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Can he still feel the nails?

Something that always surprises me about Christians is our fascination with nails.

We imagine the nail-scarred hands.
We craft necklaces out of three nails, fashioned in a cross to remind us.
We sing songs that dramatize and magnify the physical pain of the Cross.

And we ask
almost proudly
“Can he still feel the nails,
every time I fail?
Can he hear the crowd cry ‘Crucify’ again?”

Could it be –
Could it really be –
That we have missed the point of the resurrection so much we don’t understand
that we’ve missed the point?

“Christ died for sins

once
for all,

the righteous for the unrighteous,
to bring you to God.”

He died.

Once.
For all.

Can he still feel the nails?

I think Jesus tells us the answer to that:

NO!!!

When we sing those words and our eyes wander to his hands, I see the Jesus – the Jesus who knows the nails, who knows the meaning – the Jesus says, “I left the nails behind. I conquered everything they stood for. Why do you still bring them up?”

This Jesus died 2,000 years ago for your sins and mine. The ones we have committed in the past. The ones we will commit in the future. He bore them to the cross.

The pain he bore,
the shame he took.

And because of that we have life.

Jesus left our sin at the cross so that we could live together with him

forever.

Can he still feel the nails?
or is it only you?

Of the many songs that have serious theological issues, this one perhaps bothers me the most. Christ died once, we are told – once for all, erasing the punishment of sin. With what anguish and loss Jesus went to the Cross, and he carried my sin with Him there – My sin, O the Bliss of this glorious thought: My sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more…

The fact is that Christ has already paid the price for our sin. He paid the price 2000 years ago on a cross and pays it no longer. He paid once both for the sins you have committed and the sins you will commit. What particularly bothers me about this song, I think, is its blatant use of guilt as a motivator. Instead of promoting our love of Christ and our desire to be like Him as the motivation for a Christlike lifestyle, it instead seeks to make us feel guilty about the pain we have caused Christ and hopes to mitigate that by suggesting that we continue to cause pain with each failure.

It is precisely because of the death of Christ that we no longer have to sing songs like this. It is because of the totality of Christ’s victory over sin that we are able to conquer the guilt and shame of our failures and become new creations in Him. Praise be to God that the nails no longer have power over Him, or over us!

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“And who is my neighbor?”

Is it only your brother?
your friend?
your spouse?

Is it the acquaintance?
the passer-by?
the person behind the counter?

Is it the policeman?
the tax collector?
the guy who hit your car?

Is your neighbor the influential guy?
the rich man?
the powerful man?

Is it the homeless?
the outcast?
the poor?

Is your neighbor pretty?
smart?
popular?

Are they unattractive?
annoying?
forgotten?

“Which of these three
do you think
was a neighbor
to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

And who is my neighbor?

“Go, and do likewise.”

We often find it easy to love those who love us. We find it easier to love those who it benefits us to love in some way. The real test of love is not whether we love those from who we gain something, but whether we love those who can offer us nothing in return.

Christ’s love knows no bounds. We have nothing to offer him, and he loves us anyway. He loves people regardless of their social status, their income level, their intellect, their ability, their family situation, their past, their appearance, their clothing… there is nothing about anyone that causes Christ to love them any less.

May we love with the love of Christ. May our love reach out across social barriers and cross racial lines to bring healing to a world in desperation. May we seek to love selflessly, giving of ourselves to those who can give nothing in return. And may we find courage to love boldly those who need it most, even when it’s easier not to.

“Teacher,”
he asked,

“what must I do
to inherit eternal life?”

I’ve known people who ask this question. They ask because they want to know – to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are fine, that their passport is stamped and their ticket is punched. What do I have to do, in order to guarantee that my reservation is secure?

Jesus’ answer is remarkably simple:

Love God with everything.
Love men like you would love yourself.

So simple.
So complicated.

And we say we love God.
And we say we love men.

And still we ask.
And still we ask.

There is a paradox in our Christian walk that renders our journey both simple and complex simulteneously.

The commands of Jesus can be boiled down into four words: Love God. Love others. Though amazingly simple concepts, they become exceedingly complicated when we try to put them into practice.

While a rather simple set of “rules” and “guidelines” govern how relationships and love work, any of us who interact with people know that there’s no formula that accurately describes a relationship with a person – you can read a 10 step book to making a friend, but it isn’t going to describe every situation you might encounter, nor will it have the “answers” to how to make every person like you.

As we encounter God, it is not with a rulebook or with a score card, but in relationship – a relationship where our call is to honor the heart of the Living God.

“A man with leprosy came to him
and begged him
on his knees,

‘If you are willing,
you can
make me clean.’”

What an attitude!

To come before Christ in humility,
knowing his position,
knowing that the decision was Christ’s,
knowing the Savior’s power to cleanse.

He demanded nothing,
But received everything.

And when I come before God in my pride,
thinking I am good,
thinking that I have control,
thinking that I am holy because of me.

I demand much,
And receive nothing.

So often we come to Christ expecting to be healed. Christ commands us to come knowing in faith that he can heal us, but sometimes we take this a few steps too far and feel that we are entitled to his healing, rather than receiving it as an act of grace – unmerited favor.

The fact is that each of us comes to Christ empty and broken. Some of us have tried to glue parts of the pieces of our lives together, but none of us come as whole people. We come helpless, missing the very thing Christ offers – Himself.

Faith is interesting. So often it stands in contrast with knowledge. Faith demands that we look at all we see and then take a step beyond pure knowledge – a step into the unknown of doubt.

That is not to say that faith is without experience. We have faith that the world will continue in the future much as it has in the past. We have faith that gravity will continue to hold us down, that the sun will come up tomorrow, and that the laws that govern the universe will hold relatively constant, at least within our ability to measure them. We cannot know any of these things for certain – the future is truly the undiscovered country, and objective knowledge about it cannot be obtained. Yet this does not stop us from believing that a future exists, and furthermore believing it will have certain properties – namely properties that resemble our present. While we cannot objectively prove these things to be true, we believe them with a fierce passion, and we have yet to be disappointed. Our experience suggests certain things about how the world works, and causes us to believe them and trust them, even though we have no real emperical basis for doing so.

In the same way, our experience leads us to believe that certain things are true about the human condition: that service is greater than selfishness, that sacrifice is greater than greed, that love is greater than hate. Logically these things make little sense. They seem to go against everything our society teaches us. But in the hearts of those who have seen charity and experienced love, faith suggests to us that there is something more to life than the endless race to get ahead – that our lives are not measured by how much we get, but by how much we give away.

Even still, true faith cannot exist without doubt. Doubt is not the cancer of faith, it is the tester of faith. It is that moment where we examine ourselves and make the choice of whether or not to believe. Were there no doubt, faith would not be a real choice. If faith were certain, it would cease to be faith, its beauty robbed. The veracity of our faith is continually proven in our struggle with the realization that the seemingly illogical sometimes turns out to make more sense than what we have been taught.

Even though we look to the unknown future through the lens of our personal experience, it is sometimes difficult to believe what we experience – love, joy, hope – is something that will last.

But in faith, we continue to believe.