Jesus’ victory alone – is it enough? To even ask the question is to acknowledge
that life feels like defeat at times. If
we were fulfilled and had all we desired, why would we search for any other
victory than what we already have in him?
It seems to me that the biblical faith stakes everything on
a victory that comes in the midst of what looks like defeat. We gain our life by losing it. To the one who toils at this ground, the one
who strives to obey without too much regard for more worldly measures of
success, a victory comes that is not one’s own, but which belongs to Christ. This person has a chance to share in Christ’s
victory and to be satisfied.
Jesus’ victory is not staked upon his rhetorical skill or
upon his gifts for healing. His victory
is established by his comprehensive life and the positive force of his obedience
and of his love. The obedient life lived
toward God looks so passive and dependent from the world’s perspective, but it
is the most forceful, wise, positive decision to be made with one’s life – for to
give one’s life to God is to gain it back again, even if it is lost.
And Christ’s death is not for himself alone. By the grace of God, it is vicarious, whereby
the benefits of his life and of his death and of his new life are shared
generously. His status as God’s Beloved
Son is unique by nature, but whatever else we could want or need by way of
adoption is provided to us by grace.
Only that Jesus Christ be received as Jesus Christ, all else will
suffice for us, far beyond what we could know or expect.
This is the good news for our secular, post-modern era and
its unique challenges: that although we consider everything outside our own
emotions and our own heads with suspicion with regard to forming our personal
identity, Jesus gives the gift of finding ourselves, the gift of a true
identity and the gift of a solid basis for reality outside of ourselves. For
even the darkest night, Jesus’ gifts are enough light to fill the sky.
For the most downtrodden of us, the most self-pitying of us,
his gift is the sort that comforts and satisfies, not least because this
comfort is rooted in our own pain and sin-sick sorrow. We were right to feel as we did. It was all true. But through this weakness comes strength. Strength over and against the
allegiance-claiming world and also for the sake of this same world, which God loves. We are not orphans or beholden to any other
lord. Christ’s love frees us from all
tyranny – even the tyranny of our own selves – and deputizes us for love and
service in his name, as his ambassadors.
And though all burdens are equally manageable to him in his
glory, that is not so for us. Some hours weigh heavily. Some days crush us. The early morning burden
may take one hour to give him. The late
afternoon burden may take one minute.
With Christ, we should expect comfort.
And we should wrestle until we get it.
We should dig through the mess of our lives in prayer until we find the
cross of Jesus Christ. Where else would we find victory? What other victory is there? His pain is solidarity. But for all the work to get there, it is
worth it. Only when we find him at his
cross do we find the reminder that we never skip straight to hope or to resurrection
in our lives. Only when we find him at
his cross are we immediately flooded with transcendent and prevailing hope of a
great victory. This hope is one step
away, but the only one who can say this, and the only who can make such a step
is the one who finds Christ at his cross.
That is the great overview of the world, the lookout on the universe. We can only overcome the world because, at a
point in time, Christ overcame the world.
