- The first is the doctrine of the Trinity.
- The second is the humility of God.
In no other religion do we have a god who stoops, a god who comes down to enter into human history in the most inconceivably personal way. But here in Christianity, we have a God who wants to be united with us and who is prepared to humble Himself and even to suffer to accomplish such a union.
The gods of human imagination are indifferent towards the human race. Towering above us in their glory, they are distant and unapproachable—preoccupied with themselves and with things far more important than human existence. These gods exist in eternal separation from us, and whatever interest they take in human affairs serves their own ends. The Christian God is the exact opposite. In marked contrast to the gods of human imagination, the Christian God is not self-centered, not a taker at all, but a giver, and He thoroughly despises the idea of being untouchable.
From the very beginning, from before the beginning, God is not indifferent towards the human race or indecisive about its future. He has staggering plans for us. Indeed, the Christian God is preoccupied with us and our welfare, and determined to bless us with life and fullness and glory. The Christian vision of God is of a God who is eager to know us, eager to cross the infinite chasm between the Creator and the creature, and eager to stoop down and lift us up so that we can share in everything He is and has.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 130-140). . Kindle Edition.
The Christian God is interested in relationship with us, and not just relationship, but union, and not just union, but such a union that everything He is and has—all glory and fullness, all joy and beauty and unbridled life—is to be shared with us and to become as much ours as it is His. The plan from the beginning, in the Christian vision, is that God would give Himself to us, and nothing less, so that we could be filled to overflowing with the divine life.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 142-145). . Kindle Edition.
To believe in the Trinity means that we believe that God is a relational being, and always has been, and always will be. The doctrine of the Trinity means that relationship, that fellowship, that togetherness and sharing, that self-giving and other-centeredness are not afterthoughts with God, but the deepest truth about the being of God. The Father is not consumed with Himself; He loves the Son and the Spirit. And the Son is not riddled with narcissism; he loves his Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit is not preoccupied with himself and his own glory; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Giving, not taking; other-centeredness, not self-centeredness; sharing, not hoarding are what fire the rockets of God and lie at the very center of God’s existence as Father, Son and Spirit.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 162-167). . Kindle Edition.
Creation was the fruit of purpose, the outgrowth of a determined heart. Behind creation, figuring as the driving force of all divine activity, as the one thought at the forefront of the divine mind and the preoccupation of the heart of God, was the decision to give human beings a place in the circle of the Trinity. Before the blueprints for creation were drawn up, the Father, Son and Spirit set their heart and abounding philanthropy upon us. In sheer grace, the Triune God decided not to hoard the Trinitarian life and glory, but to share it with us, to lavish it upon us. Why this is so, why God is this way, why the Father, Son and Spirit set the fullness of their love and lavish grace upon us and determined such a glorious destiny for us, can only be answered by peering into the mutual love of the Father and Son and Spirit. For in one way or another, the existence of everything, not least of every human being, finds its purpose in the deep and abiding love of the Triune God. That circle of love, that circle of intimacy and togetherness and fellowship, that circle of purity and mutual delight and eternal wholeness, is the matrix, the roux, of all divine thought and activity.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 179-187). . Kindle Edition.
Before creation, the Triune God decided that the human race would be included in the Trinitarian circle of life and fullness and glory and joy. And with that decision came a fire in God’s belly that it would be so no matter what it cost. The Lamb of God was slain indeed before the foundation of the world.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 196-198). . Kindle Edition.
What was God’s reaction when Adam fell into sin? What did God do when the human race and creation were plunged into ruin and began lapsing into nothingness? Did God throw up His hands and walk away, disgusted? Did He say to Himself, “I knew they would do this, they deserve to perish, let them get what they deserve”? Did God explode with anger at Adam and Eve for the audacity of disobedience to Him? Did He threaten vengeance? Did His blood begin to boil with plans of punishment and retribution? No. The Fall of Adam and Eve was met by the eternal Word of God. The disaster of Adam’s sin, the chaos and misery, the brokenness and bondage of Adam’s rebellion were met with an immediate and stout and intolerable divine “No! I did not create you to perish. I did not create you to flounder in misery, to live in such appalling pain and brokenness and heartache and destitution. I created you for life, to share in My life and glory, to participate in the fullness and joy, the free-flowing fellowship and goodness and wholeness that I share with My Son and Spirit. And I will have it no other way. It will be so.”
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 198-206). . Kindle Edition.
