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WHEN SPIRITUAL VICTORY LOOKS LIKE DEFEAT
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?“
Matthew 26:53-54
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 24, 2024 – Even before I was a believer, I knew that Jesus’ crucifixion was considered by Christians to be a victory. I thought it was all foolishness at the time and couldn’t be bothered even to hear their explanation as to why they saw Jesus’ torture and execution as such a good thing. Peering through my cracked and foggy lens of atheism, all I could see was defeat propped up by an improbable fairy tale that only gullible losers could believe.
Fast-forward to today.
Well, as this blog attests, I became one of those “gullible losers” myself, and I now see Jesus’ death on the cross not only as a good thing, but the greatest victory ever achieved for mankind.
God has a plan. As believers, we hear this so often that it pretty much goes in one ear and out the other, but God does have a plan. He has a plan for you and he has a plan for me, and it’s up to us whether or not we want to go along with his plan. He’s revealed his plan in scripture and he’s also revealed his plan for each of us, one on one, like he revealed it to Jesus and to Peter and to Paul.
In revealing his plan to us, God doesn’t hold a gun to our head and tell us we have no choice but to comply with it; he shows us plainly and well in advance what it is, and then he stands back and lets us choose whether to go along with it or not.
Jesus told us he always did that which pleased the Father. And we know this is true, because God told us: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” From this, we can see that Jesus and God were clearly on the same page. There was no divergence between them. No conflict. No contradiction. Still, when God explained to Jesus what his mission was, he left it up to Jesus to accept it or not. Nothing was forced on him.
God’s plan for each of us also includes spiritual victories that will appear to the world as defeats. Many of us may already be living that reality. We also know (because scripture tells us publicly and God tells us personally) that if we at any time feel overwhelmed by what we’ve agreed to and want to back out, all we need to do is to call out to God and he will in fact send 12 or 50 or even 100 legions of angels, if that’s how many the situation warrants. This option is always there for us.
I don’t know about you, but I’m spiritually greedy. I don’t want to settle for plan D or plan F or some other fallback plan after I’ve chickened out of the main one. I want to do plan A, no matter what it entails. And as grateful I am that God has those twelve or more legions of angels on call should I need them, I don’t want to have to use them. Like Jesus, I want to do that which pleases the Father. I want to comply with God’s plan without contradiction or conflict. I want to endure, as Jesus advised us, to the end.
Like with Jesus, this might require me to look like a loser or a failure or a criminal to the world, but if that’s God’s plan, then so be it. You can imagine that the last thing Jesus wanted was to hang on a cross with the world pointing and laughing at him and sneering that God had deserted him. Jesus didn’t go up on that cross because he wanted to; he went up on the cross because it was God’s plan, as laid out in scripture and as told to Jesus personally by God. And because it was God’s plan, saying “no” to it wasn’t an option for Jesus.
Saying “no” to God’s plan should never be an option for us, either.
God’s plan is never a mystery. God has, as Jesus pointed out, told us well in advance what his plan is, so that when it happens exactly as described, we’ll know who’s behind it. What is often a mystery to us is how God is going to achieve his plan. That’s where the miracles come in. That’s where faith comes in. That’s where we come in as we take our place up on the cross where Jesus once was, confident that this is where we need to be and that this will be our greatest victory, too.
YOUR CROSS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, February 8, 2024 – When Jesus advised us to pick up our cross daily, he didn’t mean what most people today think he meant. The cross Jesus was talking about isn’t what most of us envision when we think of a cross. During the heyday of the Roman Empire, a cross was simply the crossbar that was used in crucifixions; it was a large and heavy piece of wood that was affixed crossways to a tree or pole, which is why it was called a cross. The cross was separate from the tree or pole and was fastened to either one or the other during a crucifixion and then removed after the prisoner was dead. The cross would then be reused for the next crucifixion, as would the tree or pole. The cross was mobile; the tree and pole weren’t.
So when Jesus told us we should pick up our cross daily, he was referring to that large and heavy mobile straight piece of wood that was intended to be carried by the condemned to the execution site, where it would then be affixed to a tree or pole and the prisoner hung on it with cords or nails until he or she died.
The structure that was temporarily formed from these two separate pieces of wood was not called a cross in Jesus’ day; only the crossbar was called a cross. At some point, the entire structure took on the name of the cross and became symbolic of Jesus and Christianity. I’m not sure this has been to our benefit, for the following reason.
If you’ll recall, along with picking up and carrying our cross daily, Jesus also invited us to take his yoke upon us. What he meant was that we should yoke ourselves to him, like cattle are yoked together, two by two, in a team. He said that the burden of his yoke would be easy and light. Like the cross reference, the yoke reference would have been readily understood by his contemporary audience. These references aren’t quite as well understood today, mainly because we don’t often see cattle yoked together and working in a field anymore, but also because of the confusion caused by what was meant by a cross in Jesus’ day and what is meant by a cross today.
I don’t know about you, but the yoke reference made a lot more sense to me after I found out what a cross was in ancient Roman times. I could envision the two different pieces of wood being used interchangeably as a metaphor, and I think that’s what Jesus was aiming for when he talked about the cross and the yoke. In both cases, whether we’re labouring under a crossbar or a yoke, we’re labouring side-by-side with Jesus, we’re following along next to him in his footsteps and he’s helping us carry our burden. He’s gently showing us what to do next and how to do it, and he’s quietly encouraging us every step of the way. As followers and disciples of Jesus, we’re working in tandem with him; we’re not working with other people: We’re working with Jesus.
Sometimes we’re plowing. Sometimes we’re harvesting. And sometimes we’re being driven to the slaughterhouse or to a place of sacrifice. But regardless of the type of task, test, or temptation we’ve been given, Jesus is always right there next to us, carrying the lion’s share of the load. We can be absolutely sure of this because he told us he would be doing just that.
And I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anyone I would rather be yoked together with in my labours daily than Jesus.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 