The Glory of God and our Creaturehood
This section adapted from John Piper—Desiring God Conference
We have a vast Savior, whose glory we have to ‘see’ in order to be saved (2 Cor 4:4-6). We exist to spread a passion, a joy in the supremacy of Christ in all things. This is why I am here on earth as a child of God—to stoke the flame—to leave things red hot. There is something profound in finding your delight in blessings others (1 Jn 4). There is a reason for your life—a reason you did not create. It was given to your sovereignly (do you believe this?). To deny this IS to waste your life (John Piper).
Existentialism puts existence before essence (epistemology before ontology)—thus there is no reality outside of self to which you must bring your life into alignment and conformity with/to the given essence defined by God (this is the ancient lie in Eden). In existentialism you create your own existence and project your own existence (this goes with evolution and naturalism and the Edenic Lie). But you can’t reduce your existence to ordered chemicals without objective reality and objective existence to which you conform your life (you can’t and don’t live that way).
People are constantly making moral evaluations—their consciences are busy weighing the ethical choices of those around them, and their own choices (Rom 2:13-15). If a person says the holocaust was just a blip on the radar of human evolution, just some unfortunate electrical activity in the synapses/brains of the Nazis—we scream, “No, you are wrong, it was horrifically unjust to torture innocent citizens!” We are indignant, we have moral outrage. The point is that it is absurd to say that there is no meaning outside of self to which we must conform the self.
What is a wasted life? It will be declared from the outside (of us). I will be defined by absolute reality declared by Christ, the Father, and the Word. God has the right and authority to define our entire existence—this is what it means that He is Almighty God. A bruised Christ said, “You will see the Son of man coming in the clouds of glory.”
Jesus and Paul believed that you could waste your life. By contrast, the total relativist believes that there is no objective standard for what is a wasted life. In Luke 12, Jesus warns against coveteousness— your soul is on loan to you, and God requires it back from you. A fool will waste his life. Our culture is willfully oblivious to this fact—blithely imagining that a benign, ordinary life is not a wasted life.
The essence of an un-wasted life is found in Philippians 1:20-21. Christ is more valuable than anything life can offer. How radical we would be if we could be like Paul, “to die is gain.” Live for/in Christ, die in/for Christ is gain. People observe your life—they make inferences from your life. When they observe you, do they see Jesus as more valuable than anything?
Most people in Christianity ‘coast’ into worldliness—they don’t ask, “how can everything in my life make Christ more valuable than all else?” A day is coming where the entire creation—the whole cosmos, from animals to star systems, everything in the sea, all thing from trees to tigers will all give vent to the worthiness of the King of kings (Rev 4; Ps 96).
Christ is the supreme manifestation of God—the Father in the flesh (“show us the Father!”) (Jn 14). Christ is supreme, preeminent—He is speaking the universe into existence every millisecond (Heb1:1-3). The reason we exist is to display the majesty of Christ—because He is God (we know God in Him). The reason the universe exists is to make God known. This is the meaning of the universe—the definition of an un-wasted life.
God’s communicated to the biblical authors the all-encompassing idea that the universe exists for the purposes of a self-exalting God. We are to join Him in His own self-glorification. People stumble over this —that their existence is defined by the reality that they exist to magnify God—you are created for His glory —for His Name’s sake. God does all for His glory. He commands us to join Him in it. This is not a duty of drudgery. It is a call/invitation into the passion for His glory—into the inter-Trinitarian ‘conspiracy’ to glorify one another (within the Godhead). Salvation is God’s effectual invite into the joyous communal life of the Holy Trinity.
God’s allegiance to His own glory shows how He is righteous toward us, the redeemed, AND how His righteous glory is treasure of infinite worth—above anything that can be treasured. God’s commitment to His Name is His righteousness. God has an unwavering allegiance to His own happiness— He delights in His Son more than you—He is infinitely happy delighting in His own perfections in the Son (Jn 17:22-24). As sinners, we love self more than God—people imagine that they can be religious, love themselves, and use God (treat Him as merely useful—using God to get your ‘supreme’ treasure’: created things). But if you are radically God-centered, then you won’t let that stand.
