John 13:31 “When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”

Jesus’ glory is not like the glory our world lusts for. When I was in high school, we called the quarterback, the running backs, and the receivers–the people who handled the ball–the “glory boys.” They were the ones who got their names in the papers. CEO’s of corporations, presidents and prime ministers of nations are showered with recognition and glory because of the power that they wield.

It’s not necessarily an evil thing if some of that kind of glory should happen to come our way. Prestige, power, and pleasure were experienced by some of the believers in the Bible, and they survived. But it is tempting to let that kind of glory reign as god in our lives. One man summed it up this way, “One of the saddest pages kept by the recording angel is the record of souls damned by success.”

Being surrounded by such worldly glory can alter our understanding of God’s glory. What did Jesus mean when he said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him”? God has prestige, power, and pleasures, this is true. He has more of these things than any human being who ever lived.

But is that what Jesus was seeking? During Jesus’ earthly ministry many tempted him to find his glory that way. His brothers encouraged him to go up to Jerusalem for the Jewish feast of Tabernacles to perform some miracles (John 7:3-5). They figured that he wanted to be a famous public figure. Jesus refused. Many of Jesus’ followers wanted him to become the political King of Israel. They wanted him to return it to the good old days when Israel was the envy of the world. Jesus refused. Satan even came to Jesus and offered, “Here, I will make you an instant celebrity, if you will just jump off the temple, or I will make you the King of the world, if you will just bow down and worship me.” Jesus refused.

Religious people toy with similar ideas about bringing God glory today. “If God’s people could only get control of the power, then what a paradise of safety, morality, and plenty for all we could make of this world. What glory we would bring to God.” That thinking distracts churches from centering their ministries on the gospel of forgiveness of sins. I am in favor of ending abortion, strengthening the family, defending religious freedoms, and promoting good morals. We all need to be. But too much of Christian activism is still infected by a fascination with power. If the glory of his power were God’s main concern, then all of these world problems–and they are problems–would have been taken care of long ago.

Jesus was looking for his glory in another place. “NOW is the Son of Man glorified,” we read. What was happening now? “When he was gone…” and that “he” was Judas. Now is the Son of Man glorified, when my betrayer goes to spring his trap and sets the events of my horrible suffering in motion. Now is the Son of Man glorified, as I am abandoned by my disciples, humiliated by my people, and crucified by my rulers. Now is the Son of Man glorified, as I carry the sins of the world to my cross, and give up my life, my soul, my all in the most shameful death imaginable.

Do you understand why this is his glory? It is not because Jesus did something very brave, self-less, or even hard to do. To all the world his death looked like a huge mistake. What good could he do, how could he change things, if he were dead? But “this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). Jesus is glorified by his death because God himself, dying to save you from your sins, is the ultimate expression of God’s love for you.

And God is glorified in him. Nowhere does God identify himself by saying “God is power.” But he does say “God is love.” It is part of his very essence. Jesus reveals this most clearly when he dies for us. Such self-sacrificing love leads our hearts back to God. We can come to this God, and glorify him, for reasons unlike the worshipers of all the other gods in the world. Such love fills us with sincere trust and heartfelt love for him who loved us, and gave himself up for us.

Luke 20:35-36 “Those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.”

When I die, I don’t want that to be the end for me. And I am not alone in thinking that way. Christians historically have confessed their faith in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. But people of every culture in almost every kind of faith throughout time have longed for a life to come as well. Over 4500 years ago the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids in hope of an afterlife. Today, over 50% of people believe there is a heaven even when they have no religion at all. All of this reflects what the author of Ecclesiastes once wrote: “(God) has also set eternity in the heart of man.” We long for something more than the life we know now.

