Super Hero or Savior

1 Peter 1:10-12
10Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Throughout the Old Testament, we have voices of the prophets telling God’s people what was coming – The Messiah, promised to Adam and Eve. While there are a few prophecies that pain a picture of a suffering Messiah, (specifically Isaiah 53) I doubt if any of them could have imagined the reality of Christ’s crucifixion. When the Old Testament prophets thought about the coming Messiah, the One who would crush Satan’s head, they perhaps had a powerful superhero in mind, someone who by superior force would do a lot of destroying and righting of wrong. That concept wasn’t even close to the brutal reality.

Even the angels don’t know all of God’s plans and had to wait for the fulfillment in Jesus. The prophets all died in hope. It was the privilege (and consolation) of the people reading Peter’s letter to know that God’s Word had been fulfilled in their lifetimes and that the sufferings of Christ made his glories possible. In other words, the Bibles that the Jewish believers had been reading foretold the messages that Peter and the apostles were bringing. Peter’s point was this: Christ’s sufferings were not signs of failure but were part of the Father’s loving plan.

Jeske, M. A. ©2002. James, Peter, John, Jude (pp. 75–76). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

I think that the fact that Jesus did not come as a super-hero type figure points to the grim reality of sin’s black stain. The salvation of us from our sin meant a Suffering Servant, not a handsome supernatural person who could fly and was really strong. And while indeed Jesus could probably do all of those things because He was still True God, He was instead the One who washed the feet of the Disciples and reached out to the broken. Maybe He could fly, but His power over sin lays in the fact that He sacrificed His life on the cross for us.

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