Who would have expected that God is a God of surprises?
British songwriter Jamie Lawson chronicled the story of his love for and life with his wife, punctuated by his admission at each stage where he mentions, “I wasn’t expecting that.” From the first exchange of glances through wedding and three children, who are suddenly “up and gone,” the song makes its way to the nurses’ announcement that his wife’s cancer is back, and then the closing of her eyes... and he wasn’t expecting that, either.
The unexpected keeps popping up in Scripture if we peek between the lines. Sarai had not expected a husband who would cart her off across a thousand kilometers to some unknown land when they married. The disciples had no expectations at all when they begrudgingly hauled their wet nets out of the water just to throw them back on the other side of the boat into unproductive waters and then had a couple of boatfulls to take home. We can well imagine the disciples gathered on the evening of Good Friday, and with tears, shaking their heads and saying, “We just did not expect this.” When the women came with news that angels were of the opinion the tomb was empty, apart from coffin clothes, because Jesus had come back to life, the disciples must have greeted them with, “Well, who could have expected that.” We still marvel that God decided to defeat evil and restore us to a life of peace and joy in relationship with Him through the cross. His modus agendi is what Paul calls in 1 Corinthians the wisdom and power of God displayed in a way which surprises us to this day as foolishness and impotence. Who would have expected that God is a God of surprises?
He still surprises us. Just when we think that we have sinned more than could ever be forgivable, He comes with forgiveness. He restores us to His family and makes us His children. He comes to give us comfort and support, to close down what oppresses us, to open new possibilities and opportunities. When it seems as though everyone and every other source of aid has vanished, Immanuel sneaks into our consciousness once again, and we realize against all expectations that Jesus the Messiah is with us to the end. With God you just never know.
“Never” is far too much said. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 2, “If we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we disown Him, He will also disown us.” That all makes sense, as terrifying as the last phrase is. But then Paul shifts into reverse and announces, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself.” Faithfulness is who He is. Throughout the Old Testament, God appears as the one who is faithful even when His people were not. He stuck with Israel through thick and thin and has never given up on reaching out to His ancient chosen people. And He has opened His arms to embrace those to whom He is faithful in every people and land.
His faithfulness took our sin seriously: He came into human flesh to fight our sin through the combat on the cross. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23a), Paul tells us once he has told us of our baptismal death (Romand 6:43). Sin is a fair paymaster, and we get what we have earned. God’s good Law cannot be bought off with silver or gold (1 Peter 1:18). No commercial fee can meet the price. To ransom sinners, it takes more than can be stuffed into any envelope. It takes the soldier’s payment of life itself to win our freedom. That Christ would come, not for His friends but for His enemies, to pay that price! Who could have expected that?
That Christ would come, not for His friends but for His enemies, to pay that price! Who could have expected that?
We would not have expected him to eliminate sin and death and to conquer the devil in this way, but it is God’s way of handling the biggest dilemmas plaguing His own. Unexpectedly, He defeats sin, death, and the devil by submitting to them. He has blown up the devil’s prison, and He has swallowed down death itself while ending the magnetic power of sin and its way of ruling and twisting our lives. Who could have expected that?
But Paul assures us in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that the unexpected intervention of God into our sinful world is indeed an expression of His stubborn and indefatigable faithfulness. With all that is wrong with our lives deposited in the tomb of Christ, where He laid them aside and forgot them, erasing them from the memory of our heavenly Father as well, we are raised to live a new life with Him. In the strangest of unexpected ways, He puts the wisdom of dying with Christ and the power of rising with Him into a promise rested in the cushion of baptismal water. Paul informs us, His people, in Romans 6, that, “We were buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
In Colossians 2, he tells us we have:
“Been buried with Christ in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him.”
That seems a strange way to conduct such serious business, but that is what God has done. He has come in human flesh so He could swallow up death by dying and eliminate our sin by placing it in His tomb. We just would not have expected that from Him.
Actually, you could only expect this from the Creator whose essence is His faithfulness and whose burning desire was from the beginning to have His human creatures back in His family. The man on the cross, foolish and impotent as He was hanging there, has gone beyond our every expectation in His faithfulness. He has restored us to the favor of our heavenly Father and will restore us to the fullness of life which lasts forever. Expect it!
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