The Losing Streak Broken at the Cross
In 1963, the US Naval Academy’s football team went to Notre Dame stadium, and behind Heisman trophy winning quarterback Roger Staubach, won the game 35-14. The next year, Notre Dame played the US Naval Academy and won 40-0. That victory kicked off a streak that stands as a record in college football. Beginning that year, Navy and Notre Dame met in football over the next 43 years, and each year Notre Dame won. Some of the games were close, but each time Notre Dame would pull out a win.
43 years is a long time for a streak, but there was another streak where 43 years would just be a drop in the bucket. Ever since the Garden of Eden, humanity had been on a losing streak. God created man in order to dwell with humans, to be with humans. Genesis 3:8 tells how God would visit Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Ever since he has created man, God has wanted man to be true to him, to be in communion with him, to live life in and with God. But instead of choosing to dwell with God, humans decided they wanted to be like God, to be their own god, and sought to be their own source of order. And ever since we were created, humans have been allured by their own selfish pursuits and desires. Paul says it in Romans chapter 1 that we have turned to the pleasures and joys that the created things can give us, and turned away from true life lived in communion with the Creator. For thousands of years, God has not been getting what he wanted, what he deserved as humanity’s creator.
However, just as the Naval Academy finally broke through and ended the streak of losing to Notre Dame, eventually a human broke through and ended humanity’s losing streak of not giving to God what he deserved. When Jesus came, he always looked to the Father. He lived his life on earth as God had intended for humanity to always exist. He never turned away to the pleasures and cares of this world. Jesus never put those things in front of being in communion with the Father.
Jim McGuiggan, in his book “The Dragon Slayer” puts it this way (I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s his thought). On the cross, humanity was not getting what it deserved – God was getting what he deserved. That is, the cross is not about one person absorbing the ultimate punishment for an entire race’s worth of sins. Instead, it was about giving to God what God had always wanted out of, and from humanity. But God had not received what he had wanted or deserved until Jesus. Sometimes we talk of a debt owed to God – what do we owe to God?
In Exodus 19, God brought the people out of captivity in Egypt. He tells them he has a purpose for them – to be a holy nation. The people respond that everything God has said, they will do. They haven’t even heard what he wants yet (the 10 commandments aren’t even given until the next chapter), but they’re already saying they want to be his people. In Exodus 24, God enters into covenant with Israel, and again the people respond that all the things that God has said, they will do. We know that didn’t last. Shortly after that, Moses is meeting with God for 40 days on the mountain. In his absence, Aaron constructs the golden calf. The losing streak continues…
In Deuteronomy 6:5, Israel is told to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul and strength. Jesus later says this is the greatest commandment. What does humanity owe to God? This devotion of their whole self, their entire being, directed to God. Humanity needs to fulfill the pledge that Israel made - everything God has said, we will do. And since the Garden of Eden, God had not been getting this. Humanity had been on a long losing streak. Until Jesus came and broke the streak. On the cross, Jesus gave to God his whole self, his entire being. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:23 that Jesus on the cross entrusted himself to the Father. As much as the powers and temptations were there to entice him to turn from God and cast his allegiance to other things, Jesus would not do it. As much as Jesus was tempted to save himself, to use his power to come off the cross, in spite of the suffering he was enduring, as he said the night before, he said on the cross to the Father “not my will, but yours be done.” Paul says in Colossians 2:15 it was in this staying true to God that Jesus disarmed those powers. That is, the powers threatened Jesus with even the taking of his life. Jesus’ response was that it was not theirs to take, and even if they did take his life, his heart was in allegiance with the Father, and it was the Father who he trusted. And by not turning, not yielding to the pressure of the powers, Jesus disarms them and defeats them. In dying, Jesus defeats death, because it no longer has power to frighten us away from God. See Hebrews 2:14. In Acts 2, Peter in his sermon states that death could not hold Jesus in its clutches. Simply because Jesus did nothing deserving death – because of that, God raised him to life.
So at the cross, we don’t see a loss, but a victory. A losing streak that had gone on for thousands of years was snapped and broken. God was given what he’d always desired from humanity. And it was given to him by Jesus. Regardless of the powers and authorities that tried to distract or detain, Jesus held true and gave his love and devotion to the Father. He trusted the Father in the face of death. And in doing so conquered it and opened a pathway for all of us. That pathway is a way for all of us to participate in the new winning streak that was started at the cross. As we are in Christ, we too give our devotion and love to the Father. And even when we sin and fail and get distracted, we still get to participate in the winning streak, through redemption found at the cross.
-Mike Hendricks