lagged, and we both went about our separate agendas—
until mealtime (those were the days when a meal came with cross-country flights
in the U.S.). "So what are you going to talk about?" he asked over lunch.
As I struggled to make sense of my talk to him—to describe it in terms he
could relate to—I learned something about the need to express our "message of
the sanctuary" in categories accessible to our contemporaries. And I would
suggest that one way is through a touch of humor.
This may at first strike you as unacceptable, given the serious nature of the
subject. But I don't think it hurts for us to admit that we have an unusual theme
on our hands here, a concept that's off the beaten track. (In self-deprecation, we
may even go ahead and call it "offbeat," before they do.) It's amazing how ready
people are to listen to us when they discover we have a sense of humor and don't
take ourselves too seriously.
So before responding to a question such as the one that faced me on the plane
that day, we may want to alert the listener ahead of time that our answer may
sound strange, that it would probably blow their minds—and are they ready for
that?
In other words, deliberately—and humorously—make it sound worse (that is,
more far-fetched and complex) than it probably actually is. Thus prepared,
they're perhaps ready to say after you're done: "Oh, that wasn't so bad after all!"
And actually, it isn't. Vast numbers of people on the planet have had some
exposure to the basic concept of priests and priesthood. Our job, then, is simply
to redirect their thinking to the reality of something similar on the cosmic level.
To the extent that the person is familiar with the fact that a priest, essentially,
is someone in whom we can feel safe to place our confidence and confession, we
may build on that. (Later we can disabuse them of the notion of finding that kind
of ministry here on earth.) But for the time being, we can use that common
notion to point them to our heavenly High Priest, whom we may approach with
confidence, in the certain knowledge that He is able "to sympathize with our
weaknesses," having been "in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (see
Heb. 4, NKJV).
And we should emphasize the point that we go to Him directly—no human or
angelic interveners necessary. In an age when everybody is looking—yearning—
for someone to listen, you're telling them (from your own personal experience)
that we may "come boldly to [what the Bible calls] the throne of grace, that we
may obtain mercy and find grace [or help] to help in time of need" (verse 16,
NKJV). Let them know, moreover, that the line is always open—never a busy
signal, never an answering machine.
And remember, you've got to have a sense of humor for it all to work— they
must hear the smile and feel the relaxation in your voice.
Like that of "priests" and "priesthood," the notion of "sanctuary" is also
common. To "offer sanctuary" is a universal expression for providing protection
and safety. In her Cadfael chronicles, set in the twelfth century, English novelist
Edith Pargeter (pen name Ellis Peters) gives a gripping illustration of the concept
of sanctuary in her depiction of a young minstrel who, pursued by a murderous
mob of townspeople in the night, breaks into the monastery church "to grip the
edge of the altar cloth with life-and-death desperation."
As he is brutally pounded by the rabble that has followed him into the sacred
place, Abbot Rudulfus, backed up by his fellow clerics and "brothers," come to
his rescue. "Rabble, stand off! Blasphemous!" Rudulfus orders. "Quit this holy
place and be ashamed. Back, before I blast your souls eternally!"
Instinctively everyone now understood the meaning of the fugitive's action. "If
the law itself were here," Rudulfus continued, "there is no power can now take
away this man from the sanctuary he has sought. You should know the right of it
as well as I. And the peril, body and soul, to any who dares to breach that
sanctuary. Go! Take the pollution of your violence out of this holy place!'"1
The notion on which Peters anchored her story is as well known now as in the
twelfth century, and employed in a wide variety of contexts—in regard to
refugees, political prisoners, endangered animal species, etc.
Thus considered, the notion of "sanctuary" gives us a common pool from
which to draw, as we try to present the heavenly sanctuary as a place of safety,
protection, and healing. Yes, it's true that the heavenly ministry of Jesus does
include judgment (which, unfortunately, space will not allow us to cover here),
but to begin there with inquirers is to distort this wonderful biblical truth, whose
fundamental purpose is to bring hope to a humanity burdened down with the
weight of guilt and despair. After all—whoever we are—that ministry is our
only source of hope.