In our carnal reason, we don’t like a God-centered God. It doesn’t sound loving to us. God seeks His own all the time (His own good pleasure—but He does so in a way that is holy). God constantly exalting His Son is vastly more loving than being creature-centered. God cannot be true to Himself and make Himself the means to your self-satisfaction (if you are the end, and He is the means that is non-love).
What is love? The answer is in 1 John 4. Love dies to liberate self from bondage so that you can delight in God forever. Divine redeeming love frees you from a love affair with self—frees you from self-absorption. God would be unloving if He didn’t magnify Himself in your presence. You were created to know something vastly greater than self (without that created purpose you wouldn’t know what love is). Love is God expending Himself in the Son (at the expense of the Son in His atoning work) to liberate you from self to make much of God. Left to myself I will remain blind to these things.
When you love God, it is not just your love for God, but entering into God’s love for God. Only then can you begin to conceive of how vast He is (a wonderfulness beyond your comprehension). This comprehension is not something you can generate yourself—you cannot produce it or manufacture it. The reason why is because it is the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit is the love of God as a real Person. The mission of the Spirit in your life is: “He will glorify Me” (Jn 16). Christ prayed for this ministry of the Spirit for His own—that the love which You loved Me may be in them (Jn 17). This is remarkable—that the magnitude of the love for the Son by the Father should be put into a finite creature (a saved sinner) by the Spirit’s indwelling.
Think of it—that the Father’s love granted in its fullness requires a resurrection body to manage (or handle) the energy of the Father’s love of the Son in you—you need a glorified body to manage it because it is going to land on you with cataclysmic force (plunging you into the ‘ocean’—the shoreless sea of His love). When I count Christ as gain then I am making much of Christ—enjoying Him so much that no losses here are loss compared to counting Christ my gain.
God does all from eternity to eternity for His glory. The cross is the center of all (2 Tim 1:9). God be forever praised because His grace is the apex of His glory. Grace is the ‘spill over’ of the totality of God. The glorious self-sufficient cross is the most full display of His grace. By sufficient we mean that in salvation there is no transaction, no qualifying of self, no obligating God. Christ is full of grace and truth (we full of darkness and demerit).
God’s mind has been consumed with the plan of the cross forever (God does not learn, nor do things ‘come to mind’). The book of life of the Lamb that was slain—our names are in the book of the slaughtered lamb before the world was created. All is summed up in Christ (Eph 1:10; Col 1:19-21). “It is finished” finished the end and goal of the universe. What He did, is and was shall be the content of our praise forever. This cross-work had to happen in order for us to see and savor and treasure the glory that is Christ.
He is magnified in the treasuring of Christ above all things—but what has to happen—for this to change? What has to be ‘fixed’ in us for this to happen? Our nature prefers created things over the glory of Christ. We worship and serve the creation rather than God in Christ. We break the first command of loving God first. We forsake the ‘fountain’ for the leaky stagnant cistern of created things (Jer 2). We love darkness in order to conceal our idolatry (Jn 3:19-21).
The gospel is counter-intuitive. It overturns our natural understanding which says, “I can do something to qualify myself for God’s favor and acceptance.” God’s freeness in bestowing grace—not in connection with us. God’s essential glory is put on display in salvation because He is completely in charge of the dispensing of His mercy. He acts preemptively—all the conditions necessary to show grace are met by Him (as opposed to synergy). Monergism puts God’s character on display—so that the only possible response is the obedience of the creature in faith and repentance. Faith in God’s sovereign mercy is faith in who God really is—for He is known by HOW He saves—faith alone lets God be God.
