For Our Sake--January 10, 2024

For Our Sake--January 10, 2024

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." [Galatians 4:4-5]

Jesus' coming isn't for God's sake--it's for ours.

That is, the reason for Christ's coming isn't because of something that God needed or that God wanted to learn or experience but couldn't; the reason for Christ's coming is that we might share the same belonging as "children of God" that Jesus himself has.  It is for our sake, our need, our benefit--not something on God's bucket list like a Caribbean cruise or sky-diving lessons.

We have plenty of stories about supernatural beings coming to the human realm like it's some kind of otherworldly field trip.  The classic movie Death Takes a Holiday (and its 1998 remake with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, called Meet Joe Black) has the figure of Death become a human just to know what it is like, including falling in love.  The Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan movie, City of Angels, has literal angels as the ones who want to experience humanity, and so some of them choose to leave behind their heavenly status to become human.  For that matter, the Greeks were telling stories about Zeus coming to the mortal world to mess with humans for amusement (or to seduce them for his own pleasure) for thousands of years before those movies on the silver screen. And whether they are ancient or modern, those stories all suggest the same thing: that the visit from the cosmic realm is for the entertainment or education of the supernatural visitor.  It's not for our benefit--it's for theirs.

Of course, we Christ-followers tell a different story.  The story we tell, which was first told to us, is of the One who has come into our midst for our sake, for our good, and for our redemption.  As Paul put it to the Christians in Galatia, "God sent his Son... so that we might receive adoption."  It's not that "God really wanted to find out what it was like to feel something, because God is so lonely and isolated in divine omnipotence up there floating on those clouds."  And it's not that God was missing out on some part of existence that could only be felt by wearing our skin or walking in our sandals.  It's that we were missing out on the fullness of life.  The early church father Irenaeus (who lived in the second century) said it something like this: "God's Son became human so that humans could be children of God."  In Christ, the Word of God became what we are so that we could become what he is.  In other words, it was never a matter of God needing to feel something or experiences something, as though there were a deficiency in God.  It's that God intended us for fullness of relationship, even being brought into God's own life through Jesus.

All of that is so alien to the way our culture usually thinks, because it means that God wasn't looking to "get" something for God's own sake out of the whole ordeal of incarnation.  We are used to being told everything is a deal, a transaction, a quid-pro-quo exchange, and that nobody is there doing favors for you unless they are going to get something they need.  The myths about Zeus coming "down" to the mortal realm are ultimately about the gods wanting to "get" something from us (we tend to project ourselves and our own selfishness onto the divine in our myth-making, don't we?).  But in Jesus we are told that God's coming among us is wholly for our sake, not because God was looking for a few thrills by slumming it with mortals.

This is the story we are given to tell the world.  This is the news that is worth bringing to friends, neighbors, strangers, and even enemies.  This is why we gather around the Word on Sundays and why we are sent out from the four walls of our church buildings, too: what makes the Good News good is that it really is about God seeking our benefit, not using us for some ulterior motive.  This is why Jesus has come.  This is the One we are sent to introduce other people to--not for God's sake, but for ours.

Lord Jesus, make us fully alive by being brought into relationship with you.  Allow us to be channels through whom you make other people fully alive, as well.