Years ago, I went on a college mission trip where we went from house to house, knocking on doors, trying to begin evangelistic Bible studies. One of the questions we were told to ask as an “ice-breaker” was the question of who do you think God is? I can’t remember how anyone ever answered that question and to be quite honest, I’m not sure how I would have answered that question either. Today, is different. Ask me who God is and I will unequivocally tell mention Jesus.
Yes, that’s a very simple answer in needs of further explanation but one of the foundational claims of Christianity is that when we see Jesus, we see God in the flesh. We call this doctrine the Incarnation. The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the eternal Word of God who not only was with God in the beginning but was God and who became flesh, making his dwelling place among us (Jn 1:1, 14). Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul recites an early Christian hymn that speaks of Jesus as the very icon or image of God and in whom the fullness of God lives (Col 1:15, 19). Likewise, the writer of Hebrews describes Jesus as “the imprint of God’s being” (Heb 1:3). Of course, when we consider the many miraculous acts Jesus did, they all point to his divine identity.
So, I am now able to answer the question of who God is. In fact, as I like to tell people, it’s not that Jesus is like God but that God is like Jesus because he is Jesus. That is, God is like Jesus because he has become flesh in the person of Jesus.
This matters much during this season of Lent as we approach Holy Week, during which, many years ago, Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross. Yes, God the Father raises Jesus from death and exalts him as the Lord and Messiah but now our answer to the question of who is God must include the image of Christ, God in the flesh, crucified. As Jürgen Moltmann reminds us, the image of Christ crucified means that God is like this (The Crucified God, 205). God is the one who has become flesh in the person of Jesus, choosing to work through suffering death himself on a Roman Cross.
Yet this just might be our stumbling block. We want to think of God as all-powerful, and he is, but he chooses to exercise his power through the humility of Jesus hanging on the cross. As believers, we’re called to participate in the mission of God by following Jesus and that seems fine until we have to choose between the power and wisdom of God manifested in the crucifixion of Jesus or the power and wisdom of the society we live among.
Remember, how the apostle Paul said, “Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified…” (1 Cor 1:22-23). Well, we might ask ourselves a question: If Jews look for signs and Greeks for wisdom, what do Americans look for? Who knows exactly what the answer is but perhaps science, politics, money, guns, education, and even conspiracy theories. Every day we are then faced with a choice of whether we will choose to live by the power and wisdom of Christ Crucified or will we choose some other power?
That’s a question that needs to be answered by everyone of us, both as individuals and as local churches. How we answer that question will reflect how we embody the gospel and whether our witness will tell the story of Jesus Christ crucified upon the cross or some other story we just slap some religious language upon. What will our answer be?
Kingdom Seeking 