Solidly Biblical
The ultimate test of any doctrine is whether it has a solid basis in Scripture.
And in regard to the fundamental concept of the sanctuary, no biblical scholar
would have the temerity to deny its pervasiveness through the entire Bible. The
sanctuary lay at the center of Israelite worship, and the New Testament makes
abundantly clear, both symbolically and explicitly, that a heavenly economy has
now supplanted the ancient one.
The major symbolic indication came as Jesus died. "At that moment,"
Matthew says, "the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom"
(Matt. 27:51). And the meaning is inescapable: the old order has irrevocably
been changed by the One who ripped that massive veil from the top, exposing to
full view a place once deadly sacred, but now no longer so. Henceforth, the
symbol spoke in words too clear to miss, the focus shifted from earth to heaven.
The one proclaimed by John as "the Lamb of God" (John 1:29) had just been
slain, Himself both priest and victim. And now, through His death, He would
enter, not an earthly sanctuary made with human hands, but rather "the true
tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man" (Heb. 8:2).
Before the mob stoned him to death, Stephen in vision saw Jesus in that
sacred place, and expressed the sublime revelation in words that sent his
accusers poking fingers in their own ears to avoid the powerful testimony.
Stephen said: "'Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right
hand of God'" (Acts 7:56).
One important thing to note in connection with "the present work" of Jesus in
the heavenly sanctuary is that it in no way detracts from His finished work on the
cross. We must maintain with the utmost insistence that when He died on
Calvary, Jesus made a full atonement for us. As I wrote in another place, when
Adventists speak of Christ's present work, "they imply no belittling of the
centrality of the cross. Rather, they mean to suggest that the cross reaches
beyond Calvary, beyond A.D. 31—into the heavenly sanctuary itself, the seat of
God's government, the nerve center of human salvation, where Jesus Christ has
entered for us within the veil, having been made High Priest forever after the
order of Melchizedek."2
Some have difficulty seeing how the two concepts could run parallel, not
conflicting with each other. We must be patient with them, but must never back
away from what is so clearly biblical, regardless of the number of Christians
who've never seen or embraced it.