But “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” has always had its skeptics. We see what happens to dead bodies over time. “Living” skeletons and zombies and mummies and ghosts are fine for the horror films, but we don’t actually see the dead return to life like that, much less in perfectly restored form. It’s not hard to see why atheists, who demand more than God’s promises, would have their doubts. Nor have the skeptics always come from outside the church. Paul had to deal with people who denied the resurrection in the church of Corinth, and there are professors in Christian colleges and seminaries today who teach that there is no real resurrection of the body.

The Sadducees of Jesus’ day were a religious party whose skepticism led them to deny a resurrection of the dead. They tried to make the idea look ridiculous by confronting Jesus with a scenario in which a woman was widowed multiple times. If there is a resurrection, whose wife would she be in the next life? Surely God would not allow her to live with multiple husbands! To these men, life after death was a farce.

So Jesus explains that marriage is an institution for this life only. It doesn’t follow us to heaven. Those God considers worthy of a place in that new world will face no dilemmas regarding spouse or family.

Nor do we need to fear that heaven will somehow be inferior to our current experience, then. The absence of marriage doesn’t mean we will have something less. Jesus implies that this new life will be a huge upgrade. “Those who are considered worthy” will take part in it. Don’t misunderstand his words. It’s not that any of us actually is worthy in and of ourselves. God considers us worthy because of the value and worth of Jesus our substitute. If we listed our own qualifications on an application for heavenly membership, we would submit a blank piece of paper. The only “qualifications” we can claim are borrowed. They come directly from his own perfect life of love. And no background check can turn up any marks against us, because every sin has been permanently removed from our record by his innocent death on the cross.

That God should look at us as people worthy of heaven, then, is a powerful expression of his grace. From the externals, the difference between us and a worthy candidate for heaven is far greater than the difference between a bag lady or a homeless person and a country club member. One would expect that our presence would only spoil it for everyone else.

Then we find that God has filled heaven with others just like us, people considered worthy because they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. All of them have been cleansed, transformed, and made immortal. “They can no longer die.” In his grace God has given us the priceless privilege of participating in a new life with a new body indescribably better than anything we now know.

The resurrection is not only a certain promise we can believe. It is a beautiful promise we want to.

John 8:4-5 “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

No one denied that this woman was actually guilty of adultery–some form of extra-marital sex. Jesus didn’t question it. The woman herself never denied it. She wasn’t being mistreated because the Pharisees and the teachers of the law said what she did was wrong.

In this even the Pharisees and teachers of the law were wiser than so many who would like to take the commandment “You Shall Not Commit Adultery” off the books. They call it a victimless sin, at least where everyone involved has given their consent. “Sex is healthy, and it’s natural, and restricting it to marriage simply gets in the way of a beautiful thing,” is the claim. I don’t have to document that claim for you, do I? You watch TV and go to movies. You see the magazines in the checkout lane at the grocery store.

The truth is, sex is healthy and it is natural. But take it outside of marriage and it hurts everybody. It often robs children of one of their parents. It erodes our ability to form trusting, committed, lasting relationships. It spreads disease. When it leads to pregnancy it may cut short a young person’s education and employability, fostering first poverty and then crime. Without boundaries it makes us less self-disciplined and self-controlled. It moves us more and more in the direction of seeing other people as objects for our use rather than children of God for us to serve. It makes all of society less stable, less functional. The God whose main concern is that we love our neighbor was consistent with that goal when he commanded, “You shall not commit adultery.”

That doesn’t mean the woman’s accusers were taking the right course of action with her. She may have sinned, but she was a sinner mistreated. When the prophet Nathan came to David after his adultery with Bathsheba, he had a rather elaborate presentation to bring David to repent of his sin so that the Lord could restore him. It seems that there was some concern for the man’s soul.

Where is there any evidence of that kind of concern for the woman here? Where is their sense of grief and shame that a sister in the faith has fallen? Where is the seeking love, hoping to bring a lost sinner to repentance and restore her to God?

Where are we as we react to a world whose morals should make us blush? Are we too weak to resist? Are our own attitudes about sexuality coming more and more from the trash on TV or the biblically ignorant people with whom we work?