In order to understand the death of Jesus Christ, we must begin in eternity with the Father, Son and Spirit, and with the decision to give humanity a place in their shared life and glory. This decision establishes the ultimate basis for the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God. He became human to create a living and everlasting relationship between his Father and the human race, to be the mediator, the one in whom the life of the Triune God intersects with and flows into human existence, and the one in whom human life is lifted up into the circle of the Trinity. Through all eternity, Jesus Christ will sit at the Father’s right hand, and he will share with us all that he is and has and experiences with his Father in the fellowship of the Spirit. This has been the plan from the beginning. Without it there would have been no creation and no incarnation and no death of the incarnate Son, and no resurrection and ascension. The fire in God’s belly drives the incarnation and figures as the ultimate context for the death of Christ. But within this larger picture of the eternal purpose of God and its fulfillment in Jesus, there is a second reality that figures into the meaning of the death of Christ: The only way to move from the catastrophe of Adam and Eve to the right hand of God the Father almighty is through death. For the Fall of Adam was such a disaster that to rescue the human race and fulfill the eternal purpose of God for us necessitated nothing short of our our recreation through death and resurrection.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 211-221). . Kindle Edition.
According to The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster tradition, which I was taught as a young man, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” This definition of sin is a typically legal understanding of sin as violation of the law of God. But sin is far more profound than breaking the law, either by failure to do what we should do, or by doing what we should not do. The catechism, as well as the whole legal orientation of Western theology, confuses the root with the fruit. The problem introduced by the Fall of Adam was not simply that humanity began breaking the rules. The problem was that humanity became diseased. The disease is the root problem. Breaking the law is the symptom.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 222-227). . Kindle Edition.
A few months after I read Athanasius’ book, I was asked to lead a Bible study for a group of students. I wanted to talk about Jesus, about who he was and what he did. I remember struggling to think of a way of communicating the problem of sin. I was walking around my apartment thinking, when I noticed several oranges in a bowl sitting on the counter. I am not sure how long those oranges had been there, but it must have been months, for they were rotten to the core. They were imploding, diseased from the inside. There was still enough orange color about them to tell that they were oranges, but they were more slimy green and black than anything else. I took one of those oranges to the Bible study and held it up as an illustration of the problem of sin. What God has on His hands in the Fall of Adam is not a legal problem, but an organic one. Sin is about corruption, about disease, about a deep and pervasive alienation of our very beings. To be sure, all manner of evil and wrongdoing come forth from sin, but these are symptoms of the deeper, more profound disease. If God’s purpose to lift us up into union with Himself, to give us a place in the circle of the Trinitarian life, is going to be fulfilled, the disease has to be healed, the cancer has to be eradicated from our humanity. This is the dilemma that the love of the Father, Son and Spirit faced in the Fall of Adam. There has to be a radical conversion of fallen human existence. And it all has to happen in such a way that God does not loose us in the process.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 239-249). . Kindle Edition.
What exactly does it mean to say that sin is a disease? What does it mean to speak of the alienation of our very beings? It is here that we have to shift into more personal categories. We need to open a psychological window, as it were, and peer into Adam’s soul, for the disease of sin involves the baptism of Adam’s soul in the spiritual forces of anxiety.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 250-253). . Kindle Edition.
Knowing the Father’s delight, His pleasure, filled them with the most powerful force on earth—assurance. Their souls were baptized with assurance, and that assurance in turn generated freedom to go out of themselves and embrace one another, to give and receive, to expose themselves and be known. The baptism of assurance gave birth to fellowship, and fellowship transformed their “existence” into “abounding life.”
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 268-271). . Kindle Edition.
The actual Fall came before they ate the fruit. They fell when they stopped believing the truth and believed the lie of the serpent. In that moment, the razor cut through their souls, assurance was shredded, and anxiety infiltrated the scene of human history. Eating the fruit itself was the first fruit, the first response to the great anxiety that swept into their hearts when they believed the lie. The serpent convinced them that God was holding out on them, that He was not giving them everything they should have, that they were not yet everything they could be. He convinced them that they were missing out. What happened to Adam and Eve’s assurance when they believed that lie? What happened to their security and peace when they believed that God was holding out on them, that they were not everything they could be, that they were missing out on the real glory? Their assurance and security and peace were destroyed, and their souls were baptized with the lethal roux of anxiety and insecurity and guilt. Adam and Eve suddenly knew good and evil. Moreover, the baptism of anxiety instantly colored the way Adam and Eve perceived the world around them and one another. That baptism produced hiding, self-protection and self-centeredness, which acted together with their colored perception to obliterate their freedom for fellowship.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 275-284). . Kindle Edition.
Baxter Kruger notes 3 consequences of sin:
- Failing to share in the abundant life of God - humans fell into mistrust, fear, and isolation then guilt sorrow and angst.
- Disconnected from the source of life, they teeter on the edge of non-existance
- The very presence of God fills them with dread
- He projected his own brokenness onto the face of God, seeing him as vengeful and angry
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 310-315). . Kindle Edition.
God is for us and therefore opposed—utterly, eternally and passionately opposed—to our destruction. That opposition, that fiery and passionate and determined “No!” to the disaster of the Fall, is the proper understanding of the wrath of God. Wrath is not the opposite of love. Wrath is the love of God in action, in opposing action.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 333-336). . Kindle Edition.
The ascension preaches to us that here in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the Fall of Adam and Eve has been undone, Adamic existence has been thoroughly converted to God, fundamentally reordered into right relationship with God.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 388-389). . Kindle Edition.
