So last time I was talking about Jesus as the Life and the Resurrection and how I thought that death really got under the Savior's skin. Here are a few more musings about the topic...
As I was talking about these ideas with a colleague of mine we got to talking about the idea of death and Satan. It was here that I had something of a revelation. You see, I had always thought that the great battle was between God and Satan: the Lord of Light vs. the Prince of Darkness. But as I thought about it and as we discussed it, I’m beginning to think that this just isn’t true; God’s great battle isn’t against Satan, it’s against death. Satan doesn’t really war against God, instead the devil wars against humankind. It wasn’t God the Adversary tried to trick in the Garden, it was Adam and Eve. When God shows up, it’s pretty clear that He has power and authority over the Adversary. In fact, anytime we actually see Satan he’s in the lesser position trying to afflict man with something (think Job).
God’s war is against death. The problem is that we humans chose death in the Garden. God said, don’t eat that and we did anyways. My colleague likened it to me telling a houseguest that they can eat or drink anything in the kitchen but thet’d be better off if they stayed away from the stuff under the kitchen sink since the Drano I store there will likely kill them if they drink it. Adam chose to drink the Drano. By doing so, Adam changes the world so that we’re all more susceptible to sin. In other words, because of Adam and Eve’s decision to drink Drano we sort of acquired a taste for the Drano, even thought we know it will kill us. This is what gives Satan a foothold in our souls. He tells us the same lie (he is the Father of Lies after all) that he told Adam and Eve; namely that something that tastes this good won’t actually kill you. Once he gets us to take the first bite he can then tell us that we’re too broken and polluted for God to want to save so we might as well enjoy the Drano before it kills us because that’s really all we’re going to get.
So God has to figure out how to deal with our choice to drink the Drano without removing our free will to make that choice. God’s solution is to become human somehow without having to stop being God. He’s born as an infant to a virgin and after He’s made it to the right age where the people in His society will listen to what He has to say, Jesus, the person of the “Son”, begins to tell those around Him the truth about life and death and Drano and God the Father. This is the only time we see Satan directly war against Him because, I guess, Satan realizes that if God is really fully human then he’ll be tempted by the same things we all are; He’ll have the same taste for Drano we do and He’ll have to face the same choice we do: abstain from the Drano that tastes really, really good but will kill Him or drink the Drano and die. So Satan meets God in the desert and brings along the best tasting types of Drano that he can find and offers it to the Son.
The interesting thing is that the battle here isn’t really against Satan. It’s still against death. Jesus has to choose God’s way (life) or not God’s way (death). This is going to happen over and over again in Jesus’ time on earth. The really ironic thing is that at the end, in the other Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, he’s got to make the same choice but this time the way He chooses life is to choose to die physically. By doing this He robs death of its power over us (and not just after His death but for all time). He undoes the Fall by dying and defeating death’s hold on all of us. Human beings no longer have to die spiritually because of Adam’s choice and our resulting taste for sin. That doesn’t mean that our taste for Drano is gone or that there aren’t still certain consequences for drinking it (you’re still going to have an upset stomach) but it does offer us a way of dealing with the poison.
There's more to come with this (one more installment I think). Thanks for putting up with my ramblings.
