Love’s Victory Unveiled
On Easter day, the veils of Lenten array come down, and the image of the risen Lord is revealed once more. That’s the meaning of Easter: in the bodily resurrection of Christ the hidden victory of the cross is unveiled, it glory and power to save.
To the outward eye the cross may be nothing more than proof of man’s inhumanity to man: a horrifyingly cruel, degrading, and painful public death intended to deter any possible challenge to worldly power, and to demoralize and intimidate any possible opposition to its rule. Indeed at the cross the world invites us to join in the triumph of strength over weakness, of winners over losers, of bullies over weaklings, and cravenly we too often join in. That’s the psychology of public crucifixion.
All this is true, but it is not the whole truth. The eye of faith perceives that something else is involved in the crucifixion of Jesus – not the triumph of carnal weakness, worldly arrogance, and demonic malice, but of God’s loving purposes. On the face of it, the idea is absurd. Yet if we accept the accounts given in the gospel, Jesus approached the cross resolute and determined to see through to the end the work God had given him to do. By his obedience to the Father’s will, his readiness to drink the cup of wrath to the dregs, he made himself the conscious willing instrument of that saving purpose. The powers of evil did their worst to Jesus, and they exhausted their arsenal in seeking to discredit and destroy him, but they could not divide his will from God’s, and so they could not prevent him from accomplishing his mission. By his death Christ made once for all a full perfect offering, sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world; and sealed in blood his witness to the truth. That is the hidden victory of Christ upon the cross – a victory, veiled in the shroud of degradation, defeat, and death, but a victory nonetheless: for this is the sacrifice that God must accept, and the witness that he must vindicate. Thus it is not by the power of his Godhead, but by the righteousness of his manhood, did Christ win the victory over the world.
It is this hidden victory of the cross which is unveiled in the resurrection. As the prophet says, “he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it” (Isaiah 25:7,8, emphasis added).
This unveiling has three aspects. The first aspect is the unveiling of Christ’s victory hidden beneath the appearance of defeat; “who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life” (Easter preface). Though malice rose against him, yet God has triumphed: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen 50:20). There is only possible response to the unveiling of that victory, and it is joy, the joy “that no man taketh from you”, because it is joy of resurrection, of the life that cannot die.
Let us note, that the joy of faith presupposes the sorrow of repentance. For us to take joy in the removal of the veil of shame and defeat, we must acknowledge it as the veil our hands have woven, the bears the image of our own sin. We cannot rejoice at Easter if we do not acknowledge and renounce the scars of the nails which our sins drove into his open hands.
The second aspect of Easter’s unveiling reveals our humanity in the glory of righteousness and life. In Christ’s resurrection this deliverance from condemnation to vindication and death to life is complete; but in us this unfolds in three stages, moving from the inside out. The first stage is the full and perfect justification of sinners before God for Christ’s sake, known by faith only: our deliverance from the guilt of sin. The second stage is our progressive sanctification by his Holy Spirit, manifested in good works: our deliverance from the power of sin. The third stage, yet for to come, is our glorification, when Christ comes again, and the dead rise to glory: our deliverance from penalty of sin. Thus the veil of sin and death that disfigures and conceals our humanity is progressively removed that our humanity may be revealed in the glory of righteousness and life which God intended for it.
All this depends on the third aspect of Easter’s unveiling: the removal from our minds and hearts of the veil of darkness, ignorance, and blindness that Satan, that great deceiver, has cast over them, that we may know the divine purpose fulfilled for us in Christ. That’s what the Easter narratives in the gospel show us: the passing over from doubt to faith and perplexity to understanding, manifested in the response of the disciples to the empty tomb, the angel’s message, and the risen Christ. Like them we are in a pilgrimage from blindness to vision, passing over from doubt to faith and from sorrow to joy. In Easter’s unveiling is the answer to our Lenten prayer: “Lord, that I may receive my sight”.