A God who Makes Himself Vulnerable

We have an all-powerful God.

 

I mean, that's sort of what you want, isn't it? You want a big tough-guy sort of God who can ride in and save the day whenever things go wrong.

 

But is that the God we need?

 

At least one of my three sons when through an "angry" phase when he was young. I won't name any names. I'll just say his name starts with "E" (all of my boys' names start with E).

 

Whenever he wouldn't get his way, or one of his brothers was giving him a hard time, he'd resort to punches and kicks.

 

It wasn't just his brothers, either. He'd try it with me, too. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen.

 

It didn't even hurt. He was so small, but so angry, so determined that he was going to get his way that despite all odds stacked against him, he turned anger and range, and started throwing fists around.

 

It didn't hurt even a little. I was pretty much invulnerable to his punches. I mean, when a three-year-old (threes are way more "terrible" than the twos IMO) is punching a grown adult, it's almost funny. He'd rear back, and give me his best shot. I wouldn't feel the slightest bit of pain.

 

The hardest thing was trying to get him to calm down enough so we could explain why hitting people (e.g. your brothers and parents) isn't a solution to not getting his way.

 

As impossible as it was for my three-year-old(s) to hurt me, it's even less possible for us to hurt God.

 

But we get angry, don't we?

 

I know a lot of people who are angry at God. For whatever reason, whether it was the loss of someone they loved, or an injustice they suffered, or whatever, they are enraged that God didn't intervene and do things differently.

 

A lot of people who say they are atheists, when pressed, will say they can't believe in God because they're mad at God. It begs the question, how can you be angry at a God you don't think exists? It's sort of like another game children like to play, when they "pretend" to ignore you, as if you don't exist, just so they can teach you a "lesson."

 

In the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth. Throughout the Scriptures, he'd go ahead of his people, he'd fight their battles and win their wars. He's an invulnerable God, impossible to beat.

 

But then... the most incredible thing happened.

 

God made himself vulnerable. 

 

How did we respond?

 

Well, when he made himself vulnerable as a baby, we immediately tried to kill him. Herod slaughtered every first-born male in the region, and Joseph and Mary had to flee with Jesus to Egypt.

 

When Jesus was a bit older he returned his home-town synagogue in Nazareth, he read a prophecy from the Isaiah Scroll, and he made himself vulnerable by revealing to people who he knew wouldn't understand that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. 

 

And what did they do? They tried to throw him off a cliff.

 

Jesus made himself vulnerable to his closest friends. One of them betrayed him, another denied him explicitly, and the others denied him implicitly by hiding behind locked doors when Jesus was arrested.

 

The Almighty Creator of the Universe, took on human flesh, and he allowed us to pour out all our rage... through Roman whips, jeers and mockery, a crown of thorns, and through one of the most cruel and painful methods of execution ever devised my mankind. He allowed us to crucify him.

 

Why would an all-powerful God do something like that? What could ever move a God who needs nothing at all, who lacks nothing, who has existed eternally, to subject himself to the rage of his mere creatures?

 

Only because He loved us. That's what John 3:16 says, by the way. There's a little word there that we usually overlook. "For God so loved the world." The Greek word, there, means "in this way." The best translation of that verse is, "God loved the world in this way: he gave his only begotten son, so that whomsoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life."  

 

He made himself vulnerable because love is always vulnerable.

 

Thank about it. When you decide to love someone, you make yourself totally vulnerable to them. If you give someone your heart, you run a great risk they'll crush it. Love requires vulnerability.

 

And we did exactly that.

 

He gave us his heart, and we broke it.

 

We did more than break it. We rejected Him, we stomped on His heart/love, and spat on it.

 

We're like tantrum-throwing children, aren't we? God didn't do what we thought He should do, so we resorted to violence.

 

But that didn't stop Him. He kept loving us. With every strike of the Roman whip, with every scream, with every laugh from the onlookers, he could have risen up at any second and with less than a snap of his fingers, wiped everyone there out of existence.

 

But that's not what love does. Love makes itself vulnerable. It allows itself to be hurt because it values the one it loves more than it values itself. That's why Jesus gave himself for us.

 

Because God loved us more than He even loved himself.

 

You can tell how much someone values something by how much they're willing to pay for it. Well, God paid for you with something of infinite, priceless, worth. He paid for you by offering up Himself. He gave His eternally begotten Son so to you so you could see the depth of His love for you.

 

A big, almighty, lightening-bolts-from-heaven God doesn't do that. There's no way to show your "love" with a flex (though a lot of fellas at the gym might try). You see, in the "comparative religion" game it's not just about "My God can beat up your God." While God does fight our battles, what we have isn't just a God who can beat up all the other false deities out there, we have a God who allows Himself to be beaten up for our sake.

 

Have you ever thought about that? How at any second Jesus could have stopped it all? How he could have put an end to his suffering, his pain, and all of it? Do you know what Jesus was thinking about when they whipped him, when they forced those thorns onto his head, and they nailed him to the cross?

 

He was thinking about you. And how much He loves you.

 

That's why this week is called the "passion" week. It's not just that Jesus suffered, but he suffered because He was passionate for you. When you really understand that, the depth of His love for you, it's impossible to go on living the same way. How can you turn from Him again, and again, and again, once you've truly grasped in faith the price He paid to show you how much He loves you?

 

In Jesus name,

Judah