We All Want an Execution
Taken from my personal journal. June 21, 2017
Ephesians 2:14-16
Christ Jesus, in His personality, godship, and human body answers for justice in an unjust crucifixion and emerges as a new creation, thus ending the former patterns embedded in our culture and psyche of division, and bringing those who trust in Him into harmony in relationship to the Godhead as well as to each other.
Although wrath is not something many people want to talk about, justice is. We want justice for the oppressed. We want equality. However, we fail, many times, to see the need for wrath in the pursuit of justice. Currently, my black brothers and sisters are crying out for justice on account of the murder of Philando Castile. Inherant to that cry is a plea for wrath against his murderer, the broken people running the system that hired and trained him, the court that let him go free, and the evil energizing this act of fearful hatred as well - racism.
Unfortunately, mere human effort and systems and laws will continue to fail to answer this a call for wrathful justice, because the brokenness within human beings will always manipulate and rot the original intent, no matter how good it was to begin with.
We are unspeakably broken and frantically searching for harmony within and between ourselves. A law cannot bring this harmony, no matter how many times we seek to appeal, repeal, or create them. Our own humanity sabotages any flicker of good intent, and we will continually find ourselves back at square one, crying out again for justice, for wrath.
Yet an innocent and winsome Jew's crucifixion continues to answer this call throughout all of time. It boggles me. I cannot fully comprehend it....I only know it to be true. His beaten, bloody body doesn't restore Philando Castile to his family, but it reminds me that God knows something about wrath and unjust execution. He endured one Himself. With His own body he endured brutality, and only He can say to my suffering brothers and sisters, upon whom the weight of inequality has rested for generations, "I understand."
In turn, to the rest of us, whether passively or proactively participating in perpetuating cycles of injustice, Jesus's life still beckons us to meekness. The king of heaven submitted to human form and used his position to serve mankind and promote the Father. He intentionally came out of an appeared realm of neutrality and placed himself in the heart of the conflict - Roman occupied Israel, 30 A.D.
[...]
Jesus's example is an invitation to action. It is a call to die to our own ideas of comfort and embrace His model. Our fallen world and its systems embedded in sin will continue to chew up and spit out other tragedies like Philando Castile. To think we can change the system on our own human effort is arrogant. It needs more than change. It needs supernatural redemption.
In the time between now and His return, when He sets up His kingdom, how has Jesus asked us to follow his example of meekness? If his cross and resurrection has made us new, let us press into and model that newness to a world that is desperate to see it.
Ephesians 2:14-16
"For He Himself is our peace (harmony, rest, contentment), who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity (hate, hostility, alienation), that is, the law of the commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace (harmony, rest, contentment), and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity (hate, hostility, alienation)."
Christ Jesus, in His personality, godship, and human body answers for justice in an unjust crucifixion and emerges as a new creation, thus ending the former patterns embedded in our culture and psyche of division, and bringing those who trust in Him into harmony in relationship to the Godhead as well as to each other.
Although wrath is not something many people want to talk about, justice is. We want justice for the oppressed. We want equality. However, we fail, many times, to see the need for wrath in the pursuit of justice. Currently, my black brothers and sisters are crying out for justice on account of the murder of Philando Castile. Inherant to that cry is a plea for wrath against his murderer, the broken people running the system that hired and trained him, the court that let him go free, and the evil energizing this act of fearful hatred as well - racism.
Unfortunately, mere human effort and systems and laws will continue to fail to answer this a call for wrathful justice, because the brokenness within human beings will always manipulate and rot the original intent, no matter how good it was to begin with.
We are unspeakably broken and frantically searching for harmony within and between ourselves. A law cannot bring this harmony, no matter how many times we seek to appeal, repeal, or create them. Our own humanity sabotages any flicker of good intent, and we will continually find ourselves back at square one, crying out again for justice, for wrath.
Yet an innocent and winsome Jew's crucifixion continues to answer this call throughout all of time. It boggles me. I cannot fully comprehend it....I only know it to be true. His beaten, bloody body doesn't restore Philando Castile to his family, but it reminds me that God knows something about wrath and unjust execution. He endured one Himself. With His own body he endured brutality, and only He can say to my suffering brothers and sisters, upon whom the weight of inequality has rested for generations, "I understand."
In turn, to the rest of us, whether passively or proactively participating in perpetuating cycles of injustice, Jesus's life still beckons us to meekness. The king of heaven submitted to human form and used his position to serve mankind and promote the Father. He intentionally came out of an appeared realm of neutrality and placed himself in the heart of the conflict - Roman occupied Israel, 30 A.D.
[...]
Jesus's example is an invitation to action. It is a call to die to our own ideas of comfort and embrace His model. Our fallen world and its systems embedded in sin will continue to chew up and spit out other tragedies like Philando Castile. To think we can change the system on our own human effort is arrogant. It needs more than change. It needs supernatural redemption.
In the time between now and His return, when He sets up His kingdom, how has Jesus asked us to follow his example of meekness? If his cross and resurrection has made us new, let us press into and model that newness to a world that is desperate to see it.
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