Two Common Questions

1. As high priest, what does Jesus actually do?
The question is not an easy one to answer in a way that would make logical
sense to the scientific mind. And, ultimately, we'd simply have to let the Bible
provide its own response.
In Hebrews 1-7 the writer weaves together an elaborate theological strand to
make his point about the uniqueness of Jesus. Then coming to chapter 8, he
summarizes for us the case he's been building: "Now this is the main point of the
things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand
of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of
the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man" (Heb. 8:1, 2, NKJV).
What follows in chapters 8 and 9 of Hebrews would be a series of
comparisons and contrasts between the ancient tabernacle system and the
"better"— that is, superior—heavenly sanctuary ministry that has supplanted it.
Hebrews 9:11, 12 gives the essence: "When Christ came as high priest of the
good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect
tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did
not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most
Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption."
Two things the author wants his readers to grasp here. One is the theological
meaning of these realities, and the other is their practical dimension. The
theological significance, already summarized in Hebrews 8:1,2, is that we now
have a superior high priest, the Son of the Living God. Like the ancient high
priests, He is human—but unlike them, He is divine and faultless. On the basis
of His humanity, He is able to "sympathize with our weakness" (Heb. 4:15). And
on the basis of His divinity, he is "able to save to the uttermost those who come
to God through Him" (Heb. 7:25, NKJV).
The apostle's practical point centers on the idea of access. Within the physical
layout of the ancient Israelite camp, the ordinary Israelite worshippers stood
several barriers removed from the sanctuary's innermost sanctum, barriers they
could never overcome. Only the high priest had full access, and that just once a
year, on the Day of Atonement. But now, through Christ, our heavenly mediator,
a door of unlimited access has opened up for us, whoever we are—a door to the
heavenly sanctuary itself, the throne room of the living God. "Let us then
approach the throne of grace with confidence," says the sacred writer, "so that
we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Heb. 4:16).
So what is Jesus doing? According to Hebrews, in His capacity as high priest
He "is able to help those who are being tempted," having Himself known the
peril of temptation (Heb. 2:17, 18). He intercedes for us (Heb. 7:25) and works
to solidify the loyalty of His people by inscribing His laws in our minds and
hearts (Heb. 8:3-10). By His blood He cleanses our "consciences from acts that
lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" (Heb. 9:13, 14). Finally, He
works to bring an end to the centuries-long crisis that Adventists call the great
controversy (see Heb. 10:11-13).
We cannot know the exact form that Jesus' intercession for us takes. But
Scripture offers us several examples of the general idea, albeit from a human
standpoint. Two of them occurred in the life of Moses—in connection with the
rebellion at Kadesh (Num. 14:10-20) and with the golden calf incident (Ex. 32:9-
14, 30-32). "But now," Moses pleaded with God in that last incident, "please
forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written"
(verse 32). We also witness such forms of priestly intercession in Daniel (Dan.
9) and in Jesus' great prayer before His passion (John 17).
Christ's current heavenly function covers many dimensions, but on the
personal level we may boil it down to intercession. And to understand what that
means, we have His prayer in John 17 for illustration. As a way of understanding
what He's doing now for us, that chapter is absolutely priceless. How awesome
to know that no one less than Jesus Himself stands up for us, prays for us, and
carries us in a heart that once bled for us!
2. Do those who know Jesus only as Smior have a disadvantage in comparison
with those who know Him as both Savior and high priest?
The trick here is to answer this immensely difficult question without drawing
invidious comparisons with other Christians. Adventists who have interacted
with people of other faiths (even with just "secular" people) would readily admit
that they've often found them just as gracious and merciful and patient and
generous and kind and morally upright as we are—sometimes (truth be told),
even more so. And it thus becomes a matter of considerable delicacy to put a
finger on where the difference, if any, lies. What's the practical or theological
benefit of "our sanctuary message"?
I would suggest that ultimately it comes down to the question of loyalty and
faithfulness. It's not without significance that when the author of Hebrews
wanted to reestablish the faith of his readers, he turned to the doctrine of the
sanctuary:
"Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of
Jesus ... and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a
true heart in full assurance of faith.... Let us hold fast the confession of our hope
without wavering, for He who promised is faithful" (Heb. 10:19-23, KJV).
The language of covenant and faithfulness permeates the book of Hebrews.
And the difference we're seeking is to be found right here, having to do with the
awesome implications of entering "the Holiest by the blood of Jesus" (cf. see
Heb. 4:16).
To follow Jesus by faith into the inner sanctum is not only to have one's soul
cleansed by His marvelous grace, but also to experience a new appreciation of
the everlasting covenant, symbolized by His immutable law ensconced within
the sacred ark anciently housed within that enclosure (see Heb. 8:10). This
transaction, utterly significant in the context of what Adventists call "the great
controversy between good and evil," defines the difference that the sanctuary
teaching makes for us. By faith we enter with full assurance into that sacred
place where Jesus ministers. And there, against all possible odds, we cling to the
One whose indelible promise is symbolized by the ark of the covenant.
Daniel, down in Babylonian captivity, understood this. It was his
overwhelming concern and respect for the sanctuary that both created and
preserved His unswerving loyalty and faithfulness to God in the face of deadly
peril. It's not by accident that the central focus of his book is the sovereignty of
God and the integrity of His sanctuary, two elements that sustained him during a
worship crisis instigated by high officials in government, bent on destroying
him. For him it was elementary that the decree not to petition any god or man,
except Darius, for 30 days, on pain of death by lions (Dan. 6:5-9) constituted a
direct and open affront on the law of God that formed the basis of Yahweh's
covenant with His people, symbolized by the ark of the covenant housed in the
inner sanctum of the Hebrew Temple. "You shall have no other gods before
Me," it said in its very first precept (Ex. 20:3).
The prophet understood that of all the instructions Yahweh gave to Moses,
those Ten Commandments were the only segment He chose to write with His
own hand. And when in righteous anger Moses broke the original tables, not
even then did God entrust their recording to human hands. Rather, He inscribed
them Himself a second time (see Deut. 10:1, 2, 4)! That was the document that,
under explicit direction from God, Moses placed within the sacred ark, inside the
innermost compartment of the tabernacle, signifying its awesome importance
and sacredness.
That history is there for all to read. And it's the height of spiritual arrogance
for any person or group to pretend to alter or abrogate what God Himself has
written. Against any such attempts, the sanctuary stands guard, and thus features
in the loyalty and faithfulness of a final remnant. Daniel himself stands as a
symbol of the eschatological remnant, who will choose to honor God, however
threatening the provocation or crisis.
In an early vision Ellen G. White beheld symbols that drove home these
important elements of truth. She spoke of seeing in the heavenly sanctuary "the
ten commandments written" with "a halo of glory ... all around" the Sabbath
commandment.3 From such symbolisms Adventists have come to understand the
high divine valuation placed on those Ten Words. So that unlike the rest of
Christendom—ready to jettison any portion of God's holy Law they find
inconvenient or uncomfortable—Adventists are prepared to remain firm in their
loyalty, at whatever cost.
Thus anchored, we stand secure against every concept or philosophy (be it
evolution, atheism, materialism, or whatever) that seeks to wrest the eternal God
from His sacred throne or belittle or downgrade the validity of His eternal law
enclosed beneath the mercy seat, the throne of universal power. Abiding there in
spirit, we become impervious to drift—either into views that lead to the
abandonment of God's holy law or into evolutionary conceptions of origins that
seek to dismiss the living God from His own universe. The doctrine of the
sanctuary thus becomes a protection for us against rebellion, and secures for God
a faithful remnant in a revolted world.

