Sharing Grumpy Cat Memes and How God Proves That He Cares For Us
Sharing is caring.
Hebrews 2 says: 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Usually we see that slogan on Facebook to guilt people into sharing some Grumpy Cat meme or caption with the Dos Equis guy.
God had a profound idea that changed how we share with others. Where we could only sit and partially grasp the pain of those around us, God collectively brought the experience of Heaven and Hell together in one man’s suffering. God gave Heaven and Hell over to the body of Jesus, where He shared in the best of humanity as well as the worst of human depravity.
When we share in the experiences of others, we only get a partial glimpse of that moment they seek for us to embrace. Jesus brought the fullness of the created and the uncreated to us so that there was now a shared experience that could be looked to for a sense of completeness where this world leaves off.
A few points about the significance of the humanity that Jesus shares with us:
(1) To share in death is to share in uncertain certainty
While there is time and space, there is a certainty, that all will succumb to the grip of death. In death lurks the uncertainty of what is beyond. Science and rational people tell us that all we have to look forward to is a hole in the ground. That is their certainty. Live life to the fullest because it will one day be gone. There will always be the uncertainty that faith must heal. Faith brings us closer to the Resurrection and the certain hope that it provides. Faith seeks a finality of deliverance.
The certainty of death hangs over the head of every person. It is a prod to move us to productivity, hedonism, legacy, and slavery. We are bound to it so that we stay in line, lest that waiting death come earlier than by natural causes. When death is finality, we will always be in slavery to its due date. That is not how God wants us to live. Every ache and pain and trip to the hospital and glimpse at death is not meant to hold us in slavery of what we haven’t done, but to help us see that there will be so much more when we are delivered as Jesus was delivered.
Jesus’ shared experience of death brought help to the lesser beings borne of earth. There will always be that tingling in our minds as to what is next, but Jesus’ experience, in part, was meant to bring us back to a place of certainty, trusting that we were not born simply to take up space in a cemetery one day.
Here is the real uncertain certainty: Satan’s reign is all about his fear. Satan fears the uncertain time in which Jesus will return again because He knows the certainty of what that day will mean. It will be the end of the time he has had over this world. He fears an end to his ability to use his arrogance, lies, and charm to call humanity to his cause. He fears His certain end.
Satan has not fully shared in death, yet. He lives for the uncertainty. His share in death will be great, and he knows it. That is the certainty that he fears.
(2) To share in life is to care about what we care about
To share in our lives, Jesus would be able to see what His creation got excited about. Everyone has a passion, even the high priest. Not only did Jesus become the great high priest, offering the one and true sacrifice, but His work also took the work of mortal man and glorified it.
By doing the work of the high priest, might God have been saying something about that exalted position? Might God have been saying something about the concept of work as well? Not everyone can be high priest. Not everyone can do what we do. But God inserted Himself into the position of high priest to test the limits of the position. He experienced the power and the struggle that goes with being a high priest, standing between God and men for the salvation of His people. By being a craftsman, teacher, Rabbi, and the other occupations that Jesus inserted Himself into, was He not sharing in the glory and the struggle of those positions as well? Jesus couldn’t be everything, but as He ministered, He had the opportunity to see you and me for who we are in this world. And Heaven got a chance to see humanity beyond merely creating us as emotional beings.
Jesus had DNA like you and me. He was created in the womb from the basic building blocks of life. He had His baby teeth fall out. He had growth spurts. He had to sit through Algebra (well, maybe not). But all of those rites of passage we remember, He had the chance to experience like us. And God celebrates those little joys along life’s journey with us because the Son went through them, both the big and small.
(3) Sharing means that we do not fully grasp the devastation of temptation
We cannot fully comprehend the work of Jesus and what it took to remain sinless under temptation’s power. We give up to temptation on occasions too numerous to count. Because we miss so much of what we have handed over to Satan in our temptations, we cannot grasp the intentionality of how Jesus had to watch every breath and action He took. This is a reminder that we all need to hear, not so that it continues to shame us, but to continue to try to understand how much our Lord endured to remain the sinless Lamb of God. Jesus gave up the opportunities to overindulge in alcohol that so many use to celebrate, He remained sexually pure in His actions and His thoughts, He did not give in to sloth, He had no idols, He did not hand Himself over to blasphemy, and so much more.
Temptation finds its way into our hearts in large and small ways. No matter the size of the temptation we have failed to overcome, it’s still a sin worthy of condemnation. Jesus beat temptation’s power, so that we can be free from living with that fear of sin always in the back of our minds. He overcame that burden, so that we would be freed to go and accomplish great things instead of dealing with atonement every second of our lives. Thanks be to God!
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We did not guilt God into caring for us, He did that because He believed in those whom He had created. He wanted to exhaust every means of redemption to bring His people back to Him. The heart of man will always be one to join in a setting of compassion, and God wants to use that to gather us together with Jesus. Our Lord’s submission under Heaven breaks the bond of the ignorance many cast upon God; He cannot possibly understand my condition. He does understand because He understood. Amen.
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