The Resurrection

I wonder what hurt Jesus more? Our nails or our sins?

I have had intense physical pain, though nothing even close to death on a cross. But I can surely tell you that my emotional pains have been much more painful, though again not nearly the pain of Jesus taking all of our sins upon himself. So I conclude that our sins hurt Jesus more then our nails.

So rather then saying that our sins held Jesus to the cross, perhaps our sins bombarded Jesus on the cross. It is like adding hurt to injury every time we sin it is another sin that we put on Jesus. Incredible that he endured so much from just me, but imagine all of the sins of everybody everywhere for all time... wow.

But in the Bible there is this talk of his glorious comeback. So to fully understand this I analyze the comeback.

What make a great comeback is obvious: coming back from a long ways off. If MSU is down by 5 points and they "come back" and win the game by 10 points, it is not terribly exciting or impressive seeming. But if MSU is down by 75 points with 10 minutes to do go, and they win by 10 points... well there would be nothing to match the excitement of a MSU fan on that day.

Let us look specifically at Jesus comeback though. Jesus became the lowest of lows. He went from sitting on the throne to being born of a virgin in a dirty manger. And if that was not enough he got lower. He hangs out with the diseased, and the outcast. He goes and has dinner with the tax collectors. And finally he makes his exit from this physical world in an even lower place: as a convicted criminal being put to death on the cross (the crux).

Jesus intentionally put himself as the lowest imaginable human on the planet at the time, imagine the people who are on death row now and people's opinions of them.

But Jesus is totally making his comeback.

The first thing he did was coming back physically from the dead, are you impressed yet? Then he hung out for a bit and went back up into heaven, but he had just begun his come back. His next move is what we look forward to every month when we take communion. Jesus is going to come back, the same man who was the lowest of lows, is going to come back and he is going to rule over all of us.

Now we got this sweet invitation. Nobody wants to be cheering for or playing on the team that was up by 75 points against MSU only to lose by 10. Would it not be better to be down at first, to be lowly at the beginning of "the game" and be ahead later... at the end of "the game?"

We get to do that, we get to not only cheer for Jesus as he makes his comeback, but he invites us to join him in his comeback. How awesome is that? Jesus could do this without us, but he chooses to invite us onto his team. For the sake of the analogy, Jesus is incredible at basketball. Makes every shot he takes and blocks every shot he wants to, but we suck at basketball. We miss just about every shot we take, and we cannot block a shot worth spit, but he wants us on his team.

1 Peter 4:13 says: "But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."

When we suffer to be on Jesus team, we get to be overjoyed when he wins.

And he will win, I promise ;)

In anticipation,

Ben