Why the Cross

The Colonel doesn't care near as much for Christmas as he does Easter.

The Colonel cares not one wit on which of Santa's lists his name appears.  If his name did happen to appear on the "good" list, the Colonel assures you that nothing in his own character and conduct landed it there.  The only redeeming quality of the man curmudgeoned before his time is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

And that's why Easter is the holiday that means the world to the Colonel.   

Like every other man who preceded, and will follow, him, the Colonel's sin and imperfection separates him from his Creator.  The Colonel fervently believes that his God is so Holy, so perfect, that He cannot allow sin and imperfection in his presence.  Nothing the Colonel could ever do in his own strength and personal conduct can ever bridge the great gulf that separates his sinful mortality from God's perfect and holy immortality.

The Colonel believes that God loves him despite his possession of the blackest, most sinful heart any man has ever possessed.  The Colonel can not, even in the wildest delusions about himself, come to any conclusion other than that he is just as imperfect and bent toward evil as any man who ever lived.  And yet, he can come to no other conclusion but that God loves him. 

Allow the Colonel to explain why he believes God still loves him in spite of his sinfulness. 

Man is God's greatest, most beloved creation.  God placed man at the head of His earthly creation -- privileged to the fruit and responsible for stewardship.  But, as beautiful as all of creation may seem to man, it is not perfect.  It is corrupt and transitory.  

So, why would a perfect God create imperfection?  

The Colonel doesn't pretend to know the perfect mind of God, but he believes that God created man for a relationship built on man's free will.  God didn't want man to love Him because he had to.   

When God selected Abram (and later renamed him Abraham), from whom to establish His People, He was not picking a perfect man to father a people special in their own right.  The only thing special about Abraham and his descendants is that they were chosen for one purpose and one purpose alone -- to reveal God to man. 

Abraham's descendants -- God's chosen people -- endured four centuries of captivity in Egypt.  At the time of their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites were a nation of millions -- and still they needed a Savior God to free them.  It was the overwhelming power of a Savior God that liberated the Israelites, a people as stubbornly sinful and rebellious as any who ever existed.  God miraculously saved them from captivity and miraculously sustained them on their return to the land God had promised to them.

Look, for all the "flowing with milk and honey" descriptions of the land between the Euphrates and the Nile, the "Promised Land" isn't any more special -- in its own right -- than any other territory on this big blue marble.  The Colonel has trod on a goodly percentage of God's creation, to include the "Promised Land," and there isn't anything to recommend that sliver of land at the western end of the Mediterranean above any other.

Except that God chose it, and a people to populate it, to reveal Himself to man.   

On the way out of Egypt, God established a covenant with the people He chose for the express purpose of revealing Himself to man.  He provided His Law -- the Commandments -- as His expectations of the people He chose for the express purpose of revealing Himself to man.  

God expected man to follow His Commandments to the letter, but knew that he couldn't.

The Colonel knows that just don't make sense.  Not to man, anyway. 

Just as God chose Abraham's descendants to reveal Himself to man, He provided His Law to reveal His perfection and man's imperfection.  No man, save the human incarnation of God's Son, has ever perfectly kept the Ten Commandments. 

The Colonel hasn't even come close.  In fact, he has swung and missed at every one, in thought and deed (no difference in God's perfect vision), of the slow-pitch softball offerings of the Ten Commandments.

Seriously.  The Ten Commandments don't require anything that man would consider Herculean effort.  There's no requirement to slay dragons, no demand that one fly like an angel, no need to perform miracles -- just demonstrate by your actions that you love God and love your fellow man.

Search your heart.  What is your score?

(Rhetorical question.  Please don't tell the Colonel your failings -- he has more than enough on his own conscience to be burdened with yours as well.) 

One infraction of God's Law makes one imperfect and guilty of sin.  A sinful, guilty man cannot enter into God's presence of his own accord.  God just won't allow it.

So, all of mankind falls far short of the glory and perfection of a Creator God who loves them above all of His creations.  It doesn't make sense to this man.  And that's the point.  The Colonel ain't God.

From the very beginning of His relationship with man, God required a significant sacrifice to demonstrate a man's sincere remorse for his sin -- the life blood of the best of the beasts for which God made man responsible.  But, this atonement was always temporary and ultimately insufficient.

Why?  Because any sacrifice of even the very best, any lamb without outward blemish, of God's imperfect creation was..., well...,

...imperfect.

