Crucified Creator
The prologue to John’s gospel defines Jesus in ways I fear that we as Christians may not readily grasp. A regular threat to the legitimacy of our Bible reading is how jaded we can become to the the transformative and powerful Word of God. To that end, we must fight to approach truth with the eyes of someone who is first opening the Bible and the heart of someone who has not been buffeted by the constant stream of worldly and shallow Christian ideology and is therefore free from the surface-level impressions that have unfortunately accompanied them.
Jesus Christ. He died on a cross for the sins of all people that all may have eternal life if they would believe in Him and accept Him as Lord. This is the good news. Why then does John find it important to talk about Jesus outside of this role? Why doesn’t John begin his gospel with Christ the redeemer or Christ the Savior? Why does John begin his book talking about Jesus the creator of the world? Because of this, the Gospel of John provides a very unique perspective when it comes to how we are to understand our Lord and Savior. Jesus being our Creator contextualizes the crucifixion to what it was: the creature murdering the creator.
John tells us that Jesus was not only present at creation but he was the progenitor, or originator, of creation and without Him, nothing would have been created at all. But this same Jesus descended into His creation in a very different state. “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.” (John 1:11) God desires the perfect relationship He had with man in the garden, but as Paul writes in Romans 1, we have exchanged the glory of God for idolatry. It is written in 1 John that when walking in the darkness of our sins it is a lie for us to claim fellowship with God. Sin has utterly destroyed the relationship we had with a just and righteous God. Our creator, the one who made us perfect, came upon a people of wickedness. According to John 1:10, the world he created did not even recognize Him.
With this new-found understanding, the cross becomes less about a far-off God acting in a way we have all become much too jaded to. It becomes a narrative of a loving Creator, the maker of the world, taking on the whole punishment for his creation though they hated him still. Jesus created the men that crucified him, just as he created the ones today who continue to deny His righteousness. It is written in Isaiah 53:10 that God was pleased to crush Jesus severely. With the knowledge that Jesus and the father are of one essence, the cross is again shaped in my mind to portray Jesus, the one who was at the beginning, declaring ‘it is finished’. My creator was pleased to take on my punishment even though I rejected his authority and his desire for a relationship; after all, “No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Picture this: Judas came to betray the one who was sustaining his life. When Pilate washed his hands of the bloodshed he washed them in water that Christ created. Even the wood of the cross was once a tree that grew according to His good pleasure. And this is the Jesus, deserving of all respect and adoration, knowing the most intimate details of each person’s life, who allowed his foolish and rebellious creation to kill Him; so that by the wounds they inflicted in rejection of His authority, they could also be drawn back to Him.
Lord, by your wounds we are healed. I ask that we be a people humbled by the utter humiliation you endured while maintaining the entire universe. In one moment you revealed your transcendent glory and your deep and sacrificial love for us. Drive this truth deep into our hearts. Amen.
