This Sunday the Second Sunday in Lent, March 4th, 2012: “Sinners Who Rebuke Their Savior” (Mark 8:31-33)

We have a hard time accepting that specific persons come with specific actions. We want to love our family member who is engaged in a life-style that is against our faith and morals and then say, “hate the sin, love the sinner.” I wonder how that family member feels about this approach? Persons and actions are joined at the hip. If certain actions are actually repented of, then the very person changes. Person and actions are inextricably linked. I was calling on folks and inviting them to church during a summer internship back in 1988. The woman in the trailer park seemed friendly enough when she welcomed me into her mini-trailer, but she immediately began to define her religious position as: “I believe in God, but I don’t want to be a fanatic.” My immediate question — at least in my mind — was “how do you define ‘fanatic’?” What I came to realize that anyone who went beyond believing in God and actually pointing to the necessity that we believe specifically in Jesus Christ, the Son of God (number one), and that Jesus Christ came to live, die, and rise from the dead to save us from our sins and win for us eternal life (number two), and that Christians are called to share this faith with other people (number 3), was considered to be in the view of this woman a fanatic! She had a definite position going on: she would rather deny the Savior of the world than be a “fanatic.”

The disciples had finally come to know who Jesus was in His Person. They finally realized that He was truly the Messiah, the very Son of God, true God and true man. But as much as they believed this, they could not accept the actions that came thrown in with His person. In Mark 8, Jesus told them what He had to experience and what He had to endure: He had to go into Jerusalem to be murdered. This necessary person-action connection was untenable and unacceptable to the disciples. Peter was so sure of the incongruency that he felt perfectly justifed in rebuking Jesus! He stood in front of Jesus to stop Him and when Peter did this he became the spokesman of the devil himself. Jesus did not hesitate to crush this satanic temptation not to suffer and to avoid shedding the blood that would be the life of the world. Jesus was straight-forward: “Get out of my sight!”

We are like Peter. We want to accept the great person Jesus is. God in the flesh, God with us, God who loves us, God who guides us, God who is our Good Shepherd, but we want to stop right around this point. The rest of the story is hard for us to swallow. This God in the flesh had to take His incarnation into a state of severe rejection, suffering, to the point of crucifixion, to His blood being poured out on that cold Roman cross, to being mocked, to being condemned. Why did the person of our Savior have to go so far with these actions? We would like to tame this picture and make it much less messy; considerably less offensive.

One reason is that it brings out the reason He had to have His blood flow down that cross to begin with: namely, our sin. Our sin is that bad. It required atonement. It required that the life of God’s Son be spilled out for that which brings death into the lives of people. It means that those people (all of us) really are sinners who will perish eternally apart from the atoning work of Christ. This is the last thing we want to speak of. It is humiliating.

So sinners are ashamed of Christ and must rebuke Him. “Lord I want you, but do I have to embrace the details?!” We want to hate what the Savior did, but love the Savior.” It doesn’t work.

Our salvation is seen in the fact that Jesus did not negotiate with Peter. He wasn’t shocked and didn’t go into counselor mode, “But Peter, why do you feel this way?” No, Jesus didn’t play around with sin and temptation. His one response was one that saved us as it kept Him on the faithful path to cover our sins with His blood. His response was one of total annihilation of the temptation: “Get out of my sight Satan!” Recognizing that Peter — yes even Peter who had just previously confessed Christ as the Son of God — was in this moment acting as the agent of the devil. By crushing the temptation, Jesus proved that He does not care about our compromising attitudes that wheel and deal between person and actions. He will not tolerate the compromise, but went straight-ahead to die for you and to die for me, so that in entering our death, He would defeat it and His resurrection proclaims this victory.

In the end, it is our compromising ways that are rebuked by Christ. Thank God! Now in Him our person and actions are made congruent. We are children of God and our confession is specific and uncompromised: Jesus is our Savior, His blood washes away our sin, He is risen and calls us to follow Him. Let our person in Christ be consistent with the born-again life He has created for us, indeed, His very life for us and in us! In Him, when our actions rub against our new persons, His faithfulness continues to overcome our weakness. May He always be our hope!

In Christ,

Dr. Espinosa

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