God's Irony Explains Paradox

Each year around the time of Easter, there is a skeptic who asks and challenges, "So how does killing an innocent man (Jesus) give any benefit (repayment) to God?"

In his book, "Reaching for the Invisible God," author Phillip Yancey points out that God's irony helps explain deep paradoxes in the Christian faith.

Yancey states, "Only the sequence of goodness, fallenness and redemption explains the paradox. God did not save Jesus from the cross but, ironically, saved others through Jesus' death on the cross. In the Incarnation, God's power stream of redeeming good from evil was stealthily under way. God overcomes hate with love and death with resurrection. At Christ's crucifixion even Satan was used as an unwilling instrument of grace."

Jesus' execution accomplished the salvation of the world: "Your grief will turn to joy," he had promised in John 16:20.

To redeem our brokenness and lovelessness, the God of the universe shared in our suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil. This profound realization and message should not be missed!

The Sovereign God interacting with a free, rebellious creation involves three kinds of wills. His intentional Will - a world of perfect goodness (Genesis 1, 2); His circumstantial Will - because of the entry of evil at the Fall, God continually salvages good from bad; and His Ultimate Will, which cannot be thwarted - through human history when all of its evils place obstacles in the way, in the end these will be overcome (see Revelation 21, 22).