2 Corinthians 5:21 may be the most horrifying verse in Scripture, for it reveals the fact that Jesus, who was holy, righteous, and perfectly sinless, became sin for us. God made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us.

The Horror of the Cross

Can you imagine the horror, the shame, and the guilt that poured upon Jesus while He hung upon the cross?

We, who are born in sin and who are accustomed to sin’s constant presence within us, still feel shame and guilt when we sin. Imagine then how it would feel for God in the flesh, who is perfectly holy and righteous, and for whom sin is the exact antithesis and opposite of everything about His being, to not just take on a few sins, but to actually become sin for the entire world? It is shocking and horrifying to think about.

The Love of the Cross

But it is also incredibly loving, for God, who alone knows the full ramifications and consequences of sin, knew that only in this way could He have the relationship and fellowship with us that He so desires. Only by taking sin upon Himself could He finally, ultimately, and completely defeat sin, death, and the devil. So He did it.

Jesus became sin for us and gave us His righteousness.

Jesus accepted our sin into Himself.

He breathed it in, soaked it up, and allowed it to consume Him from within.

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The greatest expression of what God is truly like is found in Jesus when He died on the cross.

While most Christians affirm the centrality of the cross for the mission and work of Jesus in bringing reconciliation and redemption to this world, it is relatively rare in Christian circles (but thankfully, becoming more common!) to state that of all the ways which Jesus reveals God to us, it is on the cross where God is most clearly seen.

If you ask the average Christians how God is most clearly revealed in Jesus Christ, they may talk about His teachings, His miracles, or maybe even His resurrection from the dead, but few would point to the cross. The cross is critical to the Gospel, people would say, and essential for accomplishing the mission of Jesus in the world, but it is not usually thought of as the primary way in which Jesus shows us what God is truly like.

Key Text: Philippians 2:5-11

Philippians 2:5-11 is one of the most well-known passages in the Bible about what Jesus did in leaving heaven to come to earth.

Many read this passage as a description of the downward spiral into humility and death which Jesus undertook for the sake of humanity, so that this downward spiral eventually resulted in the worst of all possible humiliations, death on a cross (Php 2:5-8). As a result, God raised Him and reversed this downward spiral of humiliation by giving Jesus an upward descent into glory and honor (Php 2:9-11).

There is nothing wrong with this interpretation, and Paul is certainly placing great emphasis on the sacrifice of Jesus in taking on sin and shame. But what is often overlooked is that this downward spiral into humiliation and then the resulting upward spiral into glorification is only a secondary point for Paul in this text.

The primary point is the fact that in everything Jesus did, He was revealing the very nature and character of God.He came, says Paul, in the “form of God” (Php 2:6).

Now again, when most Christians read verse 6 (and some Bible translations even help in this regard), we often add the word “though” or “although” to the first part of verse 6 (cf. NAS, NRSV). In this way, the reader is led to believe that the following description of Christ’s actions are contrary to the character and nature of God: That although Jesus was God, He turned His back on His divinity, and gave it all up to come to earth. Read this way, the ultimate humiliation of Jesus comes in verse 8 where Jesus became obedient to death, even to death on a cross.

Many teachers and Bible scholars have noted, however, that a better way of reading this text is not to say that although Jesus was God He came to earth to suffer and die, but rather, since Jesus was God He came to earth to suffer and die. When read this way, the cross is not the ultimate humiliation of Jesus, but the ultimate manifestation of the divinity of God in Jesus. This “position” in theology is known as “cruciform” theology. It emphasizes the cruciform nature of God, that God is most fully revealed through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.

This helps make sense of verse 8 as well, so that rather than it saying that Jesus’ ultimate humiliation was “even death on a cross” (NAS), the text should read “especially death on a cross.”

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Since Jesus perfectly reveals the Father to us, we must view God’s actions in the Old Testament within the light of Jesus’ goal to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8).

In other words, since Jesus shows us what God is like and how God functions within this world, and one of the primary tasks of Jesus in all He did and said was to destroy the devil’s work, then whatever God was doing in the Old Testament, we can be certain that He was seeking to destroy the devil’s work.