The Christian church has always confessed that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh, fully divine and fully human, God of God and man of man. It is in thinking these two truths together that we come to the heart of the work of Jesus Christ. The sum and substance of the work of Christ is that the eternal Son of God became human and lived out his divine sonship inside our fallen Adamic existence, and in so doing not only converted fallen Adamic existence, but also forged a real and abiding relationship, a union, between God the Father and fallen humanity. On the one side, there is the truth that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, the Father’s beloved, who from all eternity has loved the Father with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength, and shared all things with Him in the untold fellowship of the Spirit. The incarnation is not merely about some generic divine being becoming human. The Christian Church confesses nothing of an abstract divinity, a “lone ranger” god who dwells in isolation. The confession of the Christian Church is that God is Father, Son and Spirit. It was not a god, but the Son of God, who became human. The incarnation, therefore, is the act of the Triune God, and it means nothing short of the earthing of the eternal trinitarian fellowship. When the Son of God stepped across the divide and entered into human existence, he did not leave his Father or the Spirit behind. The incarnation means that the very life of the Trinity—the fellowship
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 392-402). . Kindle Edition.
The existence of the universe and of the human race within it is not an accident. The Triune God created the world as the first act of a vast and almost inconceivably gracious scheme to lift the human race into the circle of the Trinitarian life itself. Creation serves the higher purpose of adoption. Unto this end the incarnation of the Son was predestined, for there could never be a union between the Trinity and humanity without the most profound stooping on God's part–a stooping which would establish real and actual union between the life of God and human existence.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 414-418). . Kindle Edition.
If the Son of God enters into Adam’s world and takes on Adam’s fallen mind, there is a very real chance that he will believe in the god who appears there and begin to live out of that appearance, thereby violating his eternal relationship with the Father in the Spirit. What is at stake in the incarnation is the very being of God and thus the existence of the universe, on the one hand, and the salvation of the human race on the other. In astounding grace, the Triune God hazards its very being for us and our blessing.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 421-425). . Kindle Edition.
The paradox at the heart of Christianity is that the Son of God entered into fallen Adamic existence without ceasing to be the Son of God. He became Adam without ceasing to be the faithful Son of the Father. The life of the Trinity intersected the brokenness of fallen human existence. How is this possible? How could the fellowship of the Trinity penetrate Adam’s hiding? How could the togetherness and integrity of the Father, Son and Spirit enter into the brokenness and perversion of fallen Adamic existence? How could the one who knows the Father and loves Him with all of his heart enter into the wrongheadedness and blindness and projections of Adam and of Israel? How could this contradiction be possible? The answer is that it is not possible—something has to give, something has to change. Either the fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit grinds to an eternal halt, or Adamic existence is fundamentally reordered. Either the love of the Triune God is broken, or Adamic flesh is converted to God. There has to be a conversion, a fundamental restructuring either in the being and character of God, or in the being and character of Adam. The entrance of the fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit into our alienation and estrangement did not mean the ruin of the Trinity—it meant war. As Luke tells us, Jesus Christ beat his way forward by blows. The Son of God entered into our broken, fallen, alienated human existence. He took upon himself our fallen flesh. He stood in Adam’s shoes, in Israel’s shoes, in our shoes, and he steadfastly refused to be like Adam. He refused to be like Israel. He entered into fallen human existence and steadfastly refused to be “fallen” in it. Step by step, blow by blow, moment by moment, he refused to believe in the god of Adam and he loved his Father with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. Step by step, blow by blow, moment by moment, he hammered out his sonship on the anvil of fallen Adamic existence. Step by step, blow by blow, moment by moment, he bent back the thoroughgoing wrongheadedness of the Adamic mind. It took 33 years of fire and trial, of temptation, with loud crying and tears. What we see in Gethsemane, the gut-wrench of it all, the pain and overwhelming weight, the struggle, the passion, the agony, is a window into the whole life of Jesus Christ. To relegate the suffering of Jesus Christ, the agony that he bore, to a few infinite moments on the cross is to miss the point entirely. His whole life was a harrowing ordeal of struggle, of suffering, of trial and tribulation and pain. For he lived out his sonship inside nothing less than fallen Adamic existence. His whole life was a perpetual cross—and resurrection.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 429-439). . Kindle Edition.
The death of Jesus Christ was not punishment from the hands of an angry God; it was the Son’s ultimate identification with fallen Adam, and the supreme expression of faithfulness to his own identity as the One who lives in fellowship with the Father in the Spirit. For he truly entered into our brokenness and estrangement and alienation. He bore the intolerable contradiction in his own being, and he resolved it through fire and trial, by dying to his Adamic flesh, by crucifying it on Calvary. For in no other way could he live out his fellowship with his Father—as the incarnate Son, in the teeth of the Fall—except through the radical circumcision of his Adamic flesh and the complete undoing of the Adamic mind.
Kruger, C. Baxter (2011-08-09). Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Kindle Locations 447-452). . Kindle Edition.
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