Looking at the life of Jesus, there are some things to notice which are not often taught in sermons. They are important to notice because his relevance to us hinges on his weakness as a human. It is that weakness of human state which provides us a foot on the rung of the ladder going upwards towards heaven, which God provides. Notice he did not save John the Baptist when John was in prison. He could not even visit John, his cousin. Herod was powerful and would have maybe arrested Jesus if he had tried to visit or rescue John. Even a crowd of disciples would not be enough. No violence, no show of force, no leveraging his following. Then again on the cross, Jesus did not rescue the thief who believed in him. He promised comfort after death, not before, for this sin-confessing thief. This showed how weak Jesus was in death. He might have used the one strength he had in that state of weakness, the fact the Father loved him and heard his prayers, but he did not even ask the Father to rescue the thief. He was submitting to the Father’s will. He was showing the fulness of that submission. He was submitting to the sheer humanness of being truly weak, and mortal in that weakness. We can identify with this. Every one of us who God calls to it can identify with that weakness. Later would come resurrection, and ultimate immortality. For this short time only weakness and submission, and even death, even death on a terrible cross. Then notice the years Jesus was not known as prophet and not known as Son of the Supreme God. He must have seen demon possession, disease, direst human states of distressing disability, and deaths. Yet he was not working miracles in those years. He must have watched the sufferings in a state of normal human weakness: it was to the extent his brothers did not know him as different from others. Look too at the great apostles taught by Jesus, who at times raised the dead in the name of Jesus, but then in later years grew old and saw believers die, and later died themselves in weakness too. It is in weakness that Jesus is strong. His own for a time, then his followers’ weakness too. This is how the Father is glorified.