Both Practical and Personal

 As we meditate on the sanctuary theme for our own edification and
enrichment—and as we seek to share it with others—we should always
remember to keep it down-to-earth. The doctrine does have, of course, certain
technical (even highly technical) aspects. But let's not fail to dwell also on the
side of it that is both practical and personal. We should let people know (if,
indeed, it's true for us) what the message has come to mean in our personal lives.
In my case, the passage on the sanctuary in Psalm 20:1,2, has played a huge
role in helping me understand the practical, personal dimension of Jesus'
heavenly ministry. In the King James Version it reads, as follows: "The Lord
hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee; send
thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion."
No, I don't see in the passage some kind of magic formula, nor do I assume
that appealing to its promise forces the hand of God in my behalf. Yet my
testimony is that in every time of extreme difficulty or crisis, when I've appealed
to God in the context of that promise He has come through for me.
To anyone who asks why approaching God in the context of the heavenly
sanctuary should make a difference, my answer is always ready: I don't really
know. Nor do I know how electricity works—or my computer. But I use them
both every day.
No, I don't often pray in the context of the promise in Psalm 20. But in times
of extreme and genuine difficulty, the Spirit brings the promise back to mind,
and I go there. And as an explanation to my own mind as to what is happening, I
remember Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple. Again
and again, the king alludes to the centrality of the Temple, asking God to "hear
the prayer your servants prays toward this place" (see 1 Kings 8:29). No less
than seven more times in the prayer he repeats identical sentiments, each time
appealing to God to hear His people when, in times of calamity, "they pray to the
Lord toward the city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your Name"
(verse 44; cf. verses 29, 30; 33, 34; 35, 36; etc.). And in each case, the king,
much in advance of his time (we might say), recognized while focusing on the
earthly Temple the true source of their help, repeating again and again the
formula: "then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their
plea" (verse 49; cf. verses 30, 32, 34, and 36).
Understanding this concept, Daniel, facing a deep crisis, prayed three times a
day, his "windows opened toward Jerusalem" (Dan. 6:10). As he prayed toward
Jerusalem and the ruined sanctuary, God heard from His dwelling place in
heaven, and answered.
So in simple faith I say that something happens when we pray toward the
sanctuary—not now the earthly (whose time has passed), but the heavenly, in
which Jesus, our great high priest, ministers. I can't explain it, but it's as if God is
overwhelmed with joy that we should consciously approach Him in the context
of the high-priestly ministry of His Son, Jesus, in that sacred place.
For me personally, then, the high-priestly ministry of Jesus is far from
theoretical, far from abstract. It's part of my spiritual life, filling me with
confidence and hope. And I find myself utterly encouraged to know that
Someone stands for me at the very center of cosmic power.

