Event: SPIK (Seminar Pembinaan Iman Kristen)
Topic: Christ: The Source of Life, Died and Resurrected / Kristus: Penghulu Hidup, Mati dan Bangkit
Speaker: Rev. Billy Kristanto
Good morning, brothers and sisters, I will use the help of slide presentation to help us follow this session. Let us enter into prayer:
LORD, we give thanks, for in You we gain the true meaning of our life, we can live our days, even we could tread our days since we were born, for You were too born in this world. As we grow to be more mature, we also witness You growing. In this world, we learn as You also learn. We learn to obey God as You are also learning to obey the Father. When we see that one day we are going to die, we see that You have also died on the cross for us. Thank you, LORD, for Your presence in all aspects of our lives, that we may believe, consoled, and understand what it means to be in union with You. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
The church father, Irenaeus, said that Jesus went through all stages of human life when He came into this world. This is an interesting view because when comparing this to the Reformed or Protestant soteriology, we emphasize the aspect of substitution. I do not mean to compare here, but to enrich our understanding. But in such concept, in the Christology as taught by Irenaeus, what is discussed here is not merely on death, lived side by side with us ever since Christ’s birth. We are born, Jesus was born, we grow and so is Jesus, et cetera. Until at one point, we die as human and Jesus too died on the cross. There is not a single aspect in our life which God is not present. There is none. You may say, “I think there is. I got married and Jesus is not married. Jesus does not understand the difficulties of marriage.” People say this about marriage: Those who are in the outside wish to enter, but those who are in the inside wish to escape. We then claim that Jesus does not understand the difficulties of marriage. But according to the Scripture, Jesus was married. Jesus was written as the Groom and we are His brides. And Jesus’ wives, who are the congregation, are more obnoxious and problematic than any wives on earth there is. So Jesus understands the difficulties of marriage.
And lastly, we experience death and Jesus did too. Woe are they who in death are not accompanied by God. What are they comforted with? Pastor Stephen Tong once preached about a father and his son who are both atheists. When the father was about to face death, he was shaken as he fears the possibility of atheism is wrong. The son then reminded his father, “Dad, we have long believed in atheism. We have to be strong in our faith and hold on to atheism.” Then the father said, “Holding on to what? What is there to hold on to? There is only nothingness and emptiness, we cannot hold on to anything.” Not only did he not have anything to hold on to, but nobody was holding him. In our lives, there are times when we cannot hold on to God, yet we are still thankful that God is still holding us. But woe are they who do not know God in their lives. There is no God in their birth, there is no God in their growth, there is no God in their adulthood, there is no God in their marriage, and later, in their death, God is not present too. So, Christ’s death accompanies man’s life, as so in His birth, growth, obedience and so on. All these accompany our lives. I do not use the term accompany in an easy manner, I do not mean merely as an accompaniment. I am speaking of a spiritual union with God. Not only a mere accompaniment but a communion with the Living God. We could actually reverse this: Christ died accompanying our death, but even in our death, we could understand Christ’s death even more. Do you understand this reversal movement? We die because of our sins, Jesus died accompanying us. But it is in our death we could accompany Jesus in terms of gaining a better understanding of Him.
