God in the Noose

God in the Noose

by Jeff Treder

Even for those who accept with gladness and gratitude God’s plan for saving us from our sin, there are still plenty of difficulties.  We still have to struggle with our own moral weakness, and we have to live in a world sliding ever deeper into corruption, greed, inequity, hardheartedness, and misery. Through the ages philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the “problem of evil”—how to make sense of a world so drenched in every variety of “man’s inhumanity to man” (never mind man’s defiance of God).  If God is so loving and powerful, why doesn’t he do something about it, or something more?

The origin of evil remains something of a mystery.  Satan was an archangel, among the highest of created beings.  He was as close to the counsels and to the heart of the Holy One as any other creature. He was free to enjoy every blessing that omnipotent goodness could give.  Somehow, though, that wasn’t enough for him.  Two prophetic passages, Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:11-17, indicate that his doorway to evil was pride.  He became discontent with being in any way subordinate to God and decided to rebel.  The mystery is just how a sinless being, in full awareness of the moral import of such an act, could choose to commit it.  But he did.  The omniscient Creator, of course, knew he would, and for his own reasons purposed to allow it and to deal with the consequences.  But this brings us back to the former question:  what reasons?  Why?  Consider this:

In one of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II, we are told, a young boy was hanged for some minor infraction or no infraction at all, and the other prisoners were forced to watch.  One of the watchers, in bitter despair, wondered aloud, “Where is God now?”  A little while later another watcher answered, “I think he is in the noose.”

The anecdote is a moving and troubling one.  It raises hard questions.  If God is hanging in the noose, does that mean that he is as pathetic, powerless, and dead as the young boy?  It certainly seems to be so at times, particularly when evil appears to be not just triumphant but virtually unchallenged—as in a Nazi concentration camp.  Then even spiritually sensitive souls—especially these, perhaps—cannot help wondering where God is.  He appears to be not just hidden but unconscionably hidden.  This is, of course, the main theme of the Book of Job.  Keep in mind that Job’s litany of anguished questions never receives a direct answer.  Yahweh reveals himself and speaks to Job of his sovereign eternal power, and this satisfies Job, yet without answering his questions.

If God is hanging in the noose, though, it isn’t the first time.  He hung on the cross.  He wasn’t compelled to squeeze his majesty into the form of a man and then humble himself to the point of crucifixion, but he did.  Or perhaps he was compelled, self-compelled, because he is love.

Have you ever wondered why our omniscient God decided to create the human race in just the way that he did?  No doubt he could have created beings who would never turn their hearts from him.  Such beings, however, would come short of the moral freedom that is requisite for creatures made “in his image” and thus capable of a perfected personal relationship with him.  No other creatures, not even angels, are created in God’s image, reflecting his essential nature (apart from our fallibility).  He created us both morally responsible and morally fallible, I believe, because he desired to manifest his true character in the fullest possible way to the entire creation.  That way made Eden, Bethlehem, and Calvary absolutely necessary.  For God is love, and no other way could adequately show forth the exact nature and quality of that love.  As strange as it seems, all the depths and ramifications of depravity had to be explored, in order that our moral freedom might be proved genuine, and in order that the complete magnificence of our Lord’s character might be manifested.  His love is love that saves to the uttermost (Heb.7:25):  He is love and he is salvation, as the name of Jesus proclaims—the Hebrew Yeshua means “Yahweh is salvation.”  It’s who God is, the essence of his character.

          In order to be saved, you first have to be lost; and the deeper the loss, the greater the salvation.  When our salvation is completed after Christ’s second coming, our purification will also be complete (1John 3:2-3) and we will no longer be subject to the power of sin.  Adam (“man”) will at last become what humanity was always meant to be, but what we could only become through falling into sin and being delivered from it by the God who gives everything for his beloved.  A perfected personal relationship with our Creator—our Father, the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit—that’s what it’s all about.

So all the depths and ramifications of depravity have been explored, and in the process God often seems hidden, perhaps even powerless or heartless.  Where is he when children are being abused and starved, or being hanged to gratify some sadist’s pleasure?  I know what the answer is, though my understanding of it is far from complete.  The answer is, he is in the noose.  He is suffering with us in the Spirit, and his suffering is still redemptive.  The crucifixion of the Son of God was a specific event in historical time, but it is also an eternal event transcending historical time (Eph.1:4, 1Peter 1:19-20, Rev.13:8).  Divine redemption will never cease until the eternal purpose of Calvary is completely accomplished.  The way in which it is accomplished is through the mystery of the cross:  the greater the apparent weakness, the greater the actual power.  The blood of Jesus was shed in agony and apparent weakness, but the weakness was only apparent, only external.  To give your life on behalf of others is an act of supreme spiritual power.  God in the noose is God at his most powerful—power incomparably greater than hydrogen bombs or supernovas, the power to change hearts through love.  Nothing and no one else can do that.  There is life-transforming power in the blood of the Lamb.

But how, we may wonder, can that power and that love reach into the pits of desolation typified by a Nazi death camp?  Only by the message of the gospel, brought into the darkness in one way or another by the witness of believers.  The apostle Paul, drawing on his whole life experience, affirmed that the gospel message “is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”(Rom.1:16)  No darkness, however deep, can quench that light (John 1:5).  Witnesses like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom (The Hiding Place) are modern proof of this, in life and in death.  The gospel has the power to transmute the despair of seeing God in the noose into the invincible hope of seeing Jesus triumphant on the cross and beyond the grave.