Approaching Easter - Philip Yancey - Who was really in charge?

Normally we think of someone who dies a criminal death as a failure.

Yet the Apostle Paul would later reflect about Jesus, "Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

What could he mean?

On one level I think of the individuals who in our own time disarm power. The racists sheriffs who locked Martin Luther King, Jr., in jail cells, The Soviets who deported Solzhenitsyn, the Czechs who imprisoned Vaclav Havel, the South Africans who imprisoned Nelson Mandela--all these thought they were solving a problem, yet instead all ended up unmasking their own violence and injustice.

Moral power can have a disarming effect.

When Jesus died, even a gruff Roman soldiers was moved to exclaim, "Surely this was the Son of God!"

He saw the contrast all too clearly between his brutish colleagues and their victim, who forgave them in a dying gasp.

The pale figure nailed to a crossbeam revealed the ruling powers of the world as false gods who broke their own lofty promises of piety and justice.

Religion, not irreligion, accused Jesus; the law, not lawlessness, had him executed.

By their rigged trials, their scourging, their violent opposition to Jesus, the political and religious authorities of that day exposed themselves for what they were - upholders of the status quo, defenders of their own power only.

Each assault on Jesus laid bare their own illegitimacy.

    -- From The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey


[But even at His final hours, Jesus, the Savior God, pursued His mission - "Today you shall be with Me in paradise," He told the dying thief, laying bare His own true legitimacy!]