00:25:00 Microcosm and Macrocosm Concepts in Christianity
SPEAKER 01 :
People often ask, and in fact we all wonder, why Jesus had to die. And I can’t say that I know all the answers by any means, but there are some things that are very important to notice or to realize. First of all, let’s look at the verse that we’re looking at. It’s chapter 1 of Romans, verses 1, verse 16 and 17. And it says, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. So, this righteousness, why does it have to be somebody else’s and not ours? Well, of course, the obvious first answer is that we don’t have any righteousness. We are a corrupt humanity. We’re We’re in a ruined state for God’s plan. Yes, we may think, oh, we’re just fine, thanks. We can live 70 or 80 or 90 or 100 years. But that isn’t God’s plan. God’s plan is for us to live for eternity. He wants to have a joyful humanity that will spend its days in joy and fellowship with him and no death or sorrow or pain or tears or crying. That’s the plan. Our eyesight is too low. Our vision is too low. That’s part of the problem. But another part of the problem is not realizing Jesus’ work in what he did on earth. We think of Jesus as our Savior, and so he is, of course. But he is more than our substitute for judgment and sin. He’s also our representative. This requires, to think about it, a whole new paradigm, really. Look, think of it this way. First of all, Adam, in the beginning, was a representative of the human race. He was really a king. He was to live forever. In fact, he lived for all those years, 900 or so years, and everyone on earth must have looked towards Adam thinking, fallen though he was, as a representative, as the head of the human race. And so when Adam sinned and went down and died and brought the whole of humanity down with him, God’s plan was to have a new head of the human race who would represent us all. Now, again, think of it, how do we in these days think of a person as a representative? Well, in the United States, it’s not quite as easy. In England, where there is still a monarchy, and some of you may laugh at the English monarchy, and some of you may think it’s ridiculous, but nevertheless, when you are brought up in a nation that has a monarchy, you begin to see more clearly how the king or the queen works. represents or stands for the country. And so that what happens to the king or queen, how they act royally and with integrity, if they do, of course, and honor, if they are honorable, of course, is representative of how the country operates and how people think of the country. Now, we can experience this a little bit in the United States, because in certain ways, our president represents, is a representative of the people. If you’re old enough to remember the time when Richard Nixon resigned because of the danger of being impeached, and under the shame of Watergate, you will recognize that when he was brought down, the nation itself was keenly affected for quite a time to come. We were embarrassed. We were somewhat depressed. We were ashamed at what had happened. And, of course, it may not have happened. I’m not making a political statement here. So, in a sense, the president becomes a representative of the country. Now, you can think of this in terms of soccer or football. When your team wins, you say, we won. And when your team loses, you’re all morose and our team lost. But wait a minute, why do we say we won when we weren’t even on the football field or the soccer field? Why do we say we lost? Because that team represents us. Our team is a representation of our dignity, of our success, of our victory, of our ability to conquer. So you get a little bit of an idea of how this works. Adam was not only, well, of course, he never was meant to be a substitute, as Christ was, but Adam was a representative of the human race. He was the head of the human race. But he came down. He failed and brought all the human race under shame. And so God brings a new head of the human race, and it is the Son of Man. Not the Son of God. Yes, it was the Son of God who came to the earth, but as a man, representing the human race as Son of Man. And when he walked obediently with God and joyfully with him, and was full of grace and mercy and truth, and then sacrificed himself out of sheer love for the human race, what an incredible representative he was for humanity. He was the new humanity. And therefore, when we put faith in Christ, we are not only putting faith in him as our Savior, but as our new head of the human race. You say, well, where do you get all this, Colin? It’s in Romans chapter 5, as I’ve pointed out earlier. Read in chapter 5 from verse 12 to verse 21. As the first man, Adam, brought sin and death into the world and so all died, so the second man, Christ, brings life and righteousness into the world and justification for all. And so it’s as if God wants to show the world what kind of humanity he is bringing into existence by faith in Jesus Christ. And by the way, we can also see this in family situations. Let’s suppose you have a lovely family setting, a lovely family unity and happy family, and then you are shocked and astonished when you grow up to learn that your father is a secret criminal of some kind, and he is found out and tried and found guilty. And that shame that is brought, rather that dishonor that is brought, let me say it again, that dishonor that your father goes through by imprisonment brings shame upon the whole family. And so the head of the family… either by his success or his defamatory life behavior, brings either glory on the family or shame. So when we think of Jesus, we think of him as the Messiah. And the Messiah is not only the Savior, but also the representative. First of all, think of it this way, that the Savior is the atonement for the sins of the world. He ends the human race by his death. Now, that sounds like a strange thing to say. We think of Jesus as being the Savior of humanity. But by his death, by his judgment, he is putting to death humanity. the old humanity, that is, the humanity in which we live, which is sin and death. He’s ending it by his own death. He’s bringing it to termination. Jesus is not only the Savior of the world, he is not only the Savior of humanity, he is the end of humanity. And by his resurrection, he becomes the representative of the new humanity. the humanity that will live forever, the humanity that will be resurrected into immortal life, incorruptible life, that will never die again. So these two concepts are One is sort of a microcosm, the other is a macrocosm. Let me explain that. That when we think of Jesus as our Savior dying on the cross for us, we think of it, we tend to think of it in an individualistic way. He died for me, and that’s quite right, of course. He died for me personally. but he actually died for everybody. So that microcosm of seeing Jesus as the individual savior of each soul is also the representative of the whole world’s judgment. And so Jesus dying on the cross not only died individually for you, microcosm, but died for the whole of humanity, macrocosm. And that macrocosm, the bigness of it, is seen particularly in his resurrection. So you and I put faith in Jesus for two very vast reasons. One, that he died for my soul. One, that he gave himself in love and mercy for me as an individual, personal, broken-down sinner. But also, Jesus rose from the dead to create a new humanity, because the humanity in which I live is absolutely ruined. Not simply me personally, the whole of humanity. I was born into a ruined human race. I didn’t choose to sin. I was born in it. You cannot forget the situation in which humanity finds itself. It’s not simply individual sins that Jesus died for. It is the whole of human existence, because all of existence is broken and ruined and cannot possibly go through to eternity. But by Christ’s death in macrocosm for all humanity as the Son of Man, he is also able to rise from the dead in macrocosm also for all humanity. And therefore he represents the whole of the human race. So I use that phraseology, which is not mine, was created by someone else, but I cannot remember who it is. I use that phraseology that says, in a life I never lived, in a death I never died, I base my whole eternity, and so do you. Thank you for listening today. I do appreciate your enjoying this program. And you can hear it any time of the day or night, as I regularly say, on your smartphone. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Now please consider as well, this is listener-supported radio. Each broadcast costs $39 per 15 minutes. That’s $200 for a week’s programs and about $850 to $900 for a month’s programs. If you would kindly consider… a single program, or maybe even a week’s program, or maybe one or two of you even a month’s programs, it would be so much appreciated to donate that. You may make your donation at faithquestradio.com or FaithQuest P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Thanks, I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
