We are walking through Hebrews at church and this week’s teaching on chapter 2 brought up a question that had me wrestling for an answer.
“…we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (2:9 italics mine)
Why does Jesus have to ‘taste death for everyone’?
“Because it was fitting.” (2:10)
Why was it the right thing to to do?
Our Pastor says,
“I know the answer up here,” tapping his head, “but how do I get it in here?” placing his hand on his heart.
It’s that leap from Knowledge to Faith –
Believing in something based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
My grapple is:
When God created the world, inhabited the earth with humans made in His image, did He know that man was going to sin and would need to be saved by God the Son from the get go?
Or,
Did He hope that man would be sinless and not succumb to the temptation in the Garden of Eden?
Did He,
Create,
Realise it wasn’t going the way He’d hoped,
Issue warnings and sacrifice requests,
Recognise that man saving himself was not possible,
And finally send His son Jesus to suffer and die that he may “taste death for everyone… because it was fitting”?
First off,
God doesn’t ‘hope’. God knew what man would do.
Creation, though ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31) allowed man to have free exchange of thoughts, emotions and decisions.
In other words, free-will.
With free-will man is able to choose to love;
Without free-will man cannot truly experience the love of God.
Clearly, in the beginning, God had a plan and I needed to mull it over,
In the car with Hubs,
In my head on my walk,
Out loud while soaping up muddy horses and
On my laptop where I could dissect my thoughts and play with words.
I checked out God’s nature to better understand what was behind creation and here’s a few of His attributes.
God is sovereign; He’s the boss; He can do whatever He wants inerrantly
God is Holy. He is 100% pure; Set apart
He is all powerful; Omnipotent
All knowing; Omniscient
Unchanging; Immutable
Righteous; Unable to excuse sin
Perfect and
Loving.
Because God is all that, why did
He create a world,
populate it with man made in His likeness,
who would commune with Him forever,
– with this caveat –
as long as he didn’t sin?
There’s the kicker!
By Genesis 3 man has abused his free-will and disobeyed God leaving the door wide open for sin.
The Fall.
From now on, because of God’s nature, man has a relational problem that only God can fix.
Man is expelled from the Garden of Eden for disobeying God (Genesis 3:23)
Holy God simply cannot live with sinful man.
God in His righteousness cannot excuse disobedience and simply let man off the hook; “Sin is part of us” Paul writes in Romans 5:12.
We need a redeemer and God knew this.
He sent Jesus, fully God and fully man, to experience the same temptations and choices we face;
To be perfection on this side of the Garden.
To pay the price of our sins, past, present and future, once and for all, so we may escape what we deserve,
– death and eternity spent cut off from God –
From the beginning omniscient God loved us first despite our faults.
Jesus isn’t Plan B,
Jesus is The Original Plan.
Make no mistake,
God makes no mistakes!
God alone, through His son, makes atonement for our sins; I cannot do it for myself.
My musings have brought me to this place where I am in the midst of God’s Sovereign Plan.
My imperfect, human choices somehow bring about maximum glory to Himself in a way that is beyond my comprehension.
In the words of David,
“…I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet,
like a child upon its mother’s breast;
my soul is quieted within me.” (Psalm131: 2-3)
Because of God’s nature, Jesus had to die.
There’s the why.
So my friends, accept this gift of salvation, won for us at great cost so we could have,
“the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21)
and live vibrant, wilful, disobedient, hopeful, beautiful lives in Christ until the end.
Amen and Amen.
Alleluia!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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2021-10-20 19:17:20
Alleluia!
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