The shock of redemption
If Jesus had not been God, the Jewish leaders of his day would have been right to put Him to death.
Not only did He claim to be God, He forgave others’ sins, which only God could do and only through the sacrificial system. He claimed to be the fulfillment of the Temple, the true center of worship. And not only did He touch those who were ceremonially unclean - lepers, the woman with the flow of blood, the dead - His touch made them clean and restored them to fellowship with God.
But He was God. And so, the law, which had been a perpetual reminder of God’s holiness and how we were separated from Him by the curse of sin and death, was fulfilled. The “dividing wall of separation” was no more (Eph. 2:14).
And yet even though His disciples knew He was the Messiah, they may not yet have known that He was God, or how He was going to save them. Despite His constant warnings, it must have seemed like foolishness to them for the Messiah to provoke the religious leaders rather than allying with them against the imperialistic Romans.
If Jesus was going to ride into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, why would He make His first step in the temple, rather than in the court of Pontius Pilate? But Jesus knew that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17). If God’s house is not in order, how can we expect to set the world to rights?
Jesus’ way of salvation was disappointing to His disciples, and if we are honest, it is often disappointing to us today. We want to see “all things put under His feet” (Heb 2:8, cf. Ps. 8:4-8, 1 Cor. 15:27, Eph. 1:22). Yet often we do not see that. Even within the Church we often see so little true spirituality it can seem like the coming of the Holy Spirit was an empty promise.
But on this day, we remember Jesus, lifted up, drawing the world to Himself (John 12:32). And we remember that, even in His deepest suffering, when He, like us, felt forsaken by God, committed His spirit into His Father’s hands (Luke 12:36). And it is by that faith that we are healed.
The “Holiness” video from the Bible Project shows more on how Jesus subverted the expectations of the ceremonial law: