There are three Persons in the triune Godhead, and the eternal Logos is one of those Three. He is numbered among the divine entities who mutually indwell one another, and who make up the one true and living God.
This one, who is numbered among the Three, became flesh and dwelt among us, and He did so in order to be numbered among the transgressors. This, more than anything else, reveals the baffling nature of God to us.
Augustine profoundly said that the cross was a pulpit, from which Jesus preached. What did He say? What did He declare?
The message of the cross is the great reversal. Jesus came, suffered, bled and died, so that we might worship a disreputable God. Does this sound shocking? It is supposed to.
One of the temptations that comes to us through long ecclesiastical experience—hymns, stained glass, steeples, robes, decent and respectable, traditional values—is the temptation of turning the cross of Jesus into something it was never meant to be.
Jesus preaches, from the cross, that God’s ways are not ours. What is reputable among men is disgusting to God, and what is highly honored by Him is incomprehensible to us. Incomprehensible, that is, unless the Spirit of God moves in our hearts, and brings us to His Word and sacraments, and does so in a way that enables us to understand what God is up to.
He is saving the lost, the least, the losers. You might flinch, and instinctively say, “But I am not a loser.” Then go away. He is saving the deadbeats, the riffraff, the sinful, the dead. “But I am not dead,” you say again. Then go away, and don’t come back until you are pathetic. Jesus came for the pathetic people, not the well-dressed and shiny people—who always think God wants them to have people like Jesus executed for being troublemakers.
Are you a waster? Then come. Are you a sinner? Come, and welcome. Are you a loser? Then come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.