1 Ellis Peters, The Sanctuary Sparrow (New York: William Morrow and Co.,

1983), pp. 10, 13.

2 R. Adams, The Sanctuary: Understanding the Heart of Adventist Theology,
p. 142.
3 Ellen G. White, Early Writings (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald,

1882, 1945), pp. 32, 33.

 CHAPTER 13

THE EXCITEMENT OF HIS ETERNAL TOMORROW

Ending its September 13, 2001, broadcast, the NBC Evening News the
recorded voice of a frantic woman, in what turned out to be her last call
home to her husband from her office on a top floor of the World Trade
Center in New York the morning of September 11. "I'm stuck here in my
office," she says. "I can't get out. Someone has bombed the building. But I
want you to know I love you."
Immediately following the broadcast I recorded my reaction to the recording:
"Already on my feet preparing to leave the family room, I stand frozen to the
spot, my mind struggling to grasp the enormity of the tragedy that had just
transpired: planeloads of innocent men, women, and children piloted to their
death by evil men; thousands of others in their offices suddenly murdered by
demons in human form; the mind-blowing image of desperate people jumping to
their death from a hundred floors above the street; the gruesome report of
thousands of body bags ordered by the city of New York; the picture of
multiplied thousands of additional bags yet to come, as the specter of reprisals
and counterreprisals makes its bloody way around the world. It all comes
flooding into my mind as I stand there transfixed near the entrance to our family
room. Finally I head for the privacy of my study, overcome once again by the
ghastly ugliness of our times. It's perhaps the deepest anger I've ever felt in my
life."
Those were my thoughts that September evening in 2001, expressing exactly
how I felt in those dark moments. How did God feel? How does God feel? Were
we to find His "journal" for that day, what sentiments from the divine pen would
meet our eyes?
None of us can really know. But from all we read in Scripture, we can say one
thing for sure: He desperately wants to end this ugly tragedy. Left to me, I'd
have ended it yesterday! But it's not up to me. Nor is it in your control. It lies,
rather, precisely where it belongs—in the hands of Him whose love is infinite
and whose wisdom is inscrutable. And we have the solid promise of the Savior
echoing down the centuries to our explosive times: "Let not your heart be
troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many
mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you
to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:1-3, NKJV).
The second coming of Jesus undergirds this final chapter; but I want to place
the major focus on the aftermath of the Advent, on the exciting future that lies
beyond it.

So Much Pain Here!

The whole creation groans under the weight of pain and hurt. A cancer sweeps
across the planet, a lot of it generated by agents we ourselves have created.
We're all slowly being poisoned.
And every September 11 brings to mind another kind of cancer, that of
international barbarism, symbolized by the event that took place on that date in
2001, an "outrage of unspeakable horror" (to use the words of Bishop Desmond
Tutu), a tragedy so terrible that it literally overloaded the human vocabulary. We
talk about those who died—nearly 3,000—but we sometimes forget the plight of
some of those who lived. There must be days when members of the latter group
envy those who perished.
That thought came to me during observances surrounding the first anniversary
of the disaster. What sticks out in my mind is a photo, with its related story, on
the front page of the Washington Post' It depicted a woman lying on a hospital
bed one year after the tragedy. The caption read: "Louise Kurtz, a civilian
employee who was severely burned in the attack on the
Pentagon, gets a kiss from her husband Mike before undergoing one of her 41
surgical procedures."
Just think of it—41 surgical procedures and counting! Kurtz, the article said,
"was standing that Tuesday morning at a fax machine in her Pentagon office
when the attack came." "Today," the piece continued, "her delicate face is still
rippled with scars. Her fingers are gone. She cannot drive a car or bite an apple
or hold a phone. Her arms end in wounded, fingerless fists. Her ears have fallen
off. The pain is wretched—still. And the Pentagon ... is cutting back her
retirement benefits while she is off the job."
That last sentence was enough to outrage a corpse. Talk about adding callous
insult to cruel injury! Such heartless insensitivity leaves one utterly
dumbfounded.
 The world is filled with incomprehensible hurt, and the only solution to the
human tragedy is Jesus. And the exciting future He holds out to us.

