Meaning is excruciating. Reality is crucified.
The pain, "the Scroll of Life of the Lamb Slain," before the world came, is plain in existence.
Existence is suffering. Death is destiny.
Resurrection is written in blood, "in the blood of the eternal covenant".
A covenant in One, cut through the God of peace, who by mortification brought back from the dead our great Shepherd.
Meaning is agonising. A forge of love, a refining story, purifying glory.
Life is not meaning, but meaning is life; life is death, and death is reality—in the shape of a cross.
We are born to die, and we die to be born; born dead and dead born. We are dying in birth and birthing in death; we die crucified, and yet, we are born crucified.
The embryonic “fellowship of Christ's sufferings," becoming formed by his death, is knowing—experientially knowing—the power of his Spirit's metamorphosis.
It is a marriage of mutual union; a communion—an intercourse of Christ’s pain, filling us with gain. It is love, an intimacy of his suffering and his Spirit; a joining within us of the Cross and Pentecost.
In hope, "we fill up in our flesh what is still lacking in Christ's afflictions;" in the sure hope of harvesting the happiness that lies on the far side of holiness. In fellowship with him, "for the joy set before us,” we must endure our cross—daily taking it up in solidarity and companionship with his crucifixion.
It is the end of loneliness and the beginning of wholeness. I am intimately acquainted with Christ’s completeness.
In my struggle against sin, I have "not yet resisted to the point of shedding my blood." Yet I know that pruning produces pain—the pain of love—and the gain is more produce.
Origen applied Christ's words literally. He emasculated himself. Many times I've meditated on it, saving myself from mancipation, from masturbation, from self-gratification:
"If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into Gehenna."
The circumcision that saves cuts off the flesh that craves; the covetousness that clings to things, that would hold onto everything—the whole of creation—at the expense of gaining Christ our Creator, who gave.
"My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he rebukes everyone he accepts as a son."
"Accept hardship as discipline." Accept discipline as love. God is pouring out his love into my life with his Spirit of holiness; giving me wholeness.
If I want to know—if I want to have and to hold—if I want to possess, I need the knowledge of Christ in the experience of his resurrection. This is the only knowledge, the only possession; the only reality and meaning—the only existence.
If I want Christ—if "I want to know him and the power of his resurrection"—I need to "know the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”
Becoming one flesh with him, marrying myself with my risen Lord—experiencing our mutual indwelling—is uniting myself to his pain, embracing his excommunication, his execution.
"Filling up in my flesh" what is still left of Christ’s afflictions is an active volition; an adoption of suffering: accepting tribulation and trials and testing as the Lord's will for me; his will to crush me and cause me to suffer—taking on the very nature of a servant, becoming like him in his service. It means becoming subject to him, subservient, come what may, unto the end; even unto the death.
Reality is not rosy; it is not a nice circle with a cross at its centre. Reality is a cross, with a cross at its very centre. Reality itself is cruciform, and so is its heart.
"The Lamb was slain from the conception of the world."
Life is not purpose-driven; purpose is life-driven, life is resurrection-driven, and resurrection is driven by death: the death of the cross.
Meaning itself is excruciating; it is suffering towards crucifixion so that resurrection might proceed with glorification.
All is dying. “Death is the destiny of every man, and the living should take this to heart.”
All things, willingly or unwillingly, embrace crucifixion.
"It is destined for man to die once and then, judgment."
I am born crucified, or I die crucified.
"I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live."
But "anyone who wants to save his life will lose it." "This is the second death.”
"I die every day.” I mean that. "In my heart, I feel the sentence of death... I have despaired of life itself."
But "this happens so that I might not trust in myself, but in him who raises the dead…”
Accept hardship as love, as God is treating us as his adopted heirs, of all of which he cares.
"In the end, it produces a harvest of righteousness for those who have been trained by it."
It is all for joy. "For the joy set before him, he endured the cross."
So too, Christ-comers "must suffer before entering his glory".
He, who in the new beginning "became flesh and tabernacled among us," choosing "the joy that was set before him," made meaning; created reality and existence.
And now glorified, he waits for everything to be put under his crucified feet.
He formed righteousness in the shape of the cross. He chose pruning to produce joy. He created glory as its produce.
How does he eternally endure the pain of it all: all the while grieving, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Every moment, inside and outside time, imminently and transcendently, feeling the hardship of evil and enduring it, in and through us.
He lives forever interceding for us as the cruciform one, to serve as the eternally slain one, for the righteousness it forms; for the joy that righteousness makes and for the glory that joy creates.
It is for righteousness, for joy, and for glory.
The harvest of "happiness is on the far side of holiness," thank you, Tim Keller. And the long, hard process that produces holiness is crucifixion:
"He who has suffered in his body is done with sin. He no longer lives the rest of his life for worldly gain."
"Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials" because the furnace refines our faith, forging hope and filling us with the fire of God's love. "We rejoice in our sufferings."
Is it any wonder that one of the biggest bodybuilder of our time said, "I loved the pain. It was orgasmic." (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Orgasmic crucifixion, like labour at the point of birth, is said to be an ecstasy of the deepest depths—a low so deep that its antithesis is an afterglow not of moments or even months but of eternal praise.
The Lamb was slain before the world he made. He'd lain down his life before the beginning of time. The beginning became his final death nail. We hail. He came. His death laid the life that he made; he paid without price. His death gave the life that he lived without strife. The life that he gives is more than forgives; his life which he gave is more than we crave.
Meaning is excruciating. Christ is crucified.