Or in our zero tolerance, one-strike-and-you’re-out world are we angry and mean and hoping to make an example out of someone? Does it matter to us how a sinner is treated, because they probably have it coming anyway?

Maybe Jesus’ final verdict unsettles us: “Neither do I condemn you.” Don’t misunderstand his words. He is not approving her sin. He does not excuse it. Those who want to remove adultery from the things condemned by the 10 commandments cannot appeal to Jesus’ words here.

These are words of forgiveness. In fact, they express perfectly what we mean when we use that five-dollar theological word “Justification.” Justification is God’s not guilty verdict. When God justifies us, he declares us not guilty of our sins. He declares us not guilty, not because we haven’t committed sin, but because he doesn’t count it against us. He counted it against Jesus instead when Jesus died on the cross.

Isn’t that what he is telling the woman here? “Neither do I condemn you.” “I declare you not guilty, though you know full well you committed the sin.” You are free from you sin. You are justified. Now you can go…and leave it.

Jesus never gives us a license to indulge our sins. He does not deny that we have committed them. But he doesn’t throw stones at us. He melts and breaks our stone cold hearts with his grace and mercy. You are forgiven. Go and sin no more.

John 7:18 “He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.”

There is nothing wrong with having a large church, a successful ministry, and a good reputation in the community. Large numbers don’t have to be about self-glory for the preacher or his church. Behind each number there is a soul, a child of God who has been saved for eternity, when the gospel is preached and believed. The more believers the better.

But Jesus warns us here about the one who speaks on his own to gain honor for himself. There are ways of gathering large numbers that have nothing to do with bringing souls, or glory, to God. A man can develop a “cult of the personality” that attaches people more to himself than to Christ. Maybe he accommodates himself to the culture instead of confronting it where it needs to be confronted. Maybe his message is delivered with a winsome smile and appealing stories, but it doesn’t really say anything. Maybe he brings glory, not just to himself, but to all his listeners, by giving them some of the credit for their faith and salvation. If this is what his teaching accomplishes, he has failed the test.

“But he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth.” Jesus did more than teach good morals or gather a large number of disciples for himself. He brought his Father glory by teaching people what God is really like. He did not preach the hard-hearted bean-counter god of the Pharisees, only interested in whether we have paid him all we owe. He preached the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. He preached the God who has done everything we needed to be saved. He preached the God who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we might be spared.

That still brings God glory today. Yes, we have to preach everything in his law to bring people to repentance. But what brings God more glory than anything else is the truth that he fulfilled the commandments for us perfectly in Jesus’ perfect life. He paid all the penalty for every sin in Jesus’ innocent death. Heaven is a gift that already belongs to us in Jesus’ glorious resurrection. Even the faith to believe it and receive it is his gift.

That is more than good advice or reliable information. That accomplishes God’s glory and our salvation. That kind of teaching passes the test.

John 7:17 “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”

A better translation of the Greek behind, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will,” would be, “If anyone desires to do God’s will” in this verse. Jesus is talking about the condition of our own hearts. Do we want what God wants?

Is it hard to see why this is so important for our test? When we want something to be a certain way, we can work very hard to justify our position. If a person wants to get drunk, he can redefine what it means to be drunk, line up all those Bible passages that tell us it is okay to have a drink, and remind anyone who tries to confront him that the Bible says “Do not judge.” I have listened to people defend their sexual sin with some of the most far-fetched and outlandish interpretations of the Bible passages that condemn the same practices. Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” We’ve got enemies. Do we reinterpret what it means to love them to excuse less than loving behavior?

It’s not just the moral issues. What God says about the only way to heaven can be hard to accept when we know someone who died trying another way, or no way at all. Do we want what God wants then? Scripture warns us that life in this world will be hard, and painful, and full of trouble, and that God disciplines us this way for our good, because he loves us. But when life actually turns out that way, and we are miserable, do we acknowledge that God is simply being gracious to us then? Do we want what God wants?

