JESUS’ SURPRISING SELF DISCLOSURE

 

Jesus is accessible to all. He says as much. To make this point, in “Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers,” Dane Ortlund quoted Jesus’ illuminating self-disclosure:

• “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

What does it mean for us that Jesus is “gentle and lowly?” I have read these comforting verses many times but always puzzled over this phrase, especially as it might pertain to my life. Ortlund explains that Jesus is not merely acting gentle and lowly. Instead, this is who He is - always, even when He might act harshly. This has great relevance for us:

• The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible. For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ. No prerequisites. No hoops to jump through...The minimum bar to be enfolded into the embrace of Jesus is simply: open yourself up to him. It is all he needs. Indeed, it is the only thing he works with.

We need only one key to His door - the recognition of our desperate need. Jesus therefore cried out, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden.”

Yes, we have to bear his yoke. However, we later find that this burden nourishes our soul, as Jesus had revealed about His own burden:

• Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” (John 4:34)

Therefore, Ortlund observes:

• His yoke is kind and his burden is light. That is, his yoke is a nonyoke, and his burden is a nonburden.

It is hard for us to conceive how God Himself, who created this world and sustains every atom, could take us seriously. Ortlund understands our perplexity and assures us that:

• ...this high and holy Christ does not cringe at reaching out and touching dirty sinners and numbed sufferers. Such embrace is precisely what he loves to do. He cannot bear to hold back. We naturally think of Jesus touching us the way a little boy reaches out to touch a slug for the first time—face screwed up, cautiously extending an arm, giving a yelp of disgust upon contact, and instantly withdrawing.

How do we know that our Savior does not cringe at the sight of us? First of all, the King of the universe endured the humblest entrance into this world. He arrived, not with a victorious army, but into a smelly, fly-infested stable.

No one had opened their house to Him; nor had they given Him any clothing. Instead, Joseph and Mary were further shamed by having to resort to swaddling cloths to wrap their newborn. These cloths, used to wrap their dead, were purposely stored in animal caves to keep this reminder of death out-of-sight. Clearly, our Lord had been born to die. This is our Messiah, whose birth even the lowly, no-count shepherds could celebrate. He was one of them!

We also tend to take for granted His excruciating and humiliating death without thinking more deeply about it. The Cross had been the most guarded secret in all history. Why? It was the greatest expression of God’s love and His glory, which could only be revealed at just the right time.

• And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:23-25)

Jesus was that grain of wheat which had to die to bear fruit. It was only this explosive expression of love that had given me the hope to move on. I had been so devastated by depression and panic attacks that I was unable to shake the doubt that God might be a master deceiver and perhaps even a sadist. How else could I explain my suffering!

It was only the Cross that was able to convince me otherwise. God had made it apparent to me that a deceiver or a sadist would never die for me. Understanding that the humble Christ had died for even me set me free.

Ortlund therefore concludes:

• This is why we need a Bible. Our natural intuition can only give us a God like us. The God revealed in the Scripture deconstructs our intuitive predilections...