The Greatest Testimony of Unrequited Love

 


  1. A Fresco in Rome

Michelangelo has always been my favorite artist and, in my opinion, his skill is completely unparalleled by any artisan to ever grasp a bush or chisel. His sculptures Pietà, Cristo della Minerva, and Moses make up the most exquisite in the world, as well as his most famous masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel, that attracts millions each year to Catholicism’s most holy place. One part of the Sistine Chapel that has always struck a specific nerve with me is The Creation of Adam. The center of this fresco shows God stretching down toward Adam with all of His body, while Adam is laying down, leaning away with his hand nonchalantly dangling with indifference toward his holy Creator. I never understood the meaning of this image, partly explaining my distaste for it, and only after studying biblical covenants and the nature of God am I able to fully appreciate the integrity behind Michelangelo’s work.

  1. The Midnight Promise

The well-known covenant between God and Abraham in Genesis 15 is an excellent example of what Michelangelo’s fresco “personifies.”

[So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other… Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him… It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates…” (Genesis 15:9-10, 12, 17-18 NASB]

What is being seen in this passage of scripture is an example of how agreements where made in the Patriarchal Age. An animal, or animals, would be sacrificed and their halves would be laid apart so that those making the agreement or covenant could walk between the two pieces, think about this as a really extreme form of the “spit shake”. In the covenant made between God and Abraham and his descendants, we see that Abraham was put into a deep sleep as God Himself passed between the sacrificed animals. God took it upon Himself to initiate, validate, and enforce this covenant. This reminds me of the profoundly powerful passage of scripture found in Hebrews 6, “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself” (Hebrews 6:13 NASB). Abraham did not take part in the ritual of passing through the pieces, not because he was unwilling, but because he had nothing to contribute and was owed nothing from God. God not only gifted Abraham an inheritance he could never earn or deserve, but chose to seal that covenant with the greatest authority possible, His own.

  1. The Cup, the Cross, and the Hero who would Die for His Enemies

God’s unique attributes include, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. but the one thing lacking in our all-powerful Creator is the ability to lie or contradict Himself. The great I Am that was, is, and is to come maintains an internally consistent nature, which means that He will always keep His promises no matter what. God created man to enjoy fellowship with Him and allowed them to have free will so that their love could be genuine. Because man uses that free will to rebel against God, He even stepped down to provide guidance through His morally perfect, holy law, the Ten Commandments. Man continually follows after the evil ways of a sinful heart and relentlessly commits transgressions against God and his fellow man. God can’t be a morally perfect, all holy judge if he lets our sin go unpunished. When a judge acquits certain people of their crimes and enforces the law justly on others, we call that judge corrupt. For this very reason, God’s cup of wrath exists to punish those who will unrepentantly follow after their own desires and shirk the guidance given to them by the Lord. “For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, says to me, ‘Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it.’” (Jeremiah 25:15 NASB). This system seems like a simple request and expectation for God to place on His’ creation, to merely follow His law. Because we are born with an imputed sinful nature, this impossibly holy standard would cause many of us (everybody cognitive enough to discern between right and wrong and reject God) to rightfully earn a place in hell, apart from God, as a way of partaking in God’s cup of wrath.

To further show how absurdly one-sided God’s rules are made in our favor, God decided to make the punishment of hell optional. I can’t begin to imagine the heartbreak of God as He is calling to us saying that if we would just listen to Him and follow the rules we can be saved from a place of eternal torment, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” and eternal blasphemies. In order for God to be able to save as many as are willing to be saved from the punishment that they justly deserve, He made Himself into the lowly son of a carpenter, living in first-century occupied Judea. Living the perfect life we are called to live, while also being tempted in all things, and imparting His wisdom to us through His followers, Jesus met a fate that even the worst criminals shouldn’t have to endure. As the Romans crushed Him and the Father poured out the cup of wrath on His only Son, Christ’s dripping blood established a new covenant. A covenant that we could never hold up our end of, or contribute anything to God, He sacrificed Himself because He could swear by no one greater.

Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 NASB). God shows us a love greater still by laying down His own life for us when we were His enemies. That is the message of the cross.

  1. The Unlikely Heirs

The story isn’t over, there is still a little more to be told. Because of Jesus’ one perfect life, death could not hold Him and He was raised from the dead on the third day, and He offers the same resurrection from sin and eternal life to both me and you, and anybody else who will accept this free gift. The salvation afforded to you by simply trusting in God to keep His word and accept the sacrifice He made of Himself on your account, as payment for your sins, makes us not just His friends, but adopted into His family as heirs. Each believer becomes a son or daughter in the Kingdom of Heaven. Furthermore, John MacArthur goes so far as to say, ”When we come into the glories of heaven and we sit at the table with our Lord and master he will rise from the table and he will put on the servants apron and he will serve.” My hope for eternity lies in the trust that God is so good in giving us that which we don’t deserve, that He will always reach down to us even when we are unwilling to look up to Him.

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