I could multiply the examples.  The point is this: When we don’t want what God wants, then we don’t listen to his word with an open and receptive heart. We try to read our own ideas into his word. We may go looking for ways to defend our positions, instead of looking in the word to learn God’s positions. We may go looking for people who tell us what we want to hear instead of looking for someone willing to tell us just what God’s word says. That is a heart problem.

What is the status of my own heart? If we are going to desire to do the will of God, God must first call us to repentance. That is why John the Baptist came as the forerunner of Jesus. His preaching or repentance prepared people to desire God’s will and recognize Christ. This is why preaching still needs to confront us today, to break down our self-will that stands in the way of acknowledging God’s will.

If we are going to desire to do the will of God, we need the gospel to give us faith. Desiring to do God’s will does not begin until after we trust in him. And trust in God does not begin until after we have been convinced that he loves us unconditionally and forgives every sin and gives us heaven. Only when we trust God and want what he wants are our hearts in any condition to test teachings and know whether they come from God.

John 7:15 “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man (Jesus) get such learning without having studied?’”

The question of the Jewish leaders does not suggest that Jesus was illiterate. Like most Jewish boys of his time, he had likely attended a synagogue school where he learned how to read.

But Jesus had never studied in one of the rabbinical schools of his time. These were something like our seminaries. You may remember that the Apostle Paul studied in the school of the well-known rabbi Gamaliel. But Jesus had no college level degree in theology. He was a tradesman, a carpenter by training, who had a brilliant grasp of the Scriptures. His teaching did not come from what he had learned in some theological school.

Likewise, the test of true teachers of God’s word is not about the school they attended or the number of degrees they have earned. These may not be bad things. We don’t want ignorant or lazy preachers and teachers who have not worked at learning Scripture and prepared themselves for serving God’s people. Continuing study is a healthy thing for one’s ministry. But theology degrees from prestigious institutions do not necessarily make a better teacher of God’s word. Many things that could be learned from some theological schools would be serious problems today. In spiritual things, academia has often produced a skepticism that gets in the way of knowing God’s word.

Jesus himself prayed, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:25). Paul made this observation to the Corinthians, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20-21). In the test of the true teacher, the right answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?” is not, “From some respected school.”

Where, then? “Jesus answered, ‘My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me’” (John 7:16). With these words Jesus does not deny that he agreed with his own teaching, believed it, and claimed it for himself. He is talking about the source. His teachings were not new teachings he made up independently during his earthly ministry. Truth is never something new, though it may have been forgotten and rediscovered. Truth has a long history behind it. In fact, truth is eternal.

We live in an age that idolizes the new and the trendy. Christians also suffer from this disease. When people make some preacher or teacher popular, because, “Here’s something we haven’t heard before,” we can be too quick to jump on the bandwagon. Has he dusted off some Biblical teaching that has been neglected for too long? Then feel free to follow. But is his teaching some creative new idea spun out of his own imagination? Through Jeremiah God complained about the prophets who “dream their own dreams.” That is the wrong answer to “Where does his teaching come from?” in the test of the true teacher.

Instead, it needs to come “from him who sent me.” Jesus was a true teacher because his teachings agreed with those of his heavenly Father, the one who created the world. His words lined up with God’s revelation to the Patriarchs, and Moses, and the Prophets. Jesus’ claim that his teachings come from the one who sent him was not a claim that defied contradiction because there was no way to investigate it. Everyone present knew the way to check it out: compare Jesus’ teaching with the Scriptures.

When testing to see if someone is a true teacher, “From God through his Holy Scriptures” is still the best answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?”

Luke 6:22-23 “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.”

If you had lived in Jesus’ day, would you have sided with the conservatives or the liberals?

On the conservative side were the Pharisees. They were the ones concerned about upholding the whole Bible. They were concerned about promoting good morals. They worked hard at teaching people how to live a godly lifestyle.

