6.8.26 – Ahead of, Not Instead of, Part 4

Eleven weeks ago, we started an expansive journey beginning with the merit—the favor that flows from the faithfulness and standing of the Righteous One. For the chen pattern to hold, for the participation framework to work, for everything we have said about the servant to make sense, we must say something carefully about Yeshua Himself. Most of us were given a picture of Jesus where the emphasis on His deity made His humanity feel incidental—a divine being walking around in human form, looking like a man, but actually God making decisions with God's knowledge and power, with outcomes never actually in doubt. I understand the impulse: the desire to honor Him. But hear me: if His obedience was not real obedience, His merit is not real merit. If His temptation could not have pulled Him another way, His faithfulness is not the kind we have been describing. If the prayer in Gethsemane could only ever have ended one way, it is not that big of a deal. If any of that is true, the entire framework collapses. Because His favor flows through demonstrated faithfulness, and demonstrated faithfulness requires the demonstration to be real.

I am not denying His deity. Fullness of deity dwells in Him bodily. But take seriously what Hebrews says: He was tempted in every respect as we are. What Paul says: He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant. What Luke says: He grew in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man. We are saved by the faithfulness of Jesus, and that language only works if His humanity is real all the way down.

There is a beautiful idea: God created the cure before the wound. He sent the answer into the world before the human condition went off the rails. The answer was already prepared. The rabbis spoke of the spirit of Messiah as being from before the foundations of the world—not the man of Nazareth, but the spirit, the principle, the plan, the preordained answer to a wound not yet struck. Peter uses the same logic: Jesus was foreknown from the foundation of the world, but manifested in these last times. Before the world was made, the plan was already there. The cure was in place before the wound. Then, in the fullness of time, a particular man was born of a particular woman, born under Torah, living a particular life of faithful obedience to the Father. On a particular day in a particular river at the Jordan, in that Judean wilderness, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and the voice said, "This is My Son, beloved, in whom I am well pleased." The spirit of the Messiah that had been waiting from before the foundation took up His rightful residence in Yeshua of Nazareth because He had merited it. His life of obedience made Him fit to bear it. The cure that had been waiting before the wound now lived in a man, in a body, with a name, walking the roads of Galilee.

Many people have divinity descend, and humanity just goes along for the ride. But in this picture, the eternal plan finds its perfect vessel in the Faithful One, whose obedience makes Him capable of bearing the fullness of God. From the Jordan moment forward, He is filled with the Spirit of God and confronts the forces of death wherever He meets them—the leper, the bleeding woman, the dead daughter, the widow's son, Lazarus, the cross itself. Everywhere death rules, He steps in, and life goes out. He is not performing a transaction; He is the cure walking. And that life has been flowing ever since, through the apostles, through the witnesses, to every generation that has followed Him—all the way to you.

This changes everything. Moses asked God to show him His glory. God passed by and said: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression." That is how God answered when Moses said, "Who shall I tell them You are?" Mercy, grace, slow to anger, steadfast love, forgiveness. Ask yourself: If that is who God is, what kind of cure would He prepare before the wound came? A cure that required violence before any mercy could show up? A cure that demanded blood before forgiveness was legally possible? A cure that required God's wrath on a substitute before He could declare His love for the world He already said He loved? Or a cure that entered the wound, carried the sickness, walked through death, and on the other side poured out forgiveness, healing, water, and Spirit on all who would come?

A picture of a wrathful God who needed someone to die before He could love is not the picture Moses saw on the mountain. It is not the picture Jesus gave when He said, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." It is not the picture John the Baptist preached at the Jordan, where forgiveness was already flowing through repentance and immersion, not a single drop of Jesus' blood yet spilled. Mercy was always who God was going to save. The cross is the faithful demonstration of that mercy, not the price of it.

I hope the picture is getting clearer and clearer for you. Happy 16th day of counting toward the firstfruits of the wine, and happy second day of the week.

Shalom!
Alan

P.S. If you want to go back and look at any of the daily studies, they are on the lightintorah.org website, the DEVOTIONAL tab.