Unbelief is a battle about control—control over source, how needs are met, how God is to be approached. The grasping for control is a battle over how the sinner is to be protected from God. Faith surrenders to God’s control—it is entrusting oneself to Christ. To love control is to hate divine grace, for only ‘God can protect us from God’. This is a paradox that is inseparable from the biblical truth that God Himself in Christ is our only refuge for our guilty souls.
Total depravity is the total inability to submit to God’s glory and God’s law. We love darkness— dead men don’t do anything right. We cannot prefer God to idols (Eph 2; 1 Cor 2). The language of “cannot” is troubling to us. There is the physical cannot, and the moral cannot (moral inability). When physically unable we cannot but would. But in moral cannot, the motive of comfort and independence outweighs to motive to please the Person (you cannot). The motive must be changed by sovereign grace, OR, the motive will not change. I am totally bound to my corruption—I prefer God’s creation to God. I cannot prefer God. Oh how this illustrates the desperate need for regeneration (sovereign grace).
Churches are so guilty of removing and downplaying punitive language. God sentences people justly to everlasting torment. To be enslaved to my love affair with creation instead of God sends me to hell (Rom 1). Every day as a Christian, I deserve hell—that’s how great God’s glory is. There is not a strict equivalence between sin and punishment—the crime is measured by the dignity of the One you have assaulted. People do not have moral outrage over their sin. They only have outrage about suffering, not about the spiritual consequences of their sin. God has sentenced the creation—it is in groaning turmoil like a woman in labor—this is all traceable to original sin.
Our great problem (the human condition) is that you will love darkness UNLESS something happens. Your problem is that you demean His glory by preferring His creation to Him. Two things must be remedied in your life if you are not to remain alienated from God:
ONE: an external problem—you are under wrath and judgment. To be dealt with in judgment means you will get what you deserve.
TWO: an internal problem—what you are by nature, in yourself. Your motives are to prefer created things to God (hostility and enmity to God). You love darkness. By nature you are an idolater. Both of these problems have to be addressed finally and definitively and radically if your two-part problem is to be solved. The good news is that God has stepped in to solve this problem. (See 1 Cor 15:1-3; 1 Pet 2:24; 2 Cor 5:21.) Your sin was condemned in Christ’s flesh—the glorious truth of substitution.
If we understand anything about God’s holiness, and our unrighteousness, then the big problem is: how can God bring people to heaven? The answer is that God puts His own righteousness on display in the redemption of sinners (Rom 3:23-26). The power of God through the gospel changes hearts. As long as you have a ‘stone heart’—you cannot love God and Christ (you waste your life). That heart of flesh was purchased for you at the cross (for God’s elect).
A heart of flesh is needed in order to be satisfied in Jesus and love His glory. What the gospel requires (faith and repentance), the new covenant creates (it creates what it commands—this is the meaning of grace). Because of the blood of Christ, our two problems are solved. The gospel comes bringing new ability—the very ability we lost in the fall. By contrast to true grace, the synergist says, “I made Christ’s work effectual.” Synergism is a radical misrepresentation of God, for the gospel comes bringing the very thing necessary for us to comply with its conditions in order to receive its promises (the promise of a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone).
In order to be God-glorifying monergists, we must believe that regeneration precedes the reception of the gospel—granting the ability to believe the gospel. If you are a true believer, then Christ has purchased for you the regenerating and indwelling work of the Spirit. Christ came down all the way to the ‘mortuary’ of the spiritually dead. Any measure of man’s control in salvation removes the demand for absolute surrender. In other words, if my salvation is in any part cooperation with God, it removes absolute obligation. Synergism in salvation kills absolute obligation to the Lord. B. B. Warfield refers to synergism as ‘autosoterism’ (save yourself).
God’s grace is marvelous—He set His love upon His own while they were still in their uncleanness (Ez 16:3-6; Rom 5:8-10). Wonder of wonders, though God lives in unapproachable light, our creation-preferring idolatrous hearts were not despised by our Lord.
