The old Lenten hymn inquires among a list of other introspections, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" & "Were you there when He rose up from the grave?" The hymn-writer is really asking the question for any of us:
Still stickin' with your alibi?!
Do we understand, know, claim that Jesus' death and triumph were neither mere historical fact nor for impersonal pan-humanity? But, it was for me He died? It was for me He rose. I was with Him. My sin was there upon Him. I was present. My one hand held the spike while the other laid full blow with the hammer. I was full participant. I died with Him. My self was laid in the grave with Him. And, by grace it was I who rose up with Him from that grave.
My greatest fascination with Peter's 2nd chapter of Acts sermon is when he says to the crowd of Pentecost pilgrims, "With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him." (v23)
Can't you feel the alibi of the ages rising within?! "I most certainly did not! I am not to blame. I did no such nailing; don't even own a hammer!" I am innocent. Others were to blame. More to blame. The Sanhedrin. The chief priest. Pilate. Barabbas. The soldiers. Really bad people. But not me. (Recall John Belushi in Blues Brothers: "No I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!")
As a matter of fact, I have an out! I wasn't even present in Jerusalem at the time. (Certainly these pilgrims present in Jerusalem for Pentecost were a different lot than the ones who had taken their holiday earlier to travel to Jerusalem for Passover!) Some of us might say, "I wasn't even born yet! How could I be to blame?!"
Yet Peter lays accusation, "you nailed him!", "you killed him." And, by sermon's end, it seems many having searched their lives and hearts agree & confess to the crime:
"let everyone know in Israel for certain that God made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!" Peter's words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" (vv.36-37)
This is humanity's great hurdle. To seek or claim no longer no alibi.
I don't know that there is any 'doctrine' by this name, but I like to call it Attendency. I was there. I made him die. He looked through the campfire during his trial not only into Peter's denying eyes, but mine as well.
In the OT, this attendency takes form in the phrase both Moses and Joshua repeatedly use speaking to the nation of Israel (who were mostly born in the wilderness and after) saying, "You saw with your own eyes" how the Lord rescued you from Egypt (Deut 4:3; 7:19; 10:21; Josh 24:7). The last of these even was when Joshua was a 110 year old patriarch about to die. There likely wasn't a person present who literally was alive when God brought Israel from Egypt! But as his mentor Moses before him, and his pupil Peter after him, Joshua says, "Sure you were there! You saw it with your own eyes! What excuse do you have to not trust Him?!"
In the NT this doctrine of attendency is expressed by our absolute interconnection and participation with both the first Adam and second. Romans 5:12 & 17 say,
12...sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—
17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
So, today, June 4, 2007. Nearly 2000 years after the event. Are you stickin' with your alibi? Am I? Or, were we there?
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