On the liberal side were the Sadducees. They were the ones who were progressive in their thinking. They were in tune with the culture. They had a vision for a better society through creative thinking and an acceptance of people and ideas from other cultures.

Does it surprise us that Jesus didn’t become cozy with either one? To be sure, Jesus once said of the Pharisees, “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything tell you.” But in the next breath he continues, “But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matthew 23:2-4). The Pharisees may have gotten the moral issues right much of the time, but theirs was a burdensome and graceless religion. It lacked the power to help people do the right thing. It was devoid of love—either God’s love for us, or true love for one another.

Jesus insisted on sticking with the truth, even if that meant that he was taking a very lonely position. It made him unpopular with the major movements of his day. Eventually, it led to his crucifixion.

Those who follow Jesus still find that sticking to the truth can put one in a very lonely position. More and more, confessing what the Bible has to say brings the disapproval of those around us.

When Bonnie Witherall was murdered in Lebanon for her missionary work fifteen years ago, even fellow Christians criticized her for evangelizing. One Christian leader compared her to a terrorist, complaining, “She was in the habit of gathering the Muslim children of the quarter and preaching Christianity to them while dispensing food and toys and social assistance” (Christianity Today, Feb. 2003).

Is telling people that Jesus is the Way to heaven a form of terrorism? The churchman quoted wasn’t alone in his evaluation. Similarly, the book titled When Religion Becomes Evil lists five signs that religion has become corrupt. Among the five signs: “absolute truth claims.” Apparently the one who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and “If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth…” was starting a corrupt religion.

We should not be surprised if faithfulness to our Savior’s words meets with the same kind of disapproval. Jesus warned that those who disturb the peace by defending the truth of the gospel would be unpopular. But then, he promises that those who do so enjoy some fine company. “That is how their fathers treated the prophets.” That’s how they treated Jesus, too.

John 18:33-35 “Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘Is that your own idea,’ Jesus asked, ‘or did others talk to you about me?’ “Am I a Jew?’ Pilate replied. ‘It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?’”

There is a good deal of irony in the first exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate. Who was Pontius Pilate anyway? He was a relatively minor official in the Roman government, a man stuck in middle management, if you will. You won’t find any monuments inscribed with his name. Outside of the Bible, only the historians Josephus and Philo make any mention of him, and they describe his administration as rather inept.

Who is standing in front of Pilate? Jesus stands infinitely higher above Pilate’s emperor than that emperor stands above poor little Pilate. Jesus’ empire extends to the farthest stars. He is the Emperor of the emperors, the King of kings. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Yes, and of every other people who have ever existed.

But Pilate’s question wasn’t asked with an open mind willing to entertain the possibility that Jesus was actually a king. By now Jesus was likely covered in dried spit and his face displayed the bruises from his treatment in the Jewish court. His eyes sagged from the exhaustion of a sleepless night. He wore a poor man’s clothes. Pilate could see how Jesus had been treated, and so his real question was only this, “What is it you have done?”

Is Jesus the King? Whatever else our world has to say about him, they still fail to answer this question properly. They may place him alongside leaders of other great world religions, but they have no intention of placing him over them. They may say nice things about some of his ideas, but they have no intention of living under him as their Lord. Like Pilate, like the Jewish leaders, they reject him as King. They aren’t even willing to consider the possibility.

Is Jesus our King? By faith we believe him to be, and we declare him to be. But to whom do we really bow when we cling to resentment in place of love? Who is really leading us when we pursue personal pleasures that make other people nothing more than objects for our personal use, or when we waste the gifts and resources our Lord has entrusted to our care? Does that sound like the life King Jesus promotes?