The awakened sight of the glory of God in the gospel through faith spills over onto others—it is called love—you want others to experience His value—that equals love. Agape love is the ‘horizontalization’ of my vertical delight in God (2 Cor 8:1; Ps 63:3). Grace is not just non-judgment, it is divine power moving into ineffective lives and fixing them.
When grace comes down the first effect is joy—joy that surpasses understanding—joy that soars above circumstances. In the midst of being misunderstood, beat up by health issues, financial problems, persecution, falsely accused, church people mistreating you—in all this you don’t murmur—you live as one with treasure elsewhere. You don’t grumble or do vengeance—you are consequently salt and light (Phil 2:14-15). The gospel means that all Christ is doing for you, He is doing by virtue of union with you, and not by your performance. Paul suffers in order to extend the cross—which through suffering is working patience and hope and eternal glory (2 Cor 4:16-18).
Spiritual gifts are a way of making much of Christ. Spiritual gifts are like a prism—uniquely projecting God’s use of you (what you are that nobody else is). When the Holy Spirit comes on you to dedicate the totality of self through your uniqueness, He refracts as through a prism through you what nobody else can do. Then (as in mission and calling) you do what you love to do and it will be loving people with all your heart. “Here’s who I am—dedicated to God.” God shines through you—a refraction of a set of beams of God—what God made you to be—where He put you—how He has gifted you.
The best minds belong on the mission field. There are the most challenging areas of ministry (where the devil opposes). Missions grow out of theological depth (evidenced by the ground-breaking work of William Carey). The common catalyst in these missionary pioneers is that their impetus for missions was rooted doctrinally in the nature of God. They were deep profound thinkers about the nature of God—that was their ‘deep soil’. They were so theologically rooted—so theologically-driven.
The more technical you are the more dated you are. Ministry is spiritual in nature. Theological depth grounds us in a spiritual sight of God’s nature—out of which comes the transforming knowledge of what He is doing in the world.
A real education is not in a school or a classroom. Theological depth involves a profoundly deep grasp of the sovereignty of God—there was no man-centeredness in the early missional movement. There was a theological force behind it all—men gripped by a vision of the greatness of the sovereignty of God. God owns the world—thus Christ in His comprehensive authority over heaven and earth is so big, so vast— so authoritative, so mighty. Therefore, we will go to every nation and talk to people about His authority, the bigness of Jesus, His power, and ownership. How important is missions/the great commission? It is so important that all we really have among true believer is: goers, senders, and disobedient—no other categories.
JOHN 10 is the missionary text in the gospel of John—Jesus calls Himself Shepherd (v. 11)— there is a flock (v. 14). There are other sheep (v. 16). He must bring them—they will heed My voice. Some sheep in the fold are Christ’s and some are not (v. 14)—not all in the flock are His. His own know His voice. The reason that some sheep belong to Christ is because His Father gave them to Him (v. 29). God has a people—“the men You gave Me” (17:6). John’s understanding of salvific reality (6:37)—when the Father gives them, they will come. Christ will not cast them out—this promise highlights the glorious keeping power of Jesus (10:28-30).
Jesus knows those who are His—and calls them by name—they follow because they know His voice. By this we know we are born of God—those born of God listen to us. The true sheep are divided from the false by ‘who hears His voice’ (your relation to His Word). Being Christ’s sheep enables them to come. You don’t become a sheep by coming to Christ (v. 26). If you hear His voice, listen—He becomes beautiful to you—then you know you are His sheep. There is mind-blowing theology in the Gospel of John expressed in simple Greek.
Jesus’ theology here is good in order for arrogant self-determining people to be put in their place. The Pharisees were essentially saying, “We will ruin your plan by not believing in You.” But, Christ to the Pharisees is communicating at timeless truth about God that you don’t put Jesus in His place by your unbelief. This truth drove missions in the early period of modern missions. The real issue is: you don’t believe because you don’t belong (you are not one of My sheep).
