Embracing a Power-Filled Gospel

A number of years ago, I attended a Good Friday liturgy and veneration of the cross. As I venerated the arms of Jesus on the crucifix, I reflected on what those arms had carried. The weight of it. The taking on of our brokenness, pain, illness, torment, disease, hardship, sin, bondage, poverty, fractured relationships.... everything that didn’t belong in this world as God had designed it. Those arms carried it all. Every form of darkness was carried straight to death, riding Jesus’ body as a vehicle into the grave. That body, willing to die so that evil could be delivered to its proper place: buried and dealt with, removed from the equation for humanity. And then the incredible resurrecting of Jesus, leaving those things behind to rot as He walked away glorified — essentially, the equivalent of flipping the bird to the devil and his powers of darkness.

This is where I began to wrestle with things. Because this price that He paid was so incredibly steep. And the conquering and triumph so incredibly drastic. It had to mean something. He died for something. For something to change, for a new reality to kick in. So why did my life after this “event” look no different than the lives of those before this “event”? Why was my post-Resurrection life so frighteningly similar to pre-Resurrection life? Why was I able to identify more closely with the Jews and their rule following and rituals and self-scrutiny and checklists and darkness and travail... or worse yet, with the Pharisees and their right answers and polished performances and judgment and semantics... and not at all with the actual followers of Jesus in the book of Acts?

The thing I discovered was that I had never really known the gospel until that moment. Until that wrestle. Honestly, until God pulled back the veil and revealed the Word to me for what it was, and not merely as snippets or sound bites to reinforce whatever message was getting delivered (which was usually an exhortation for behavior modification).

I think somewhere along my faith journey, I had come to accept a powerless gospel. For me, this manifested as the tolerating (and even embracing) of the things that Jesus explicitly came to destroy. Things like fear and self-hatred and sickness and torment — the very things Jesus gave his life to rescue me from. Rather than question the legitimacy of these things in my life, I had re-spun the gospel to justify their presence. Rather than seek out the power of the Lord to evict the works of the enemy that were trespassing on holy ground, I had bent to accommodate them. And in doing so, I had given them permission to remain.

Consequently, the Word of God had become nothing more than a place to derive solace and coping mechanisms in the midst of my suffering.

While Jesus was an excellent teacher and admirable role model, the fruit of His life should do more for us than provide teachings, principles, and guideposts for life. That fruit is valuable, but it’s the kind of fruit that mere men leave behind, not Saviors. Not the Son of God. Not the One who defeated death once and for all.

What Christ purchased for us on that cross goes beyond coping mechanisms for managing our hardships. He purchased victory. That LOOKS like something. It looks like freedom, like power, like we are actually the hero of our story and not the victim. It looks like getting out of the red and into the black, and bringing everyone we touch right along with us.

Years before this revelatory moment, God radically delivered me from some lifelong afflictions that I never fathomed I could be free from. It was supernatural, life altering, and completely unexpected. What He said to me as I tried to process my miraculous new freedom was:

“You might have been willing to settle for less than this, but I was not willing for you to settle.”

I believe He wants to issue a similar invitation and clarion call to His Church today: What is it you are willing to embrace?

The gospel is a line in the sand. Either Jesus took care of things or He didn’t. Either God is only & always good or He isn’t. Either this world is meant to become “as it is in heaven” or it isn’t. Either we are supernaturally empowered to do something about that or we aren’t.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for continual wrestling as we sort out and steward the “already but not yet”... but it does mean we either stand for the full gospel and everything that comes with it — the power and the overcoming and the refusal to tolerate strategies and strongholds of the enemy — or we don’t.

What this meant for me was a renunciation of the false gospel I had learned to accept, and a stake in the ground with a new life-cry: “May Jesus get the full reward of His suffering.”

May it be so, and may this be the cry in the heart of every believer.