The world rejects him as King because he doesn’t look the part, his rule conflicts with our desires, and he doesn’t come with some army to enforce his claims. “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (vs. 36). But it is in just this humility and suffering with which he appears before Pilate, and that will only get worse and end in his death, that we see the true glory of Jesus’ royal work. For Jesus, royalty isn’t about enjoying privileges no one else has, putting on airs of refinement and culture to bolster one’s already inflated ego.

The King protects his people. Their safety and well-being is his only purpose. If that means fighting for them all by himself, that is what he will do. If that means subjecting himself to the world’s humiliation, he is ready to accept it for them. If he must die at the hands of the world so that they might live, he will not shrink from death. Jesus stands before Pilate for us. His rejection as King is another step toward the price he will pay for our sins. Jesus is a King under whom we can happily live, by whom we can be glad to be ruled. His reign is our salvation.

John 18:10-11 “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’”

To understand Peter better, maybe we can approach this episode a little like a question on Jeopardy. “If the death of God’s Son on the cross is the answer, then what is the question?” Or put it this way: “If Jesus’ death on the cross is the solution, then what is the problem?”

If my salvation, my rescue, required God himself to leave heaven, become a human being, subject himself to his own rules, keep them all perfectly, then permit himself to be unjustly arrested and condemned, submit to beatings and tortures that would have killed many, be nailed to cross and hung there to die, and be forsaken by God the Father (essentially the experience of hell), then my sins are not a minor, insignificant bending of God’s rules. Then they must be unspeakably evil, hurtful and dangerous far beyond my poor ability to measure or understand. My condition must be dead and lost far beyond my powers to help. If Jesus had to do all that, what do I think I am going to add?

It’s a little like my son’s cancer years ago. When the solution is to pump his body full of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of deadly poisons for two years, you know we have a threat that isn’t just about feeling a little sick. This problem isn’t going to be solved with just a slight adjustment to diet and exercise. Similarly, my sins put me beyond all normal expectation of help or survival. Only God’s own miraculous intervention can save me.

Unfortunately, I am not unique. I share the same condition with every other human being. That makes our whole world a lost and dying one. It’s not a house that’s a “fixer-upper,” or a boat that has sprung a leak. It is a building about to collapse under a three alarm fire. It is an ocean liner with gaping holes in the hull heading for the ocean floor.

It would be strange, wouldn’t it, to start remodeling rooms and rearranging the furniture in that burning building? It would be strange to try to upgrade your cabin in that sinking ocean liner. But that is what we are doing when we plan and live our lives as if this world were our real and lasting home. We see no farther than the education plans, the career plans, the family plans we have for ourselves in this place. We need to be more concerned with how we are going to get out with our lives, not so concerned with making our stay a comfortable one.

Jesus cross, and the horror that he suffered there, teaches us this. The solution helps us see the full extent of the problem. But that was just Peter’s problem. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to believe it. He had big plans for that first class cabin on the promenade deck. Jesus’ cross took them all away. The first time Jesus openly mentioned his cross to the disciples, Peter pulled him aside and contradicted him in the strongest terms. You remember: “Never, Lord. This shall never happen to you.” And Jesus replied, “Get behind me Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.” Here, when the plan is finally going into effect, Peter has drawn his sword and will fight to prevent it from happening.

Like Peter, we need to put away our swords and stop fighting. Like Peter, we need to let Jesus drink the cup the Father has given him (as if we could prevent it, anyway). Like Peter, we need to learn to stop struggling with the cross and let Jesus lead us to accept all that it means for us. The cross may mean believing that I am sinner who cannot save himself, but it also means forgiveness for every sin and a place in God’s family as his holy child. The cross may mean that all my life and accomplishments in this world are going to come to nothing. But it also offers escape to a new life and a new world infinitely better than the one we are leaving behind.

Sometimes children fight the very things that save them–the shot with the antibiotic their bodies need, the seat belt that makes it possible to survive an accident. Sometimes even God’s children have resisted the very thing that saves them–the cross, and all that means for our sin and for our world. Stop struggling. Let the cross do its work. Life is waiting on the other side.