Most Christians would voice no objection to this idea. The violence of God in the Old Testament is often interpreted in exactly this light. In many churches throughout most of history, the violence of God in the Old Testament was interpreted as God’s retributive actions toward evil people. The message is often presented this way: When people sin greatly, God steps in to punish them, and maybe even kill them.

The problem with this interpretation is that we never see Jesus doing this sort of thing in the Gospels. (Yes, the book of Revelation seems to portray something different, but we’ll get to that in a later post.)

Quite to the contrary, every time Jesus has the opportunity to pour out vengeance and retribution upon other people, He not only turns away from such actions, but pointedly condemns and rebukes this behavior instead.

For example, in Luke 9:51-56, the Samaritans reject Jesus, the disciples want to call down fire from heaven to incinerate them. Where did they get such an idea? From some of the violent actions of God in the Old Testament! People who reject God are frequently incinerated by fire in the Old Testament (Lev 10:1-2; 2 Kings 1:9-12). The disciples were simply trying to follow suit with what they saw God doing in the Old Testament. But what does Jesus do? He rebukes His disciples for even having such thoughts, and tells that that these thoughts do not come from God but from some other spirit, and that He did not come to destroy men’s lives (for that is what the devil does) but to save them instead.

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One of the key things we see throughout Scripture is that we are surrounded by malevolent forces which seek only one thing: the destruction of mankind.

These forces are presented in different ways throughout Scripture, but the common theme remains the same: these powers seek to destroy humanity. They seek to ruin our lives here and now, and they seek to destroy our future lives in eternity. There is a whole system of theology inherent within this point which will summarized in future posts.

For now, note that according to the New Testament, one of the primary reasons Jesus came to earth was to stop the destruction.

First John 3:8 says that Jesus came so that He might destroy the devil’s work. Since Satan is sometimes referred to in Scripture as “the destroyer” this is somewhat a play on words by John in that Jesus is here to destroy the work of the destroyer.

To Destroy the Works of the Destroyer

And indeed, this is one of the things we see throughout the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus did not come to earth just to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the dead. If that were the case, there would have been little need for Him to be born as a human, and minister for three years through teaching, performing miracles, and casting out demons. He could have simply shown up, died on the cross, risen from the dead, and been done with it.

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When it comes to the violence of God in the Old Testament, one of the primary areas of concern is not only with God’s apparent violent actions in Scripture, but what God commands Israel to violently do in His name. In other words, the violence of God is often carried out through commands to Israel to do violence.

Israel as God’s “Hit Man”

Though in the minds of some, there is no difference between God commanding the ground to swallow people up and God commanding the Israelites to kill everyone in a particular city, others see a huge difference between the two. After all, though storms are lifeless and soulless, when God commands people to carry out His judgment He is commanding humans to take the life of other humans thereby involving them in His questionable actions.

Many critics of Christianity think that if God wants to be violent toward humanity, He should do the dirty work Himself. The fact that He asks Israel to be His “Hit Man” only makes the situation worse in the eyes of some.

Some theologians and Bible teachers try to soften the commands of God to Israel to commit violence in His name. Several of these attempts were summarized in the previous posts when we looked at several of the views of how people seek to explain the violence of God in Scripture, but the tragic fact is that violence of Israel cannot easily be explained away, and often the same reasoning that is used to get Israel if the hook in her violence toward neighboring nations is then used to justify (and even encourage) violence today from our own country toward those we view as enemies of God.

We will return to this issue later after we have seen a new way of viewing the violence of Israel.

Understand God by Looking at Jesus

Part of the framework for viewing this violence is to build upon everything we have seen so far in this chapter. If the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, and if Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels reveals the Father to us, then we should read about God in the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus, and not the other way around. We should try to understand the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob within the light of Jesus. We do not necessarily ask, “What does God teach us about Jesus?” but rather, “What does Jesus teach us about God?”

Understand Israel by Looking at Jesus

The exact same approach can be used when thinking about Israel.

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