Not only does Jesus call His sheep, they hear Him. He dies for His sheep (“I know My own and My own know Me.”) Romans 8:30 is a parallel passage: given, called, sacrificed for them, given eternal life, never taken away. Jesus’ keeping power is highlighted in John 10—there are no dropouts in the plan of salvation. This all drove missions. Missionaries grounded in this theology had a supernatural determination —they faced the jaws of lions. Whimpy theology produces whimpy Christians. Missionaries need to be raised up in the power of John 10:16.
Ralph Winter and Lausanne, Switzerland: he stood up and said, “there are 24,000 ethno-distinct people groups. . . 90% of your missionaries are laboring in the reached half.” But where do I get the confidence and encouragement that it will be worth it? (Don’t go if you think you might fail.). John 10:16 is where missionaries get their confidence. Christ has a people besides those already converted. If I didn’t believe in predestination, I would never be a missionary. He said this in response to knowing the impenetrable nature of the human heart. Predestination makes missions possible.
God to Paul in Corinth, “I have many people in this city” (Acts 18). “I will draw them to Myself.” You won’t go to a city where God has no people. There are other sheep scattered all over. There are people of God on every campus—in every people group who are yet to come to Christ; but will come. In response to your gospel preaching—99% of people may laugh and scorn—but one of the 99 will make it all worthwhile. That one convert will be worth your life. The Lord has committed Himself to bring them home. “I must bring them also” (Jn 10:16). Christ does it.
How does Jesus make His voice heard so as to call His sheep? How does He do it so that they recognize it as Christ’s voice (‘it sounds like your voice’). The answer is that people are saved through the power of the gospel, but through the agency of human messengers. (I send you to bring them from darkness to light—Acts). The dignity of this missional calling is almost infinite. “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into the harvest” (Matt 9:38). He knows the farm, the seeds, and the workers. So then, why tell the Owner of the farm? Why does He tell us to ask Him in prayer?
Pascal (thinker, believer, scientist, and mathematician) said this about prayer, “Prayer is God’s bestowal on humans of the dignity of causality.” You have not because you ask not (yet You, Lord are running the universe). Plead in prayer for missionaries—senders love to ask the Master.
The confidence that flows from a theological grounding in divine sovereignty is that God will be heard through your word. The called sheep will hear the voice of the Shepherd/King through your word. “You heard the word as it really is, the Word of God” (1 Thess 2:13). “I pray for those who will believe in Me through their word” (Jn 17). They will come when they hear His voice. They will hear His voice. As many as were appointed to eternal life believed (Acts 13:46-48).
Open your mouth—they will come in due time. Pray to see that indeed the fields are white; pray to see the vastness of God in Christ; pray not to go to sleep; pray you would carry through (not miscarry) through all objections oppositions and fears (internal and external); pray to deepen your grasp of this biblical truth of sovereign grace.
THE CROSS: When Christ came to earth, every square foot was enemy occupied territory. We need a continual reminder that we are locked in combat—the prize is the souls of men. The realm is marked out by the contours of a kingdom of darkness at war against a kingdom of light. What is a ‘friend of the cross’? It is a person who is eternally grateful that God has made Himself known through Christ by means of deliverance from sin—from its penalty, from its power, and ultimately from its presence.
A friend of the cross says along with the Apostle Paul, “But may it never be that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). This confession is not exceptional—reserved for apostles and missionaries—this statement of faith is true of every genuine believer, for every true Christian is a friend of the cross. Those who live by their sinful appetites have never tasted redeeming power against sin. Paul calls them ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’ (Phil 3:18-19).
