I’ve really been struck lately about how different God’s ways are from the ways of the world, and at the injustice of Jesus’ death on a cross.  This is the Creator King Himself:

2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:2-3)

2 For you granted him authority over all people (John 17:2)

All of Creation is His and the fact that anything or anyone exists at all is as a gift from a loving God.  So there is really no greater act of injustice in all of history than Jesus, being the perfectly holy and only begotten Son of God and containing the fullness of God incarnate, is then sentenced to death unjustly by a lynch mob at a sham of a trial, by a judge who readily sees the injustice of the situation but gives in to the bloodthirstiness of the crowd anyway, and for crimes that He didn’t commit and not just any crimes but bearing the entirety of weight of the sins of the world.  Yet this is the King of all Creation, the one who was there in the beginning creating all things and who has authority over all things, who chooses not to come and establish dominion over His own Creation through power and subjugation but instead to submit in obedience to the unjust death of a common criminal hung between two thieves.  But this changes everything, because the injustice of this world is not able to extend into eternity, and Death can no longer keep its hold on our Lord as He returns to life leaving buried the entirety of the sin and punishment that was never His to begin with, freeing all of Creation through all of history from imminent destruction and firmly establishing a new Kingdom and new way of life with a new hope for a new future, all in the matter of a weekend.  So it always strikes me at how different God’s ways are from the ways of the world, and how His ways are continually bringing life and restoration into the world by such unexpected means.

Proverbs 10:16 says:

16 The wages of the righteous is life,

   but the earnings of the wicked are sin and death.

and 2 Corinthians 5:21 says:

21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

So in not deserving death yet receiving it anyway, Jesus is able to give us life who did not earn it for ourselves.

In John 15:15 Jesus declares that:

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

And in 1 Peter 2:8-10 Paul says:

9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

So we are no longer as servants to a master but friends, brothers and sisters, a royal priesthood in a new Kingdom with a new way of living.  Even the commands that Jesus declared to His disciples are unlike the previous ones held most dearly to God’s people in the 10 Commandments.  8/10 of the 10 commandments are “Thou shalt not” except for:

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. (Exodus 20:8)

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12)

But Jesus gives us a postive command to love:

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12)

and again:

17 This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:17)

Even the structure of the relationships of God’s people operate differently than those of the world.  Under the Roman empire and all worldly empires, strict conformance to the established law is what is required, but Jesus prays for something better for His people in His Kingdom.

In John 17:20-23 Jesus says:

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

And in Revelation 7:9 John has a vision of God’s people finally together:

 9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

And even when God raises up leader in His Kingdom, they are unlike the world’s leaders. 

In Matthew 23:8-12 Jesus said:

8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Paul summarizes the contrast of God’s ways compared with the world’s ways beautifully in 

2 Phillipians 2:6-11 when speaking of Jesus:

 6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,

   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing

   by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,

   being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man,

   he humbled himself

   by becoming obedient to death—

      even death on a cross!

 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

   and gave him the name that is above every name,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

   to the glory of God the Father.

So bring praise to this God who restores all things and redeems all things, who establishes a new Kingdom through love and liberation instead of conquest and destruction, who leads by serving and exalts the humbled, who subverts the injustice of the world into the eternal restoration of God.

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by: Justin England