Beyond Imagination
For as long as I live, I think I will never forget that morning in Athens back in
1983. I'd arrived in the historic city from Tel Aviv at the ungodly hour of 3:00 in
the morning, inquired my way into the city, found a small hotel, and went to bed.
When I awoke about three or four hours later, the sun was high in the sky. I
pulled the curtains, looked out the window, and what I saw just about blew my
mind. Standing right there before my very eyes, in all its ancient splendor, was
the fond object of my boyhood dreams and fantasies, the Acropolis—the
Acropolis of Athens, with the Parthenon, that world-famous ancient temple,
standing at the top, all within walking distance from my hotel!
And as I made my way up to the place later that morning, passing by Mars'
Hill (where Paul once encountered Athens' sophisticated philosophers), I
intentionally took it very slowly, savoring every moment of the spectacular
scene, like a child not wanting dessert to finish. For as long as I live, I will never
forget the thrill of that exciting morning in Athens.
But nothing we can see here on earth, nothing we can experience this side of
eternity, can ever begin to compare with the glory awaiting us in the world
beyond. Said the apostle:

"Eye has not see, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him"
(1 Cor. 2:9, NKJV).

And the only reason we can even open our mouths about anything on the
subject is that "God has revealed them to us through His Spirit," the apostle
reminds us, "for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God" (verse
10, NKJV). God has revealed them to us—not, of course, in all their detail and
splendor and magnificence, but sufficient for us to mumble a few words about
them. And one of the most sublime revelations of the Spirit came to the apostle
John.
As the story begins, we find the intrepid veteran of the gospel of Jesus Christ
banished to the desolate island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea—a penal colony.
We cannot kill him physically, concluded the Roman emperor Domitian. He has
even refused to boil (you probably remember the story of John's surviving a
caldron of boiling oil). So let's destroy him mentally. Let's wreck him
psychologically and emotionally. Let's give him time to go insane, time to rot
away his closing days to the grave amid the lizards and snakes and other
crawling creatures of Patmos. Let's toss him there, like a bag of trash, and
forget about him.
But the Lord had other plans for His aged servant. The angel of God came
down to Patmos that lonely Sabbath, transforming that dry, barren, inhospitable
place into the very gate of heaven. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day," John
says, "and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, 'I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,' and, 'What you see, write in a
book'" (Rev. 1:10, 11).
So John wrote it down. And that document, the Apocalypse, having withstood
the battering rams of skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and high-powered biblical
critics across the centuries, has come down to us in all its unaffected power,
giving us a rare glimpse of the glory of the world beyond, and the fantastic
future awaiting every child of God.
"After these things," wrote the seasoned apostle, "I looked and behold, a great
multitude which no one could number" (Rev. 7:9, NKJV).
Sometimes, based on Jesus' statement in Matthew 7:14 (that only a "few" will
find the narrow way), we conclude that only a small number of people will be
saved. But that's true only in comparison with the number who'd be lost. We
should be encouraged to know that there'll be millions and millions and millions
of people saved in the kingdom of God—"a great multitude," John assures us,
"which no one could number." And they'll come from every place on earth—"of
all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues" (Rev. 7:9). From North Korea;
Afghanistan; Turkmenistan; Iran; Yemen; and from every other country that
thinks it can somehow smother the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here they are,
standing in one mighty gathering around the throne of God.
As I picture it, what we have here in Revelation 7 is a description of our
arrival in heaven. Necks are craning everywhere, everyone trying to catch a
glimpse of Jesus Christ, the magnificent person who made it all possible. We're
standing before the throne of God and the Lamb, the apostle says, "clothed with
white robes," and with palms of victory clutched in our hands (verse 9, NJKV).
And we're crying out "with a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God
who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'" (verse 10, NKJV). And "all the angels
stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on
stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on
their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

"'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom,

Thanksgiving and honor and power and might,
Be to our God forever and ever.
Amen'" (verses 11, 12, NKJV).

