From the President: That Alien Idea
By Dr. Chris Seiple on 01 April 2007
Sunday morning. The sun rises. Its warm orange glow gently casts the cold shadows into submission. The stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty. Love has paid the penalty for sin—death—and now lives again.
It is Easter, and the Kingdom of God is announced. Each individual human being now has the opportunity to overcome his or her own sinful alienation from God by choosing to accept this free sacrifice.
Easter is alien to human understanding because it is pure love and, as such, “only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal.”1 Why would the Creator of the universe become human in order to die? And why would this man, this resurrected Jesus—especially if he possessed power over death—leave each human being with the power to freely choose, or not choose, him?
More maddening, Jesus hangs the call to follow him on just two commandments: love God above all else and love all people as yourself (Mark 12: 29-31). Perhaps not surprisingly for this refugee child who grew up as an alien in Egypt (Matthew 2:13-20), Jesus makes clear that that the true test of obedience to the second command is to love those not like ourselves, especially the alien among us.
“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? …And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? …Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:46-48). Jesus lives out this admonition when he meets the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4). By giving respect to this double alien—an ethnically despised woman in a patriarchal society—Jesus leaves no doubt about how to live love.
Respecting and loving the minority in our midst is as old as the Bible itself. Jesus’ Father tells Abraham to go to a foreign land—to become an alien—so that he might birth the race that would produce the Christ (Genesis 12:1; Acts 13:16-23). Once settled and near death, Abraham and his minority clan receive the free gift of a burial plot from the Hittites (the majority population in Canaan) who want to show respect for these Abrahamic aliens who honor God (Genesis 23). When famine strikes Abraham’s descendants, God uses Joseph, a pre-positioned alien in Egypt, to rescue them (Genesis 47). And when the Jews leave Egypt, God reminds them not to “mistreat” or “oppress” the aliens among them, “for you were aliens in Egypt” (Exodus 22:21).
Last month my wife and I had the “opportunity” to spend three hours of our work day at the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). We are adopting from overseas and we needed to get our fingerprints done. While the slow grind of bureaucracy is always frustrating, it eventually dawned on us what a privilege it was to be there. It seemed like every continent and culture was represented. It was a roomful of aliens who chose to live in a country founded by aliens. It was a living demonstration of mutual respect, of the best of America.
That room also revealed the very best of God’s gift to us. While each of these aliens were as distinct as the fingerprints they were prepared to give, they were all wonderfully and fearfully made in the image of God…a God whose only son they were free to reject.
If we exercise the freedom to accept God and his son, however, then we must also accept Jesus’ command to love God and people. Otherwise we are not his followers. “As I have loved you, you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13: 34-35).
But here’s the kicker: by believing that Jesus died and rose again to overcome our own alienation from God, we now become alien to this world. Because we are made new in Christ, we will no longer be “foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens…and members of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). Because our ultimate loyalty now resides with Jesus, we are now “aliens and strangers in the world” (1st Peter 2:11)—a world that just might treat us the same way it treated Jesus (John 15:18; 1st Peter 2:21).
If you do not believe in Christ this Easter, please appreciate the freedom given to you, as well as Christ's call to root your identity in the love of your neighbor. And if you are His follower, know that while you may never understand the full mystery of His love, you have been given the ability to recognize it: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1st John 3:16).
It is Easter, the Son has risen, His light shines in the darkness and He will not be overcome.
Last updated 29 November 1999