The Disciple and The Crucifixion Of Christ. Part Two
Whenever we think of the Cross, you could actually , if you look at it with the eye of an ordinary man, see the Cross as a weakness of God. Because how can somebody who is the Almighty God allow Himself to be crucified on a cross. You may almost sympathize with those who said ,”If you are the Almighty God, how can you hang helplessly on the cross? Come down. If you can help others, help Yourself now”. So, you can call the Cross the weakness of God.
But thank God for 1 Cor. 1:25 which says even if you call it the weakness of God, it is stil stronger than the strenght of men. In other words, even when God is at the weakest , He is still stronger than the strongest man available. Actually the Cross is not the weakness of God, it is the meekness of God , Another name for Jesus Christ is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. But when John swaw him in John 1:29, he swaid , “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world”.
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah clothed Himself in the clothing of a lamb. This One is not an ordinary Lamb. According to Isaiah 53:7, the Bible says,
“He was oppressed , and he was afflicted, yet he opened not His mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.”
We are told this particular Lamb would not even open his mouth. He would not cry. Even as they are leading Him to kill, He refused to talk. What are we saying? A meek person is somebody who has tremendous power but who decides to become helpless for a purpose. In Luke 9:51-56, the Bible record an incident for us. It says Jesus Christ was going to Jerusalem . He sent His disciples ahead to a village to tell them that He wanted to spend a night there. The people said He could not stay there and two of his disciples . James and John said,
“LORD , let us call down fire from heaven and destroy them like Elijah did.”
What is it that Jesus said? He rebuked them saying,
“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”
He said if you are going to be my disciple, then your spirit must be like my spirit not the spirit that destroys but the spirit that saves. If you are talking of the power to bring down fire from heaven , when they came to arrest him in Matthew 26:51-53, and Peter tried to defend Him. Jesus Christ said,
“Do you think I cannot ask My Father and He would send Me twelve legions of angels to defend ME?”
Now let us assume that a legion is 1,000 angels , twelve legions will be 12,000 angels, and if you have read your Bible very well, you will have come across the place where one angel destroyed 185,000 soldiers in one night. If one angel can do that, can you imagine what 12,000 angels could have done?”
Jesus was aware of his power. He knew that if he were to use that power without control, the very people that he had come to save would have been destroyed. So he was keeping everything under control, not that He was weak but He was meek and that is what God us waiting for in you as a disciple. Before he would deposit His power in you, He has to be sure that you will not use the power to destroy.
Many of us want the power of God and we are yet to conquer anger. If you get angry once, you would destroy the whole world. This is why He is making sure that the people who would receive His power would be crucified, dead and resurrect before He can begin to deposit His treasure in their earthen vessels.
In Matt. 11:28-29, while He was inviting you to come unto Him, so that you can have rest for your soul, he insisted that you have to put His yoke upon yourself and He described Himself there. He said,
“I am meek and lowly”
He said if you want to be my partner, you need to know whose partnership you are entering into. This is why I pray that the Almighty God will let us have the same kind olf mind that Jesus has. In fact, the Bible says in Phil. 2:5-7 that,
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God , thought it nor robbery to be equal with God; But made Himself of no reputation , and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”
This is the crux of the matter. He made himself of no reputation. It does not mean that He has no reputation, but He deliberately made Himself of no reputation.
This is the same person that we saw on the Mount of Transfiguration in Math. 17:1-6 . When the disciples saw a little bit of His Glory, they were afraid and wondered if this is the same Person they had been sleeping with, if this was the One that they had been eating with, the One who had all his glory. He allowed himself to be born in a manger. This is the same Jesus with all the power , with all the glory, the Ancient of Days himself, according to John 13:3-9 , yet he washed human’s feet.
When we are talking about meekness, we are talking of a trained horse. We all know there is no human being that can face a horse when it comes to strength , but when you have trained a horse, it keeps that tremendous strength under control, this is what we call meekness.
I am sure you know a little about the power of God. If He makes a little bit available to you, you can say let there be no rain, and there will be no rain for three years. You can destroy a whole nation just by using a little bit of the power God give you. You know what Elijah did . You know what Elisha also did before he knew the kind of power that was already transferred to him. Some children were mocking him, he turned and said, “I cursed you in the name of the Lord”. Before he finished speaking, forty-two of them were dead. This kind of power is frightening. Are you ready for that kind of power? It goes only with tremendous meekness . And anyone who is going to have this kind of power must know what is called humility.
When Jesus Christ was washing the feet of the disciples, He said unto them,
“You called me Lord. That is what I am. There is no doubt about it, I am your Lord, but now in washing your feet, I am giving you an example that you can follow.
There is something about humility, You must forget that you are something before you can really be humble. You have to be humble in order to be meek.
When we talk about the word HUMILITY, it comes from the same root word ‘humus’, that is good soil.
So when we say somebody is humble, we are talking about somebody who is like the soil. You know something about the soil? You walk on it, it does not complain. You excrete on it, it will not complain. You dig it, it will not complain. Why? Because when we talk about the soil, we are talking about humility per se. This is the most powerful thing probably available on earth, because if the soil refuses to produce food, every one of you walking on it now would soon be dead. But the soil will not even complain, it will keep on bringing the food. It will ask you to go on doing whatever you like with it, knowing fully well that one day, it is going to swallow you . You that is jumping on top of it now, it will be the one who will swallow you.
So it is the humble who will ultimately overcome all the enemies. After all today, Jesus has a name that is above every other name.
So when we are talking about the weakness of God, the Cross is not the weakness of God. It was the meekness of God. I am telling you that in the meekness of God there is a lot to learn.
If you want the power of God, you better talk to God , now and say,
Lord, help me so that I will be very , very meek.
Talk to Him now.
PS: I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We would appreciate it if you could drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.
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