#DailyDevotion It’s A Good Thing God Doesn’t Make Sense Sometimes
Lent Day 17
1 Cor. 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Well it’s no wonder Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to none Jews. There’s early Roman graffiti of someone teasing another saying to the effect, “Bob worships a crucified God.” Really what sort of respectable God lets himself get crucified? Crucifixion was for the worst of non-Roman criminals. For Jews someone who is hung is considered cursed. How can the messiah be cursed.
On top of that, there is the reason for the crucifixion. God’s wrath must be appeased. In the 1800’s Walther wrote, “The main reason why nonbelievers reject the Old Testament is that God is often described therein as an angry God. These people say that any religion that attributes anger and wrath to God cannot possibly be the true religion, for God loves all people and certainly overlooks, as human weaknesses, the sins of His children. To suggest that God is not angry against sin is a terrible error… A God who does not get angry also does not love, for only He who hates evil can love good. The all-loving God created by the unbelieving world is an empty image of an idol whose original is sinful man himself.” C F W Walther – God grant it, p. 283-84
There is a perverted Christian message out there. Unbelievers didn’t think of a loving God all by themselves. They got that notion from Christians themselves. But thinking to justify themselves and get away from confronting their own sins and the spiritual cost for those sins, they make up a false Christian God who only loves and whose anger is not brought about by their rebellion against his law.
Jesus, who is the Lord, the Son of God, being crucified to propitiate the Father’s wrath against mankind, who is also sent by the Father to do this, makes no sense to them. It is foolishness to them and a stumbling block to those who think like the unbelieving Jews. But this foolishness of God is wiser than their wisdom. This weakness of allowing oneself to be crucified is the stronger than all of mankind’s resolution to live a better life.
We preach a crucified God, a crucified Messiah, Jesus Christ. In the crucifixion, God’s wrath is propitiated. Jesus’ suffering death is the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. His death expiates our sins, iniquities and transgressions. His death by crucifixion defeats death and brings us eternal life. So what if it doesn’t make sense to the world. If we could make sense of God we would God or rather God would be made in our image. But the fact that the Creator of the cell and all its components and the Universe with its vast galaxies and still unknown laws of physics doesn’t make sense to us makes perfect sense because ultimately he is beyond our knowing in this present age. But he has made something known of himself in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Heavenly Father, though we cannot always make sense of your wisdom, we are reminded your ways are higher than ours and your thoughts higher than ours. Grant to us humility and faith to believe in the revelation of your Son Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.