It is amazing how visual the Gospel of the Passion is. “Look!” you are told, again and again. “Behold the Lamb of God.” “Behold the Man.” “Behold your King.” “Like this,” St. John will describe, as though you could actually see some gesture he is making while he preaches.
No one has ever seen God at any time, but now the Incarnate Son, who resides in the bosom of the Father, He reveals God to us. For the Word of God, who is God, by whom all things are made — He has become Flesh. In Him God tabernacles among us. In Him you behold the one true God.
In the beginning was this Word — the Word was with God, and the Word was God — and as God spoke this Word of His, who is in fact the Father’s only-begotten Son from all eternity, so did creation come into being out of nothing. “Let there be Light,” He said, and there was Light. For this Word is the Light in the darkness, which is the Life and Love of God.
And on the Sixth Day, on that first Friday of creation, God said, “Let Us make Man in Our Image.” Then He crafted the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his body the Breath of Life, which is the Spirit of the Lord. So did man become a living being. And that he should be and live in the Image and Likeness of the Holy Trinity — an eternal relationship of mutual Love between the Father and His Son in the Holy Spirit — the Lord God caused the man to sleep, and opened up his side, and from his body crafted the woman, his beautiful bride, to be a helpmate comparable to him. The Lord then brought her to the man to be his wife; and behold, it was very good.
But the Image of God is not a static or stationary work of art, which simply stays put and looks pretty on the wall, on a mantle or a shelf. In order to see God in man, the man is given to live in mutual love with God and with his neighbor, receiving and requiting the Love of God, and loving the Household and Family of God in His Name. Such Love, by its very nature, cannot be forced, demanded, or manipulated. It is given and received in freedom, in the peace of friendship.
In that freedom, though they were the friends of God, the man and the woman doubted and denied His Word, and so betrayed Him with their disobedience. Though they were His own creation and His beloved children, to whom He had already given a cornucopia of good things, they chose to flee in faithless fear from His Image, and they sought instead the knowledge of self-righteousness, which is not the Truth at all but the likeness of death. They ran from God and returned to the dust.
The first man and his wife were blinded by their sin. They could no longer perceive or understand the Lord their God in His good creation with the clarity of faith and love. Instead, they were afraid and ashamed. They were lost and confused. They were no longer free to live and love in peace, but trapped in a pit of desperation. They were no longer fully alive, but subject to death and decay.
Nevertheless, God still beheld them in His mercy, and the gracious freedom of His Love for them was not defeated by their disobedience. He did not destroy them or turn Himself against them. He did not look with contempt upon their nakedness, but covered and clothed them with animal skins. Thus did the Lord offer the first sacrifice, in order to remove the shame of fallen man.
And the Promise was first given, that God would remedy the problem, rectify what was broken, and make all things new. The Seed of the Woman would crush the adversary’s head and reconcile the world to God. In Him the Image and Likeness of God would be seen in perfect clarity.
Behold, this is the New Creation that God has accomplished in Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, conceived and born of the Woman. He does not scrap the first creation and start over, but He redeems and restores it, raises it up, and perfects it in this Man. He is the completion of Creation.
So it was that, on the Sixth Day, on the Good Friday of His Cross, God the Father said to His dear Son, “Let Us make Man in Our Image and after Our Likeness.” And that is what He has done.
Indeed, this is what the one true God looks like in His Creation. Here is the fullness of the Deity embodied and enfleshed. Which means, also, that here is the true Man. For Christ the Crucified is the very Model and Pattern — the Image and Likeness of God — in which the first man, Adam, was fashioned and formed. From the beginning, yes, even from before the foundation of the world, it was this Man, Christ Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Son, whom God the Father beheld in Love, and for whose sake He created the heavens and the earth, Adam & Eve, and everything else.
It is specifically His Sacrifice for the salvation of sinners that reveals the grace and glory of God most clearly. So, if you want to know what God and Man are like, look at Him upon the Cross.
He lives and dies, not for Himself — He does what He does, not for His own sake or benefit — but in love for His Father and in love for you and all His creatures. It is such divine Love that you behold in Him, and perfect faith in His God and Father; for He is the faithful and obedient Son.
Thus He becomes your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God; not only for a little while, but forever and always. As the true Man He has fully taken your place; and in His own human Flesh and Blood He has established His place as the Son of God for you.
He has taken your place, not only by His Incarnation, by His conception and birth of the Woman, but also by coming in the likeness of fallen flesh. That is, although He has no sins of His own, He takes the sins of the whole world upon Himself and bears the entire brunt of their burden, the full extent of their curse and consequence. Though He is Life Itself, He is made mortal and subject to death. He suffers all your pain and grief and sorrow from the cradle to the grave. He is tempted in all the ways that you are tempted. He sympathizes with all of your frailties and weaknesses.
He takes your place — the place of Adam and of all the children of men — the place of the skull.
You know that no one takes His life from Him; He lays it down willingly in love, and so shall He take it up again by the Spirit of His Father. And He takes that place of yours on purpose, that place of death and the grave, so that He might take you up from there to His own place with the Father.