I call this the celestial welcome for the redeemed, a great victory celebration
for the new arrivals. A time of praise and exuberance, people are laughing and
crying for joy, skipping and dancing, hugging and holy-kissing everywhere. It's
sheer, unadulterated bliss—beyond fantastic! And we've only just begun!

The Big Supper

Following chapter 7, John sees the development of great and astonishing
events—historic, prehistoric, and future—from chapter 8 all the way down to 18.
And as we approach the close of the book, John seems to connect the victory
celebration of chapter 7 to the great wedding banquet of chapter 19, judging
from the similarity we find in tone and setting. "After these things," he says, "I
heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, 'Alleluia! Salvation
and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God!' . . . And the twenty-
four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat
on the throne, saying, Amen! Alleluia!' . . . And I heard, as it were, the voice of a
great multitude, as the sound of may waters and as the sound of mighty
thunderings, saying, Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be
glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and
His wife has made herself ready'" (Rev. 19:1-7, NKJV).
Ellen G. White got a glimpse of this event in one of her early visions, and
wrote about it in Early Writings: "The wonderful things I there saw," she said, "I
cannot describe. Oh, that I could talk in the language of Canaan, then could I tell
a little of the glory of the better world. . . . Soon we heard [Jesus'] lovely voice
again, saying, 'Come, My people, you have come out of great tribulation, and
done My will; suffered for Me; come in to supper, for I will gird Myself, and
serve you.' We shouted 'Alleluia! Glory!' and entered into the city. And I saw a
table of pure silver; it was many miles in length, yet our eyes could extend over
it."2
Where will you be sitting around that table? Where will I be sitting? To be
frank about it, that doesn't concern me in the least. I just want to make it in—that
is all. They can place me on the floor, for all I care! For no matter where we're
seated, we'll all have a clear view of Jesus!
You must understand that White's description here represents only the faintest
glimpse of what it'll actually be like. Where is the human being that can even
begin to comprehend the incredible logistics necessary to stage a party for a
multitude the size of the redeemed? The Olympic Games perhaps constitute the
biggest, most elaborate, event staged on the planet, a nerveracking nightmare of
a program to plan. "Tougher," says 1984 Olympics organizer Peter Ueberroth,
"than staging ten Super Bowls a day for sixteen straight days."3
But think what it would take to plan not just one such event every four years,
but 1 million of them simultaneously. And, if you can imagine it, that will be like
preparing for a child's birthday party when compared with the cosmic
preparations now under way for the grand homecoming of the redeemed! It's
utterly beyond human comprehension.
Yet as we come to our passage in chapter 19 of Revelation, the cosmic
preparations are complete, the show is on the road, so to speak, and we— you
and I—are part of it! Sitting among billions and billions of other created beings
from all across God's expansive universe, we are celebrating the great marriage
supper of the Lamb.
Wow!
Sometimes I wonder what will be on the menu. Mrs. White in that same vision
says: "I saw the fruit of the tree of life, the manna, almonds, figs, pomegranates,
grapes.. ."4
Now, I've never tasted manna. But I've sampled almonds, figs, pomegranates,
and grapes. And I have to say that these are not the fruits that get me drooling in
anticipation. So I'm thankful that White's statement did not stop there. After the
list just mentioned, she added: "and many other kinds of fruit"—which leaves
me free to speculate that perhaps there'd be some big, juicy pineapples around
the place; and guyabanos (soursops); and papayas; and persimmons; and huge,
juicy Julie mangoes. (And at the risk of causing a riot in heaven and starting the
great controversy all over again, some may want to mention durians!—but I
myself won't go there.)
And these fruits will not be the insipid, forced-ripe substitutes that we often
get in some countries today (picked green, sprayed for color, then marketed to
those who've never tasted better). No. In comparison to the luscious fruits of
heaven, the ones we have here taste like the medicines used to in the old days.
Returning to the quote before us, Ellen White adds: "I asked Jesus to let me
eat of the fruit. He said, 'Not now. Those who eat of the fruit of this land go back
to earth no more. But in a little while, if faithful, you shall both eat of the fruit of
the tree of life and drink of the water of the fountain.' And He said, 'You must go
back to the earth again and relate to others what I have revealed to you.' Then an
angel bore me gently down to this dark world. Sometimes I think I can stay here
no longer; all things of earth look so dreary. I feel very lonely here, for I have
seen a better land."3

