PHOTO: Social-Distance Easter Sunrise Service.
The first act of a baby is drinking. A final act in a hospice room might be a water-soaked swab. Jesus’ final act on the cross is told by John The Apostle: “I am thirsty…It is finished.” These two sentences are the bookends of the God-Man. If ever there was a human, it was Jesus. After all he was put through on Good Friday, he simply says, “I am thirsty.” Perfect love works up a thirst. If ever there was a God, it was Jesus. He knew he had completed the work that only God could and so he said, “It is finished.” One of the things most or all of us are guilty of is fighting against our humanity. It can swing like a pendulum from trying to be “as God” (controlling our lives and/or others) to ridding ourselves of pain to bathing ourselves in hedonism to living the false humility of being so heavenly-minded we are no earthly good, etc.,etc. Jesus went through no pendulum. He embraced his humanity because he knew it would be the exact way he could experience life without suppressing suffering which climaxed on the cross. In short, he knew man better than man. He knew Adam before sin. And yes, He knows how to make us become exactly like Him. Scripture tells us that he knows our end: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." 1 Corinthians 13:11,12 NIV And what about… "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV Or my favorite scripture in the Bible: "Beloved, now are we the sons [and daughters] of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2 NIV When Jesus said Mary Magdalene’s name at the tomb, she clung to both his humanity, his physical body, and his divinity - the one who could forgive sin through the very act she had witnessed two days earlier. Oh, that we would thirst for his humanity that we might know of his divinity. PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Through the reality of his humanity, Jesus’ resurrection brings us earthlings to heaven through faith; the bookends of humanity as it were. Now, that is bonding. We, too, are risen indeed. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Ephesians 2:6 NIV, 2 Peter 1:3 NIV