Jesus' Greatest Hits: Glory in His Murder?

 Jesus’ Greatest Hits is a series about the life of Jesus. Some people think these stories are fictional. I say that the stories are too profound, too counterintuitive and too incisive to have been made up by a first century mind. Each week I will discuss one such story or saying of Jesus that I believe point to the supernatural aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

Today is Good Friday.   This is a day that everyone in the world is reminded about an event in ancient Middle Eastern history.  This event forever changed the course of human history.   This is the day Christians celebrate the unjustified arrest, vicious torture, and brutal execution of our Lord and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.

I can hear the record scratch sound.   Say what?   Arrest, vicious torture, brutal execution, what in the world is there to celebrate?

The Passion of the Christ was an extremely controversial film.  It was disgustingly gory, almost enough to make even the most hardcore horror fan squeamish.   Most Christians I know do not watch gory films, yet I do not know a single Christian who has seen it, that was not deeply moved by it.   Are Christians just blood-thirsty?  I have heard people argue that.  But in my circle I don’t know a single Christian who you could describe this way. 

Christians don’t celebrate death and gore in and of itself.  This movie is so moving because we see the depth at which our God was willing to suffer on our behalf.  If the torture and eventual murder of Jesus was all there was, there would be no reason to celebrate.  Only a monster would celebrate that.  Instead, we celebrate Good Friday, and we celebrate the Passion of the Christ, because we know how the story ends.  Jesus is resurrected by God, on the third day.  This is what people think of, when they think of a glorious ending.  Truly amazing.

But there’s a problem with this view of the story.   The Bible records Jesus, just before his arrest, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (John 12:23)  Throughout the book of John when Jesus speaks of his “hour” he is speaking of the time of his crucifixion, not his resurrection.  This means that Jesus considered his brutal execution on the cross as his “glorification”.

Think of what Jesus looked like in that final scene of Jesus on the cross in The Passion of the Christ.   Just as he died what did he look like?  He looked like a bruised, disfigured, bloody mess.  He says, “It is finished”.   Then He dies.   This is Jesus glorified, according to Jesus’ own words in the Bible.

No human could make this up.  The crucifixion story is so beautifully counterintuitive to all human sensibilities that the only reasonable conclusion you can come to is that it actually happened the way it was described in the Bible.  I challenge you to think of Jesus’ hour.  Would a normal first century Jewish mind consider this, glory?

I will leave off there for now.  Come back to check out my post on Resurrection Sunday, to talk about Spock’s (the Spock from Star Trek) approach to figuring out the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus.