There is a great scene in the film Divergent, where Tris, the new Dauntless recruit, uses lateral thinking to gain a bigger picture of the battle space. As everyone is arguing over tactics, she takes matters into her own hands and splits off from the group (not necessarily wise). She is followed by Four, one of the instructors, and you watch gripped as they gain high ground by climbing a defunct ferris wheel. Brave or stupid? Either way they are then able to see the enemy’s positions clearly, make a plan to capture their flag and complete their mission.
The idea of capturing the flag made me think of what Jesus achieved by His death on a Cross, and by His coming back to life again. The Easter story shows Jesus taking back the initiative, by completely fulfilling His Mission Objective: to take back the power that sin and death have over us.
“Today salvation has come to [us] … For the Son of Man (Jesus) came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:9-10)
To understand why this mission was so necessary we have to go back to the very beginning of the story…
Fallen
After God had created everything perfect and wholesome and good from scratch, Satan in the form of a serpent (probably some sort of snake with legs and able to speak), tricks Adam and Eve into disobeying God’s one and only command, to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—they were to be content being His image bearers and to let God be God. Long story short, this wasn’t enough for them and they ate, and as a consequence death and separation from God is now a thing, whereas it wasn’t before. We remain in that state to this day: lost and separated.
“And the LORD God commanded [Adam], “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Not only is death introduced upon the earth, so was access to the Tree of Life. The two cannot coexist! Adam and Eve were, as an act of Godly compassion, prevented from gaining eternal life in their fallen state. Eating from the Tree of Life would have caused them and all mankind after them to be doomed for ever. So they were banished from the Garden of Eden.
But God has a plan…
He Himself would come down.
He came in the form of a man to rescue us from this fall: to reverse the curse of sin (our disobedience which separates us from God) and death (which keeps us from eternal life). This would mean access again to God, and access again to eternal life. Lots of significant stuff happens in between (see the Old Testament) but we roll the clock of time forward a few thousand years and we come to Jesus, the God/man on a Cross.
Why the Cross?
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
On the Cross, Jesus took upon Himself all the punishment we deserve for our disobedience to God (again, we call this sin, which actually means falling short of the target). He recaptures the flag of the power that sin gives Satan over us—that human tendency we have to keep doing wrong which he mercilessly exploits—and makes it possible to be on God’s side again.
Victory over Death…
At His resurrection, Jesus defeats Death; He is actually completely and thoroughly dead—dead as a post—but has within Himself the power to overcome this and come back to life in His new deathless body (not dead like a zombie walking, but a completely and eternally no-longer-able-to-die type of body—Jesus is fully alive, and then some, and still is).
He has recaptured the flag of Death to make it possible again for us to do so too; and also, to boot, we get an incredible deathless body like Jesus’s one (but obviously, not until after this life).
“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.” (Colossians 1:13)
Our world is currently under the dominion of Satan whether we like it or not. We can see the evidence for that quite clearly in all the sickness and evil which still exists (which many people blame God for). But, despite Satan’s dominion and powerful grasp over us, Jesus has regained the upper hand.
God holds—and always did hold—the higher ground, after all, it’s His ground. His long awaited plan unfolded when the time was right: sweeping into history, performing His rescue, ‘capturing the flags’ of Sin and Death, and reversing the damage done through Satans trickery. And we can now share in God’s victory over them, by believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins.
“Believe in the lord Jesus and you will be saved.”
Acts 16:31
Read how I was rescued:
My Story
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