pastorchin’s weblog

Christ did not die for an idea. He died for a person, and that person is you. But there again, we have been led astray. Ask any number of people why Christ came, and you’ll receive any number of answers, but rarely the real one. “He came to bring world peace.” “He came to teach us the way of love.” “He came to die so that we might go to heaven.” “He came to bring economic justice.” On and on it goes, much of it based in a partial truth. But wouldn’t it be better to let him speak for himself ? 

Jesus steps into the scene. He reaches back to a four-hundred-year-old prophecy to tell us why he’s come. He quotes from Isaiah 61:1, which goes like this: 

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. 

The meaning of this quotation has been clouded by years of religious language and ceremonial draping. What is he saying? It has something to do with good news, with healing hearts, with setting someone free. 

Christ could have chosen any one of a thousand other passages to explain his life purpose. But he did not. He chose this one; this is the heart of his mission. Everything else he says and does finds its place under this banner: “I am here to give you back your heart and set you free.” That is why the glory of God is man fully alive: it’s what he said he came to do. But of course. The opposite can’t be true. “The glory of God is man barely making it, a person hardly alive.” How can it bring God glory for his very image, his own children, to remain so badly marred, broken, captive? 

(Waking the Dead , 50–51)

Nearly every story in the Bible depicts something destined for the grave suddenly experiencing new life. From the elderly having children to imprisoned foreigners rising to run an empire, from a nation of slaves finding freedom to barren women finally conceiving—all these stories point to something crucial in the character and passions of our Creator: God loves to raise the dead. -Jeff Cook-

Look at the life of Jesus. Notice what he did. When Jesus touched the blind, they could see; all the beauty of the world opened before them. When he touched the deaf, they were able to hear; for the first time in their lives they heard laughter and music and their children’s voices. He touched the lame, and theyjumped to their feet and began to dance. And he called the dead back to life and gave them to their families. 

Do you see? Wherever humanity was broken, Jesus restored it. He is giving us an illustration here, and there, and there again. The coming of the kingdom of God restores the world he made. 

God has been whispering this secret to us through creation itself, every year, at springtime, ever since we left the Garden. Sure, winter has its certain set of joys. The wonder of snowfall at midnight, the rush of a sled down a hill, the magic of the holidays. But if winter ever came for good and never left, we would be desolate. Every tree leafless, every flower gone, the grasses on the hillsides dry and brittle. The world forever cold, silent, bleak. 

After months and months of winter, I long for the return of summer. Sunshine, warmth, color, and the long days of adventure together. The garden blossoms in all its beauty. The meadows soft and green. Vacation. Holiday. Isn’t this what we most deeply long for? To leave the winter of the world behind, what Shakespeare called “the winter of our discontent,” and find ourselves suddenly in the open meadows of summer? 

If we listen, we will discover something of tremendous joy and wonder. The restoration of the world played out before us each spring and summer is precisely what God is promising us about our lives. Every miracle Jesus ever did was pointing to this Restoration, the day he makes all things new. 

(Epic, 82–83)