Failure, God's Greatest Victory
In the lonely place Jesus was made free to fail.
Thinking about Jesus possibly failing is very strange.
How can He, the pure Son of God, with all God’s characteristics and attributes possibly fail? Seems impossible.
But, Jesus was also ALL man. Man, with all his weakness, or at least with potential for weakness and physical frailties. Jesus could have failed any number of ways, humanly. And for some, in the time of Jesus, even today, He did exactly that. He did not perform the way they had envisioned that He would, so in their minds Jesus failed.
Yet He did not. Jesus depended on, trusted, lived and worked in the power of the Holy Spirit. And did exactly what the Father had sent Him to do, complete and to the letter.
Jesus, His man side didn’t have to be perfect – His God side was.
Whew! Is that a right statement you ask? I think it is. He was born of a very human – frail, depraved sinner – His mother Mary. She was no different from any of the rest of the Adam species. Born of her flesh, born of her blood, Jesus was completely human – yet, born completely God as well for the seed was of God.
Yes, that’s right; give your head a shake if it makes you feel better. I have done that a lot, but this is a fact about Jesus we, as finite minded humans, will never be able to get our minds wrapped around. We just have to accept the un-fathom-ability of this truth. It’s as hard to understand this as it is to say that word.
In my failure I am made free to find Jesus
I, on the other hand, am completely human, I am a depraved sinner. Without the way of Jesus, I would have no return to God and would, as a result, be eternally lost because of my own personal sin against God most high. Sinful and rebellious I had no justification for my personal sin to bring before Holy God to cause Him to forgive my sin and let me live. None—nothing.
God in His mercy knew it was totally impossible for me. I sinned before I had cognitive recognition of what I was doing. Worse yet, I sinned when I did have cognitive recognition of what I was doing! Why, because of selfishness, self-preservation, ambition, greed, and anger. I had pure selfish motives for my sin – and did them anyway. In “me” there was no power to want anything different. I was blind to the needs of others from a purely unselfish motive. I was blind to the need of allegiance to God, Ruler and Sovereign of all.
But God in His mercy – although He had the “right” to, -- did not leave me there – in that state of deadly selfish rebellion. In His goodness God sent His only Son to pay the price for my failure. Jesus failed in the eyes of the world so I could succeed in the eyes of God!
It is in lowly solitude that I discover, continually and anew, my need, and the depth of my need.
Power, ambition and self-advancement, the stepping stones of success with the world, are the three things that come up against hope, faith and love, the victorious results of the greatest, redeeming failure.
One promotes pride, the other grace and humility.
