On Faith: It was God who pulled off the ultimate heist

Have you ever seen the movie, “Oceans 11”? If you haven’t, you should. It stands as one of Hollywood’s better renditions of a heist movie. Its characters set out to do the impossible — to rob the shared vault of three casinos on a fight night, when security would be at its highest level, but when the payday would also be the greatest. As you watch the heist unfold, you begin to think that things have gone wrong. Alarms have been tripped and the SWAT team is on its way. Only after the heist is completed are you allowed a behind-the-scenes look at how the plan was carried out … and you begin to appreciate the brilliance of their plan and the flawlessness of their execution of it.

In some ways the story of Jesus is a heist story as well. Ephesians 4:8 says, “when he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive (NRSV),” meaning that the things that keep us captive are carried off by Jesus. At Christmas time we hear proclamations of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. We might be tempted to think that Jesus came to take captive the Scrooges and the Grinches of this world or even within our own heart. That the peace on earth and the goodwill toward men is something that man is to create or multiply. This is not wrong — it is, however, woefully incomplete.

In heist movie terms, it’s like making a movie about the challenges of robbing a casino of a single $5 chip. Not particularly gripping cinema. “Oceans 11” gives the audience a look at the strength and complexity of the casino vault’s security. The Bible allows us the same insight into our own captivity. Ephesians 2:1 describes all of humanity as “dead in your trespasses and sins.” Our problem is not with Scrooge, but with sin, death, and the Devil. We rightfully belong to the Devil because we oppose God in thought, word and deed. And because we stand apart from God the life giver, we are locked in spiritual death, facing an eternal death to come.

But Jesus stole us back. The Devil’s vault had us, by our own sin, locked away from God. How could our prison be broken when we had made it ourselves and our prison was intrinsic to our nature? You can understand why the Devil believed his bondage of mankind was secure.

At Christmas we celebrate God becoming man. Upon this one action of God everything turned. In a move so brilliant that no one could see it coming and no one could have stopped it, God became man and ultimately became sin so that we could receive the righteousness of God. Johan Gerhard expressed the beauty of Christmas this way:

“Let us admire the marvelous wisdom of our God, who could devise a scheme for our redemption, which neither angels nor men could have devised. Infinite good was offended; an infinite satisfaction was required. Man had offended God, from man the satisfaction for sin must be required. But finite man could not possibly render an infinite satisfaction, nor could divine justice be satisfied but on the payment of an infinite ransom. For this reason God became man that, for man who had sinned, He might render a perfect satisfaction for sin, and as God who was infinite He might pay an infinite price for our redemption. Well may we wonder at this stupendous reconciliation of divine justice and mercy, which no one, before God was manifest in the flesh, could have devised, nor after He was so manifested, could fully comprehend.”

This Christmas as you read the familiar story of Bethlehem, shepherds, a virgin with child and a babe is swaddling clothes, I invite you to wonder at the beauty of God’s plan to rescue you from the ownership of the Devil. When your heart is filled with the wonder of the gift of the Christ child, you will find peace with God and Christ’s goodwill toward men to be the foundation of Christmas joy.

Merry Christmas.

Writer David Handsaker is the pastor at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cloquet. Handsaker is on his third career, after having been an airline pilot and a farmer before God called him into ministry, he says.