What's so imperfect about a lamb without any blemish?

Simple.  It is mortal.  It will not live forever.  If it was truly perfect, it would be immortal.

In God's perfect timing, He sent His perfect Son into the world as a human.  This was the Messiah, prophesied about and promised to His Chosen People -- again, not because they were special in their own right.  It was not the first time (nor the last) that God's Son would appear on Earth.  

The disciple with perhaps the closest relationship with God's Son incarnate preambles his gospel with the following revelation from God:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."  (John 1: 1-5) 

Let's unpack that.  

God's Son -- His only Son -- has existed (and will exist) with God for eternity in either direction mortal man my look in time.  Man refers to Him as God's Son because there is no other way man can comprehend the concept.  There is no God Mother of God's Son -- none mentioned by God; none referred to by God-inspired scripture.  God's Son was with God at Creation -- indeed, He is the Agent of Creation.  

The Colonel's journey with his Savior God has led him to the following conclusion about the Bible's account of Creation -- it isn't about the Creation; it's about the Creator.    

God's Son is God's Agent of Eternal Salvation.  Outside of the Son, there is no eternal life -- no means by which sinful, imperfect man may escape the sentence of mortality and enter, completely pardoned of all sin, into the eternal presence of God.  

Remember the blood sacrifice requirement the Colonel mentioned earlier?  That sacrifice of a superficially "perfect" animal only temporarily atoned for a man's sin.  The sacrifice had to be repeatedly made, and still did not completely pardon a man's sin.

A truly perfect sacrifice was required.  And because imperfect man was (is) incapable of making a truly perfect sacrifice, Perfect and Holy God had to make that truly perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of His most loved creation.  The truly most perfect and greatest sacrifice God could make was to allow His Son to set aside His perfectly holy, most-high divinity and be made low. 

How great was that fall?  

God's Son is not only the Agent of Creation; He is the Commander of the Lord's Armies.  Check out the account of Joshua on his commander's recon in front of the great fortified position known as Jericho found in the fifth chapter of the book of Joshua.  

Moses is dead and buried on the eastern side of the Jordan River.  Joshua has taken command, led God's People across the Jordan, and now stands on the Plain of Jericho scratching his head and trying to figure out how his light infantry army is going to reduce and capture one of the most impregnable fortresses ever faced by a military force.  Joshua sees a resplendent warrior standing at a distance and cautiously approaches, asking, (the Colonel paraphrases) "Hey, soldier!  Are you one of my men, or do you belong to the army of Jericho?"

The resplendent warrior's answer is a curt, "No!"

The Colonel can only imagine the look on General Joshua's face at that answer.  The warrior saw the look and then changed it, "I am the Commander of the Lord's Army."

What does it mean to be the Commander of the Lord's Army?  It doesn't take a military genius to figure out that chain of command.  But, lest there be any doubt as to bona fides, the warrior facing Joshua commands him to remove his sandals because, "you are standing on Holy Ground."  That's the same thing God told Moses to do when He appeared as the burning bush.  Mere angels don't do that -- mere angels cannot and do not accept the worship of man. 

In the 19th chapter of the Book of Revelations, the Commander of the Lord's Army returns with the entire army of Heaven at his back.  The Colonel used to take a perverse pleasure in believing that he would be fighting in that final battle against evil..., until he realized that the entire army of Heaven doesn't lift a finger to help the Commander of the Lord's Army.  One word from the Son of God's mouth destroys the army of evil.

That's the nature of the sacrifice made by God, whose Son loves mankind with the same perfect heart of His Father.  The lamb offered by God was indeed perfect, but it was not just a lamb.  

The most familiar verse of scripture -- the eternal hope of mankind -- is John 3: 16, "For God so loved the world, that He sent his only begotten Son..."  But, when you realize that God's "only begotten Son" left heaven as a perfect, immortal, holy king (and the greatest warrior) to become mortal flesh in a form without any inherent social privilege, to live as a mortal man, and to (in the prime of life) willingly go to the cross..., well..., that's a true sacrifice.

And on that cruel cross, God's Son, made manifest in the body and soul of Jesus of Nazareth, gave up His sinless, perfect, holy life-blood to cover the sins of mankind...

Forever.

God created man for voluntary relationship.  God's requirement for that relationship is the voluntary acceptance of the sacrifice of His Son.

The Colonel is beyond grateful that his own earthly conduct has no bearing on his eternal salvation.