How should one frame this issue of Jesus offering tribute to
His enemy? Jesus does not say “You take the bodies, I only want the
souls.” Jesus did not experience merely a spiritual, soul-ish
Resurrection, nor will those that stand in the union of trusting allegiance to
Him, calling Him Lord. Jesus did not say to His enemy, “You take this
world (the creation), we’re just going to heaven.” No, with man’s fall
came the fall of all of the covenant God’s good creation and the flood of death
and corruption into the world. The Creator God’s promise is to redeem all
of His creation, defeating death in its entirety and ending corruption.
Indeed, the creation is described as groaning for this redemption to occur, as
it was subjected to futility through no fault of its own, and hopes for a
resurrection like that which will come upon the Creator God’s children (Romans
8:20-21).
The Resurrection is taken to be the sign and the promise
that the enemy exacts no tribute whatsoever from Jesus. If there was to
be no physical resurrection and no restoration of the creation---if believers
are just waiting to be whisked away into heaven so that they can watch the
world be destroyed---then they can know that a tribute (sign of subservience to
His enemy) was exacted from Jesus, that death was not truly defeated, and that
they have no true reason to hope in Him.
As believers continue
to see their King Jesus through the Psalmist’s description of the anointed,
supported, and strengthened one referred to as “David, My Servant,” they read
that “a violent oppressor will not be able to humiliate him” (89:22b).
Death, of course, is the greatest of all oppressors. It is and has been
the constant, stalking, baneful enemy of man from the time of the fall.
It has crowded in upon his thoughts, and in some way, covered the majority of
his waking moments.
For Jesus, as a man,
death stood in the same role. When the Gospels are read, the reader finds
that death surrounded Jesus on a regular basis. Not only did it surround
Him because people were constantly coming to Him for healing from maladies that
were often productive of death, and not only did He raise people from the dead,
but quite often, the Gospel stories reveal that his own life was threatened,
with reports of there being a relatively consistent existence of plans, from
nearly the beginning of His ministry, to silence Him through
assassination. Sometimes, these plans were well thought out and
deliberated, and sometimes, such as that which occurred in Nazareth, they seem
to be a spur-of-the-moment thing.
When death finally
caught up with Him and had Jesus in its grasp, not only was it going to be an
oppressor, but it was going to be a violent oppressor. Jesus was going to
experience the full weight of death’s might as He underwent the scourging and
the cross, which represented the pinnacle of man’s corrupted creativity, as it
was one of the most torturous and painful means of death ever devised.
The cross, along with
its attendant punishments, was designed to not only induce the utmost of
painful deaths, but also to humiliate, and to demonstrate the shamed victim’s
utter powerlessness against the nearly omnipotent power of Rome. This is
that which Jesus underwent. To all
appearances, it seemed that He was made to succumb to the same fate as all that
had been sent down the path of the cross, sharing in its shame and its
humiliation, violently oppressed by death at the hands of Rome.
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