As your great High Priest He offers Himself up to God — the Son offers Himself up to the Father — in the faith and love for which you have been created. He does so, not under ideal conditions, not in the bliss of Paradise, but from within the curse of death and damnation, under the terrible weight of your sin. Burdened by all the hate and hurt and heartache of this fallen world, still He perseveres in the fear, love, and trust of His Father. He has no other gods but Him.
It’s not as though it were easy for Him, but He does it all because He is faithful and true, because He is the true Man, and because He loves you. So He calls upon the Name of the Lord, even with tears, with loud cries and deep groans of anguish, and He entrusts Himself entirely to His God and Father. He takes the Cup and drinks it, confident in the One who is able to save Him out of death.
And He is heard because of His piety! Not only that but, consequently, His matchless piety now and forever avails for you before the Father in heaven! For the Body of Christ Jesus, who has been crucified for your iniquities, is your Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. Therein He ever stands for you as your merciful and great High Priest, and there He ever lives to make intercession for you. His priestly garment, His unrent seamless tunic, covers your naked guilt and shame. Do not run away and hide, therefore, but draw near in peace, since you are reconciled to God in Christ Jesus.
As surely as He is your great High Priest, so is He also the Christ, the Lord’s Anointed, that is, the King of the Lord’s Creation. He truly is the King of the Jews, for salvation is from the Jews. He is the King of Israel, indeed, of all who are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by faith in the Promise. But He is also the King of the world, even though His Kingdom is not from here — just as Pilate decrees by the authority that was given to him from above, that Jesus of Nazareth is “the King of the Jews.” Thus it is written in the languages of the whole world, and so shall it be wherever in the world the Gospel is preached concerning this crucified King and His Cross.
As the New Adam He has become the Head of a new humanity. But see how His headship is so different from the rulers of this world. They lord it over their subjects and use their power to serve themselves, to promote their own advantage and agendas. The Lord Jesus is not like that at all. He reigns in love, He rules in peace. He lays down His own life in order to give life to His people. His Kingdom and His Power and His Glory are the Gospel of His Cross.
And so it is that His own Bride, His Queen, His Holy Church is taken from His opened side as He sleeps the deep sleep of death upon His Cross. By the Water and the Blood that pour forth out of His innermost being, the New Woman is fashioned and formed after the Image of this New Man, to be a helpmate comparable to Him. Even His own blessed Mother is given this new identity, as she who once gave birth to Him is given new life by Him. She, too, is redeemed and sanctified by His atoning death, by His holy and precious Blood, which she beholds at the foot of His Cross.
She stands there, beneath His Tree, as a member and an icon of His Holy Church, the Mother of all the living. And so does the beloved disciple stand there with her, as an icon of each and every Christian, each and all of whom are the children of God by grace, by His gracious adoption of sons. Behold, in this Mother and this Son, the Household and Family of God in Christ Jesus.
She is entrusted to the care of the apostolic witness and preaching of Christ the Crucified. And by the Word and Spirit of God the Church conceives and gives birth to His children, in much the same way that Mother Mary conceived and gave birth to the Christ Child Himself. Born from the waters of the font, they are nourished by His Blood and Flesh at the Altar of His Holy Church.
These are the Fruits of His Tree, the Water, Blood, and Spirit which He hands over and gives out from the Cross; His gracious Word of forgiveness; and His Body given for you and for the many.
As He enters upon His Holy Passion from the garden, and as His sacred Body is temporarily laid to rest in the garden, so is the Cross of Christ the true Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise. Its good and holy Fruits are no evil, no poison or hurt, but the very Medicine of Immortality, the true Ambrosia, by which you have life and health and strength in body and soul, forever and ever.
You don’t have to get yourself back to the garden. Nor could you ever have done so. On your own you can only return to the dust from which you were taken. But here the Garden of God has come to you, as it is found wherever Christ the Crucified is lifted up in the preaching of His Cross, and wherever He is given and poured out in the Fruits of His Cross, His Body and His Blood.
You now, beloved of the Lord, who are born from His Body in the Water and the Blood, and who are fed from His Tree of Life with His own Flesh — you are now like Him, who made Himself to be like you. You are made brand new in Him. You are what you eat and drink: the Image of God.
Do not doubt that it is true. Despite the outward appearance of the Cross, which the world despises in Christ Jesus and so now also in you, and notwithstanding the fact and experience of sin, which remains in your fallen flesh — where you feel it, and the Law reveals it daily — nevertheless, the Truth of Christ Jesus stands fast and remains forever and ever for you.
He is the Man, and He is the Image of God in Man. As He has taken your place, even unto death upon the Cross, so has He given you His place as the Son of God, even unto Life everlasting.
That is what His God and Father graciously beholds in you. Not your nakedness and shame, your suffering, sin, and death, which Christ Jesus bears on your behalf, but the perfect piety, steadfast faith, and holy love with which He has gone to the Cross for you and for all people, and which He now lavishly bestows upon you by His Holy Gospel. Amen, amen, it is and ever shall be so.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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