The Jericho Road

I’m passing on a quote I read on Facebook this morning. It was posted by Dean Waterman, an Adventist pastor in Virginia. (Dean is currently receiving a seven day course of IV treatments for a migraine).

“Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness and relies wholly on God.” - White

I’ve found everything in my spiritual life to depend on this truth. In comes home to the soul most deeply in repentance and confession of our sin to God. Going beyond the sins of behavior, it defines the experience of the soul compelled to repent even of their “good works”. 

For some time now I’ve believed and taught the paradoxical truth (see I Corinthians 1) that what we need most is the weakness of God, the foolishness of God. If we would take by faith our place with Christ on his cross, if we would know by experience what it means to be crucified in him, then we would know the power of God that is found in weakness. The boasting pride that separates us from God and one another would be subdued, it would be daily put to death in Christ, who “gave himself for us”.

Everything contained in this statement links us to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Nothing is more apparently helpless than a man crucified on a cross. The rational mind asks: What can he do for me? How can he give me peace? How can a crucified man help me overcome sin? How can a man dying on a cross save me, one who is himself dying?

By answering these questions for your own soul, by placing all your faith and hope on the crucified Christ, you will know in yourself the power of his resurrection. You will realize the promise of eternal life as your own. 

Our only hope is through personal faith in the broken, bleeding body of Jesus Christ, for he is the true weakness of God. 

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,

    “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

 ²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

 ²⁶For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” ” ~ I Corinthians 1.18-31