Jesus holds open the door. (Part 7)

Jesus holds open the door

Part 7: There is an answer to evil that cannot be extinguished

How then, is the door open, and how can we enter?

The door is open because Jesus – whoever he was, and is – is a universal person, because he represents the human condition of us all. From all that we can tell, he was a person of supreme compassion, intent only on lifting our burdens, on setting us free from guilt, failure and regret, on uniting us in love, on empowering us to live with truth and justice, and all this by opening us fully to God’s love – his freely given grace. The foundation of this new life is communion with God, which Jesus made possible by embodying the presence of God and inviting us to share in his love.

Yet this very graciousness was perceived as threatening by those who turned to fear and hatred, to closed minds rather than open hearts, to restrictiveness rather than liberty. It is this fact of the love of God being met with the hatred of humanity that makes the life of Jesus encompass the essence of the human condition. And, as we stated earlier, it was God’s genius to turn human wickedness against us, so that our plans to extinguish Jesus became the means by which God set free the opportunity of new life in all its fullness to enter the human experience. Jesus deserves our honour for it seems clear that he understood the suffering he would endure, and chose it because he simply believed that this was the way that God would liberate the human race from the dominion of sin, evil and death. There is nothing more that evil can do once it has declared that it will kill you unless you give up loving, but you choose to go on loving anyway. And that is why, ultimately, love and life win, and hatred and death are shown to be powerless to stop it.