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Ultimate Reality in Christ and His Cross
The Incarnation, Miracles, Life, Death and Reality
TJ Gemmill
May 09, 2024
It’s been awhile. Don’t worry, this will be a short one. We’re laying down the facts today:
Jesus was a real man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. He was the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, and humanity’s savior. In His time, He performed miracles: He transformed substance, walked on water, forgave sinners, healed the sick and raised the dead.
Each of these are significant on their own, but His own life ended with the greatest miracle: He bore the sins of the human race and forfeited His own life to redeem them. Then, He resurrected. Walking out of His own tomb, He conquered the grave.
Out of his own miraculous love for us, He died a miraculous death to save us.
Out of His own might, He defeated sin and destroyed the reign of death over us.
Not only this. His entire life, from His birth to His ascension, was a miracle in itself. Perhaps the Ultimate Miracle.
CS Lewis wrote about this:
In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity… down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created… one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too.
Lewis also tells us that every other miracle either prepares for this, exhibits this, or results from this. It is the central idea of Christianity, and the central theme of reality. Seeds descend into the earth and die before they produce life. We die to ourselves before we are born again. The process of death leading to new life is the ultimate pattern of present reality.
Looking at the cross, we see the world clearly.
We see the focal point of history: the Son of God, staked on a tree, redeeming fallen sons of Adam.
We see the Second Adam; the true and better Moses breaking through the veil that separates us from Glory; the true and better David crushing the serpent’s head.
We see Infinite God becoming human to suffer, bleed and die.
We see the glory of a King who, in His last breaths, gave to a dying thief a personal invitation to Paradise.
We see Yahweh in the flesh, condemned by His own people and executed by Roman powers, of whom even the centurion would say, “Surely, this man was the Son of God.”
We see the coronation of our King. Master of the Universe. Miraculous God.
The Ruler and Hero of Ultimate Reality.
That’s worth thinking about.
Don’t forget to tip your drivers.
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