Matthew 17:22, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.”
The Son of *Man*, in whom all of humanity is represented, is delivered into the hands of *men* (ie., humanity), such that, what is done by men to the Son of Man becomes almost a parable of what the human race does to itself—namely, cursing, condemning, and crucifying.
Certainly the crucifixion is *far more* than a lived pictured of the self-destroying telos of humanity’s rebellion against God (namely, it is the revelation of God Himself), but neither is it less than such a picture.
In the brutalizing, wrongful conviction, and cursed death of the Son of Man at the hands of men, we see the fruits of the rebel passions of the human soul. Not only—and supremely—are they shown to be finally deicidal in their madness (for this Man is God), but they are also revealed to be (as a necessary implication of their deicide) suicidal.
In torturing and killing the Son of Man (the representative of true humanity), Mankind in rebellion against God reveals itself to be its own greatest enemy. We are our own murderers. We are our own executioners. Yes, here, in the death of the Son of Man at the hands of Man are all the wars of Man against Man, all the murders of our shared flesh and blood, all the torments and horrors worked by the Sons of Adam against the Sons of Adam.
I think especially of the 20th century: the gulag, the death march, the concentration camps, the fire bombing, the atomic vaporization of 60,000 civilians in a moment, the horrific blood-letting endured by the Russian people—ALL of the horrors of Man against Man, ALL of the madness and nightmare monstrosities worked by the Flesh of Adam against the Flesh of Adam, ALL of that finds consummate and embodied expression in Man’s murder of the Son of Man. We see the whole history of humanity’s self-mutilation in the Son of Man nailed to the Tree by the hands of Men.
And yet, precisely in this recognition, we find that the very death we have dealt ourselves from the beginning is here entered into, borne, and—wonder of wonders—turned to our healing, turned to our redemption, turned to the crimson fountain of our forgiveness and the banquet table of our satisfaction, turned indeed to the life-giving revelation of the God for whom we and all things exist.
The blood-soaked account of Man’s war on Man is brought to its consummation as God Himself becomes the Man par excellence and receives in Himself the whole hell of the age-long kin slaying that is human history.
*There* is the history of humanity hanging on the Tree! *There* is all that we have done to ourselves! *There* is what we have made of the image of God!
And yet, see! See that this moment has become—in the apocalyptic light of the resurrection—that this moment has become LOVE, has become GLORY, has become MERCY, has become the very face of GOD turned upon us unto healing. And what the crucifixion has become, all that is borne in the crucifixion will become.
See the crucified Christ turned to glory, hear the agony of the Lord transposed to the hymns of heaven, taste the riven flesh and outpoured blood of the Son of Man as Life and Love and so know what ALL the horror borne in that crucifixion, ALL the madness endured in that agony, ALL the ages of kin slaying embodied in that flesh and declared in that blood—know what ALL of these have now and will finally become in the cosmic reconciliation worked at the cross.
*Here,* on Calvary, is human history declared in all its horror, and here is human history revealed in the flesh of God as a single, trans-temporal portrait of God with Us in all, to heal us of all, that we might know Him through all as Lord over all. Glory, glory, glory to His Name!
PS. The Greek text in the banner shouted by the slain and risen Jesus is ειρήνη, which means “peace”
