A friend of mine has had a difficult time coming to terms with the idea that Jesus was cursed as part of his suffering and crucifixion. Passage like Galatians 3:13 which says Jesus was cursed. And Deuteronomy 21:23 which says that anyone hung on a tree is cursed. However, have brought him face to face with this truth. If this is true, he asked, why does it hurt so much? The following was my response. I must confess that my response was not part of the discussion, I responded a couple months after the last comment in that thread. But I like the thoughts he provoked in my response.
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I think you are right to feel hurt by this. The message of the Gospel is a scandelous thing. The temptation is to, like Peter In Matt 16:22, to say "far be it from you Lord, surely this will never happen to you".
When you examine the teachings of many gnostics, you can see that their mistakes grow out of a desire to preserve God's dignity as they see it. Their ontological assumptions are scandalized by a God who would become flesh. Again the temptation is to say "far be it from you Lord."
I think the situations are similar. What separates Peter from the Gnostics is that he ultimately allows God to take him beyond his pre-concieved notions of what is proper to the deity, and shows him a God who is much larger, and loves him much more than he could ever have imagined. He comes to accept the scandelous offense to God's dignity as a gift to himself. It is a debt that can never be paid in full. It binds him to God forever.
