A Fresh Look at Matthew: Matthew 27:32-44

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If He is the King of Israel,[i] let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.[j] 43 He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
“If. . . let him. . . , and we will believe him.”

This is often passed over, but it is an important phrase.  The world throughout history has said, “If God … then I’ll believe.”  God is given a test that is not what God does, not in His plan, and mankind feels able to reject God because God doesn’t meet his test.  There is a dark humor in this argument.  If God did what man said to prove Himself sufficiently to man, would God be God?  Would God subordinate Himself to man?  This is the one time when God did subordinate Himself to man, for mankind’s salvation, and it still didn’t meet mankind’s standards because they wanted to call the shots.  If Jesus had jumped down, would they have believed?  I doubt it. 

I am reminded of a line in Night of the Iguana where the defrocked priest talks about “Man’s inhumanity to God.”  Mankind treats God worse than they treat each other, and that’s pretty bad.
The relationship of faith and reason (or faith and empirical evidence) has troubled the church for hundreds of years, and there is no resolution, in my opinion. There is plenty of empirical evidence for the gospel if one chooses to study it, but it will never be enough because God through the gospel is not looking for just mental agreement but also subordination of mind, will, and emotion.   

Often the failure to subordinate will and emotion means the mind is not really open to the reason behind the gospel.  At the same time, the gospel is a world view; it proceeds from certain presuppositions or foundational truth that are nonnegotiable.  That is, there is a God and you are not Him; mankind tries to make God appeased but wants to do it on his own terms rather than God’s; God defines the terms in having a relationship or really worship with Him because, well, He is God and you are not Him.  God defined the terms through the cross.  The motivation was love and justice, not one or the other.  God’s perfection will always be a stumbling block to imperfect minds.  

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