When I was very young, I found myself lost in the vastness of the sky. Night or day, the endlessness of clouds or stars made me feel very inconsequential. The idea of eternity or infinite constructs baffles us all; we’re built to categorize everything into a billion tiny taxonomies. How do you consume or categorize an infinite thing?
To me, the scariest part of anything never-ending—especially time—is the understanding that if time is infinite, then all things will come to pass. What I mean by that is, if every possibility is a notch on a spinning tumbler, then even a billion notches on a billion gears will eventually align in every single possible configuration. That’s eternity. No escape from any possibility. If you dwell on it long enough, it’s the most horrifying thought imaginable. If you believe in God, it can be much more horrifying. How can I, a speck in the cosmos, trust God in the face of a trillion opportunities for him to change his mind? How can an infinite being limit himself or his behavior?
Jesus is the answer to that question of trust. You see, the Old Testament is a twisting tale of failing men making awful decisions. Despite those decisions, God gave them a path—a seemingly temporary one. Sacrifices, laws, and detailed procedures created a journey toward redemption. The law was impossible, but God didn’t abandon Israel. While each Old Testament hero accomplished so much through obedience, they were far from perfect. Abraham himself was a flawed man, lying and conniving to protect himself. Jacob was manipulative. David was prideful and arrogant. For generations God’s plan was for man to fail, man to sacrifice and God to absolve. Then, after thousands of years, God finished his design for redemption.
For all of us who have ever doubted God’s ability to “stay true” to his word, He answered profoundly. You see, the covenants God made with humanity demanded a price—a death for sin. That was the purpose of sacrifice. If this covenant is broken by you, you must pay with blood. If this covenant is broken by me, I must pay with blood. Despite God never abandoning the conditions of his word, he knew his people would always fall short of their end of the bargain. In the face of that sad truth, God did not toss over the board or rewrite the rules. He didn’t even abandon us, as the covenant allowed. He took the hardest, most unimaginable route and became a man. He entered our side of the agreement and became the only sacrifice suitable to forgive all sins…and to quench a covenant man has broken every day, in every heart, since the age of Abraham.
There are so many lessons to be learned through the life of Christ. What does his story tell us about God’s willingness to not only keep his word, but to stand in the gap on our behalf? A God with infinite power and options at his disposal chose to go beyond his word and keep his promise in the most difficult, agonizing demonstration of love imaginable. God is not interested in building a legacy of whims. Instead, his steady engineering manifests itself in picking up a heavy, rugged cross instead of burning our world to ash.
You can trust God. Christ is enough.