Since Christ, God can only be known in the cross. This is a great offensive mystery in a world of religious pluralism. God’s purpose is (through the cross) to publicly shame, mortify, render useless and inoperative, human wisdom. God is going to make an example out of it—that is its destiny. Natural wisdom fails to comprehend and understand the wisdom of the cross. Thus, the cross ‘fails’ the wisdom of test of both Jews and Greeks (1 Cor 1:21). The cross (‘God’s foolishness’) scandalizes both sets of criteria. (For Jews: ‘come down from weakness and we will believe’.) To both groups the cross appears useless, weak, and foolish. But, it is the wisdom of God—it is God’s way of working in the world. All those who have their honor and glory by human wisdom will lose their glory.
Why does the cross appear impotent to human carnal wisdom? Though it is God’s way of working in the world, it does comport with man’s understanding of wisdom and power. In the cross, God operates sub contrario—beneath His reasoned attributes. We expect Him to operate by His reasoned attributes of power, wisdom, and conquest. Instead in the cross we see weakness, shame, injustice, disfavor, helplessness, ugliness, ignominy, victimization, death, wrath, abandonment, and mocking.
This is not the way we expect God to manifest Himself. You have to see yourself there at the cross, that your sins put Christ there (you have to see by grace the Theology of the Cross). The cross stands between the sinner and the knowledge of God—“that is the only way you can know Me.” “If you want to visit Christ and the cross and be saved, you must first visit Moses and the Law and be condemned” (Luther). “I can’t be known any other way.” “The only way to know Me is in Christ’s passion as He experiences the spiritual, emotional, physical consequences of sin (to the maximum)—there is no other way to know me.”
God saves by letting us know who He is through Christ and His work (Jn 17). God’s wisdom towers over the human intellect—“you can only know Me in My Son’s bearing of your reproach.” This is spiritually discerned. Man can’t understand it apart from the illuminating work of the Spirit (1 Cor 2). God is only known when by the cross He goes beneath, or contrary to His reasoned attributes. Deus Absconditits —God abandoned—God is only known in the abandonment of His Son. Look at the cross—it becomes the lens through which God’s attributes are focused—so we come to know Him in Christ working as a Substitute for every sinner who will believe.
How unlike our religious intuition is God’s wisdom in the cross—for the cross involves God in darkness, in hiding—this means that you cannot know Him unless you deal with His cross. This is greatly humbling—we can’t know Him by our own effort. Human wisdom says you can climb the ladder of God’s moral law and know Him—through your aspirations and inquiry you can know Him. But the cross is how God claim people—how He sets up His throne in human hearts.
The cross is the center of Christian worldview because all wisdom outside the cross obscures the knowledge of God—therefore it is destined for destruction. We are the people of God through the cross— who repudiate worldly wisdom (which is slated for destruction). God says that the present world system is fragile, temporary—for God will shake every established thing into oblivion so that only one thing remains unshakable—the Kingdom of God (Heb 12). The Kingdom of God is coming (not with signs per se). The Kingdom is spiritually discerned (Matt 13). We came to know God when we saw ourselves at Calvary (see Theologian of the Cross).
The cross has a prioritizing effect on all your life values because it adjusts them to the coming Kingdom of God. The cross tells us in no uncertain terms that we are aliens, strangers, pilgrims in this present age, and citizens of a heavenly Kingdom. As such, the cross keeps shaping our values and informing us of our true treasure—strengthening our hope and resolve. The cross is the diet of the mature. The cross radically dealt with our old man, our penalty, our deserved wrath, our idolatry, our alienation and estrangement from God.
By sovereign grace, we are friends of the cross. We have an eternal value system (Phil 3). And, we glory in the cross (Heb 13). For in it, Christ was bearing our reproach. And we boast in the cross because the cross has severed us from the world as source. And the cross has exposed the world’s wisdom as folly ( Gal 6). How we need the message of the cross—our regard for the cross is our boast. The cross is our lens for big picture thinking.
It requires a steady diet of the theology of the cross to know what the cross really means—to know its present value for the entire Christian life—to have your entire life ordered by the cross. Being a friend of the cross means you are dangerous to the powers of darkness. It means you have a target painted on your back and you are engaged in spiritual warfare. You are dangerous to the powers of darkness because the cross exposes, and delivers from every lie of the kingdom of darkness.
