A GOD WORTH TALKING ABOUT
Thomas hasn’t seen him yet. His fellow disciples said they had but that wasn’t enough for him—it was too good to be true so he couldn’t be convinced by their claim. “I won’t believe it unless I can examine the wounds and know it’s really him,” he said [John 20:24-25]. A week later, the upper room, doors shut tight, Thomas there with the rest and Jesus appears with assuring and empowering words, “Peace be yours.” The stunned Thomas, the invitation to check the wounds, then gentle rebuke and the call to believe even if it did seem too good to be true. Then comes the great confession from Thomas. I know no other confession so profound as this one: “My Lord and my God!” [John 20:26-28] No one else ever put it like that! I don’t know how he came up with that truth. Peter’s, “You are the Christ; the Son of the living God!” came from the Holy Father, said Jesus [Matthew 16:16-17]. So, obviously we must source Thomas’ confession to the Holy Father—but “the Son of God” is not as bold or as raw as, “[you are] My God.” Astonishing.
What’s more astonishing to me than the confession is the one he called his Lord and God. Here before him stands a young man who bears the deadly wounds that speak of unbelief’s victory, he’s the visible proof of Rome’s military and judicial power and the domination of corrupt and self-serving religionists. That is God? What kind of God is that?
It’s true he stands alive and triumphant and that’s what wrung the stunned confession from Thomas and led John to record it for us. Still, the evil age and evil men got their hands on him—got their hands on God. Is that not bizarre?
The Hebrew writer didn’t think so. He thought it predictable. He says, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God…should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.” [Hebrews 2:10] It “became him,” says the KJV. It was “only right,” says the TEV. It was “right and proper,” says Phillips.
What do you make of that? It was right, right and proper, for God to subject Jesus to the humiliation and suffering that left him dead and with the mortal wounds cut into his body? How was it “right and proper”? In what way was it “fitting”? We sometimes say of a woman that the dress or the color “becomes” her or “suits” her. Is that what the writer has in mind?
In Hebrews 2:9 Jesus is made a little lower than the angels so that by God’s grace he could taste death for every person. Is that what he means when he says it became God in bringing many children to glory to perfect the author of their salvation through suffering? Is he saying that the suffering of the Lord Jesus was the very thing that matched and brought out the glory of God’s character and purpose? To save a world he came in and as Jesus to suffer for it?
It’s just like God to do that!
What a God!
That’s a God worth talking about!
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