Despair or Hope?
The last week of 2006 was billed Armageddon Week on the History Channel
in the Washington, D.C., metro area, and on December 26 it ran a program
entitled "Last Days on Earth," depicting "the seven deadliest threats to
humanity." Scientists have now joined religionists in coming up with their own
apocalyptic scenarios, the program said, and none of them is rosy.
More than 99 percent of the species that ever existed on earth are now extinct,
one astrophysicist said, and "sooner or later our luck will run out." An asteroid
can wipe us out or a flu pandemic can depopulate the planet. Some star could
collapse, producing gamma rays, "radioactive light brighter than a million
trillion suns." "Imagine if that power were unleashed on us," intoned the
moderator. Our chances of survival would be less than zero. Black holes, long
thought to be stationary, are now believed to be moving at rates as high as 1,000
miles per hour—invisible "cosmic vacuum cleaners" that can suck in our entire
planet like a speck of dust. Textbooks 100-200 years ago, one astrophysicist
said, presented the universe to us as a peaceful, gentle place. But "we have come
to learn that the universe has no shortage of ways it can kill us."
British mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell, in a 1903 essay, painted
a similarly bleak outlook of the future. "All the labors of the ages," he said, "all
the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are
destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and ... the whole
temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a
universe in ruins."6
How hopeless! What if such dire prospects defined our destiny?
During an equestrian event in Virginia in May of 1995 an unexpected stop by
his horse in the middle of a jump sent American actor and Hollywood superstar
Christopher Reeve flying over the animal's head. The accident virtually
separated his head from the rest of his body. In an ingenious operation, doctors
at the University of Virginia Hospital managed to reattach his skull to his spinal
column,7 but the actor once lauded as "Superman" by a zillion fans in the United
States spent his final years as a quadriplegic, immobile in a wheelchair.
In his dreams, Reeve wrote in his autobiography, "I'd be whole again. I'd go
off and do wonderful things, I'd be riding again, or I'd be with [wife] Dana and
[son] Will, or...I'd be acting in a play."8 In those dreams, he said in an interview,
"I'm always whole, always active." "I have never had a dream in which I am
disabled in a wheelchair."9
Reeve's deep-seated yearning for wholeness represents, I believe, the
universal dream of humanity. What if there existed no cure for the malady of sin,
the greatest tragedy of all? What if there was no remedy for our crippled planet?
Thank God there is a "cure"! Neither Russell's dark vision of the future nor the
scientists' nightmare forecasts of what's ahead will ever be our destiny.
Said the ancient prophet: "The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to
Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" (Isa. 35:10, KJV). And we
read in Revelation 21:1 of "a new heaven and a new earth."
It will be a new world—a planet transformed. Perfect temperature; perfect
climate; no bugs; no allergies; no pain; no sickness; no disappointment; no
muggings; no wars; no pollution; no racism; no exploitation; no poverty; no
slums; no police; no prostitution; no gambling; no crime of any kind. No more
death; and no more taxes!
And, thank God, Jesus—heaven's chief attraction—will be there. I look
forward to meeting Him, from whom I've personally received nothing but
kindness. To look in His face, sit at His feet, place my hand in His nailpierced
ones, and see what He wrote in His journal that horrible day in September 2001.
To draw one deep, long breath and sense it's the unpolluted atmosphere of the
Paradise of God. To pinch myself and realize I'm really home!

1 Washington Post, Sept. 10, 2002, p. Al.

2 E. G. White, Early Writings, p. 19.

3 Peter Ueberroth, Made in America (New York: William Morrow and

Company, Inc., 1985), p. 92.
4 White, p. 19.

5 Ibid., pp. 19, 20.

6 Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship," http://www.luminary.us/russell/

freeman.html.
7 Christopher Reeve, Still Me (New York: Random House, 1998), pp. 14, 15.
See also Chip Crews, "The Role We Can't Escape," Washington Post, May 3,
1998.
8 Reeve, p. 45.

9 Crews.