The Power of God

All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me (Matt. 28:18).

 

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God...for since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

 

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (I Cor. 18-24).

 

It is difficult to understand the cross as "the power and the wisdom of God."  But it is only the cross of Christ that has the power to destroy sin and evil.  When David was being relentlessly pursued by the armies of King Saul, when he was hiding out in caves, not even able to get a drink of water to slake his thirst, he cried out, "If only you would destroy these men of evil who seek my life, O Lord!"

 

Is this an "un-Christian" approach to evil?  I think not.  Sometimes, our only hope to escape evil is to pray for the destruction of our enemies.  Deitrich Bonhoeffer was part of a plot to destroy Hitler in Germany; for his part, he was sentenced to a death camp and hanged just a week or so before Hitler committed suicide and the death camps were liberated.  Was Bonhoeffer "un-Christian" in his desperate solution to the problem of evil?  We of course cannot judge his actions -- but I think the person who is willing to sacrifice his own life in an attempt to save others cannot be un-Christian.

 

There is no "solution" for pure evil except the death of the one in whom it resides.  During the 60's and 70's, Catholic bishops were informed by psychologists that predator priests could be "cured" by therapy, and the bishops accepted the advice of the "experts."  Today we know better: there is no "cure" for evil.  Can abusive parents be "cured"?  Can evil be "reformed"?  The death penalty we have adopted in the United States testifies to our conviction that the only solution to grave and continuous evil is death-- or lifetime incarceration, which is another (and to me less desirable) form of death.

 

Although the death of the sinner is the only solution to evil, God's wisdom has provided a way out.  He does not desire the death of the sinner, but only the death of the sinful nature: for when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore the fruit for death.  But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code....

Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it...So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin (Romans 7).

 

The "power" of the cross is the destruction of our sinful nature:  there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1)....if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness (v.10).

 

The wisdom of God is not that Jesus had to die, but that we have to die -- the sinful nature, the "law of sin and death" residing in each one of us, has to die.  There is no other cure for sin except death.  Paul says, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me to the glory of God."  That is our "cure;" that is the wisdom of God.  As "I" die, as I allow Jesus to crucify my sinful nature, it -- the sinful nature to which I am a slave-- is replaced with a "new creation," a new nature that is obedient to God.  Now I can bear fruit to the kingdom of heaven instead of to the laws of the flesh. 

 

Jesus took my sinful nature to the cross and there destroyed it forever.  In His resurrection, He brought me back to life, no longer a slave to sin, but alive to God in the Spirit.  This is the "power and the wisdom" of God:  that I am alive and free from sin!

 

A stumbling block to the Jews (who wanted instead miraculous signs) and foolishness to the Gentiles, (who want something that makes sense in the wisdom of this world)!  But to me, a slave to sin that makes me hate the things I do, a cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving!