On his podcast series, Tim Keller is going through Holy Week and has this to say in his sermon, “The Hour of Darkness.”
“Here’s Jesus and everything is going wrong…. God couldn’t possibly be working in his life, and yet greatness and glory comes out of it.
And Jesus’ life is sort of a mini version of the whole of history.
Because if God can take the senselessness and tragedy of Jesus’ life and turn it into something cosmically wonderful, the same thing is going to happen at the end of history.
Why can’t God do that for all of history — what he did with Jesus? We can see he did it with Jesus.
We can look back and see every single bad thing that happened to Jesus turned into something glorious and great.
Wouldn’t it be possible to actually be able to stand back at the end of history and see the same thing? I think that’s the promise.
In the Brothers Karamazov, there’s this incredible quote.
‘I believe that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage – the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small mind of man.
That in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, God will bring to pass something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed, and that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened with men’.”