To know and appropriate the present value of the cross is to be victorious. To know the present value of the cross is to be an overcomer. The evil one sees this as a great threat.
Out of the all-sufficient work of the cross comes our reasonable rational service of worship (Rom 12). God created the world for His Son’s cross. We need to be convinced the cost of following Christ is worth our entire lives—we must be convinced of what we have been called to. The cross sets our values which enter our conversations (Mt 6).
Those influenced by decisional regeneration (synergism) have for the most part NOT counted the cost of following Christ unconditionally in total surrender. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They too easily fall into the trap of acceptance from our culture—acceptance from the world (rejecting the reality of being a fool for Christ’s sake).
In part this is a function of how much media is being taken in. Are we enthralled by what’s on the screen—preoccupied with that? OR, are we fixated on our eternal treasure? With our amazement at God’s sovereign grace comes humility. The synergist wants heaven and the world. He is easily swayed by the drumbeat of mass culture which is one continuous ‘film loop’ touting the desirability of idols (one giant dogmatic hype of idols).
Our success in spiritual warfare is won at the level of spiritual seeing. Our true treasure must regularly be presented to the mind’s eye—in concentration—solitude—meditative energy. This is a lost spiritual discipline in a culture of spectator entertainment in which the church service is an event and the mind is passive.
Our shrunken sentimental vacuous concept of the cross needs to be filled out with biblical truth so that it is no longer merely a cross concept empty of power. The cross is necessary for our work of rescuing stray sheep. Runaway carnality today is traceable to a vague understanding of the cross. The heart affections must have meaningful contact with the truth of the cross through meditation. Strive for deep, deep convictions versus the tawdry shallowness of today’s self-help, self-occupied worthless therapeutic ‘gospel’. We must master the truth of the cross for the sake of a faithful ministry—HOW God makes men new through His Son’s cross. Then from there we move to the transformation mandate that we might present each man complete in Christ.
The cross is not only about Christ conquering every enemy of our soul—it is about Christ conquering us by His love. For most of us, the words King and Cross do not go together. For a King to take up a cross, and die would surely bring an end to his kingdom in any society, culture, or period in history. But this King is different from any king to ever walk the face of this earth. Indeed, His kingdom was not of this world as he told Roman governor Pontius Pilate. The cross did not bring an end to the coming kingdom but instead the beautiful beginning (Tim Keller).
Jesus begins his ministry with unity in the Trinity displayed during Jesus’ baptism. “The Trinity is utterly different. Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are characterized in their very essence by mutually self-giving love. No person in the Trinity insists that the others revolve around him; rather each of them voluntarily circles and orbits around the others” (Tim Keller, King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus).
What a beautiful picture of Jesus relationship with the Father and the Spirit, which is shown throughout Mark’s Gospel. Keller continues to show how Jesus is King with the calling of his disciples, numerous stories of healing, being Lord over the Sabbath, and his ultimate power. “Jesus says, ‘I’m a King, but not like any king you ever imagined. I’m a king who must die’” (Ibid.). He was as Isaiah predicted: the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Nevertheless, the people are left with a choice. “Either you’ll have to kill him or you’ll have to crown him.”
For many, they chose to kill him, to reject the King and his kingdom. They missed the Messiah. They couldn’t grasp a kingdom or a King that did not call for a political rebellion from Roman oppression. Even the disciple struggled with this type of kingdom Jesus was bringing. “Jesus is saying, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. It’s completely different. This is how I’m going to change things: I’m going to put others ahead of myself. I’m going to love my enemies. I’m going to serve and sacrifice for others. I’m not going to repay evil with evil: I’m going to overcome evil with good. I will give up my power, my life. Weakness, poverty, suffering, and rejection will now be at the top of the list. My revolution comes without a sword; it is the first true revolution’” (Ibid.).