Why did God give us Two Hands?

Why did God give us two hands? We need two hands to hold two important buckets of knowledge so we can contemplate the details of each and the relationship between the two. One hand is not enough. A third hand is superfluous. One hand is to hold his ignominious defeat. The other hand is to hold his glorious victory. Can you articulate the details of his ignominious defeat? We tortured and killed the God who loves us. We made him suffer and die. Sin does not get much worse than torturing and killing someone who loves you - especially when your lover is the Son of God. Can you articulate the details of his glorious victory? He rose from the dead still alive and still in love with us. He did not stay dead and he did not stop loving us. Can you articulate the relationship between his ignominious defeat and his glorious victory? The evil we did to the God who loves us ought to have extinguished him and his love for us. But, it did not. Both he and his love for us survived the evil that we did to him. That he emerged from the black hole of death still alive is the proof that Jesus is God. No mere mortal emerges alive from the black hole of death. He did. That he emerged from the black hole of death still in love with us, however, proves so much more than "mere" divinity. This added, apocalyptic detail reveals to us that our simple conception of divinity as omnipotence is not quite accurate. It is incomplete. Divinity is also love - a mysteriously intransigent, inexplicably persistent and radically stubborn love (Lamentations 3:22-23) (Jeremiah 31:3) (Psalm 8:4-8). The dial that controls his love for us is in his hands not ours. Moreover, it is set to the highest degree and locked in place (Jeremiah 31:3). Not even the evil that we did to him could budge it (Lamentations 3:22). If his love for us were counterfeit, it would have faded as we tortured him and died when we killed him. But it did not. It persisted. That love survived the evil baptism into which we immersed him is the irrefutable proof that divinity is love. His omnipotence is awesome. Indeed, his omnipotence made paradise for us. However, it is his love for us that makes paradise sweet. Omnipotence without love is a false God. Omnipotence makes God powerful. Love makes God perfect

 

When we showed Jesus our worst, Jesus showed us his best . In the comparison between Creator and creatures that took place on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, we did not do well - not well at all. The ugliness of our contribution to the comparison amplified the beauty of his contribution. The evil that we did to him was the foil that highlighted and amplified and emphasized and accentuated and magnified his forgiveness of us. The greater was the evil that we did to the God who loves us , the more astonishing is his forgiveness of us.