The Cross as God’s Self-Exegesis: Some Contributions from Paul and John

John

In John’s Gospel, we see the cross as the conjunction of the Father’s love and the Son’s love by pairing John 3, which describes God’s life-giving mission through Jesus’s death, with John 13, which sets that life-giving death in motion:

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:14–16)

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end [or “to the uttermost”]. (John 13:1)

Similarly, 1 John depicts Jesus’s death as the demonstration of both his own love (1 John 3:16) and the Father’s love (1 John 4:9–10).

In John, Jesus goes to his death in obedience to the Father but also, paradoxically, of his own free will (10:18) as an act of extraordinary love for “his own” (13:1), his “friends” (15:13–15). But John 1:29 (“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”) and 12:32 (“when I am lifted up . . . [I] will draw all people to myself”) make it clear that references to Jesus’s death for “his own” or his “friends” should not be taken in an exclusive sense. ¹⁰ His loving death for others is also his participation in the Father’s love for the world, with the goal of drawing all people into that communion of divine love (17:23–26; cf. 13:34–35; 14:21–23; 15:9), offering them abundant and eternal life (e.g., 3:16; 10:10) as God’s children (1:12–13; 3:3–8). First John indicates the same goal of effecting human participation in God’s love as God’s children and Jesus’s disciples (1 John 3:17–18; 4:7–8, 11–12, 16, 19–21).

Many interpreters, citing John 13:34–35 and 15:17, have claimed that in John Jesus does not call his disciples to love their enemies or even the world God loves, but only one another. Some recent interpreters, however, stress John’s implicit ethics, which includes a call for disciples to love not only one another, but also “the world” and thus even enemies. ¹¹ The important issue for us is that if Jesus in John expects his disciples to love his enemies, it is because that is what God does, and that is what Jesus himself does.

We can see divine enemy-love in the Fourth Gospel’s theology of the cross in at least two ways, and perhaps a third. First, the “world” that God loves is a world that opposes and even hates God’s Son (1:11; 7:7; 15:18, 23–25; cf. 3:20); this is simultaneously hatred of the Father (15:23–24). Yet the Father and the Son persist in love. As noted above, Jesus promises by his death to “draw all people” to himself” (12:32), meaning enemies as well as friends, and this “drawing” is ultimately the loving work of the Father (6:44).

Second, when Jesus demonstrates his love at the foot washing narrated in John 13, he does so fully aware that there is a mortal enemy present. After explaining the meaning of his action to Simon Peter, Jesus says, “you are clean, though not all of you,” and the narrator adds, “For he knew who was to betray him” (John 13:10–11; cf. 13:26–27). Jesus deliberately and lovingly washes the feet of Judas the deadly betrayer, the instrument of Jesus’s arch enemy, Satan (6:70–71; 13:2, 27). He also washes the feet of Peter the denier (13:38; 18:15–18, 25–27), whose need for reconciliation (21:15–19) suggests that he too should be considered an enemy. It is out of love for enemies, including friends-turned-enemies like Judas and Peter, that Jesus dies.

Third, we may well see Jesus’s enemy-love on display in the account of his arrest. Simon Peter, trying to act the part of Jesus’s friend, cuts off the ear of Malchus, the high priest’s slave (18:10). Jesus’s response to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11), is primarily a statement of Jesus’s commitment to his salvific mission. At the same time, the presence of Malchus’s name almost certainly indicates that he has become a disciple of Jesus, known to the evangelist in some way. If John and Luke give us complementary remembrances of the event, then we know Jesus healed Malchus (Luke 22:51), and we may reasonably conclude that this man (unnamed in Luke) experienced the healing as an act of incredible love that wooed him to discipleship, despite the violence of Peter (also unnamed in Luke). If so, then this episode demonstrates the claim of John 3:14–15 that the lifting up of Jesus is indeed a healing and life-giving act—in fact, an act of divine enemy-love.

Paul

Turning to Paul, we again see that the “nature of God is revealed definitively by the death of the Son on the cross for us.” ¹² As in John, this death manifests the love of both Father and Son, as we see explicitly in Romans 8:

³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? Is it God who justifies? ³⁴Who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? . . . ³⁷No, in all these things [hardships, etc.] we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that . . . [nothing in all creation] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NRSV; vv. 33 and 34 alt.) ¹³

These inseparable theological and Christological aspects of Jesus’s death are also implicitly joined together in Romans 5, especially v. 8:

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. . . . ¹⁰For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. (Rom 5:6–8, 10)

Christ’s death as God’s love makes sense only if (1) Christ died as an act of love and (2) the identity of Christ and God are inseparably connected such that when one acts, the other is involved. In this passage we also find the death of Jesus explicitly described as an act of God’s enemy-love (v. 10), implying that it is also an act of Christ’s enemy-love.

Of Christ’s love in particular, Paul says, “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore, all have died” (2 Cor 5:14). ¹⁴ Love was the controlling power in Christ’s life and death, and that same love now operates in the life of Paul and other believers. Similar in theological and spiritual significance is Gal 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but it is the Messiah who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by means of the faithfulness of God’s Son, who loved me by giving himself for me” (author’s trans.). ¹⁵

In these texts Paul is speaking both representatively and personally. The personal dimension in Galatians recognizes that Jesus’s loving death was a death for God’s enemies, since Paul himself had been “violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it” (Gal 1:13). In Israel’s Scriptures, the enemies of God’s people are the enemies of God; so too in Galatians.

Conclusion

In both John and Paul, Jesus’s death is the revelation of the love of both the Father and the Son. It is not only an act of “generic” love, but also of enemy-love. Such self-giving love, including even enemy-love (e.g., Rom 12:14–21), is also expected of those who have received God’s love in Christ’s death.

Paul

Philippians 2:6–11 has been called a creed, hymn, or (as I prefer) poem narrating the story of Christ Jesus,

who, though he was (hyparchōn) in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied (ekenōsen) himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6–8)

Every word in these and the following verses has been subjected to analysis and dispute, but the story-line is quite clear: from (a) pre-existence to (b) kenosis/incarnation to (c) obedient self-humbling in crucifixion to (d) exaltation by the Father to (e) universal lordship and acknowledgment. It is now widely agreed that vv. 6–8 reveal “the mind” of Christ to which Paul refers in 2:5 and which he applies concretely to the Philippian believers in 2:1–4. ¹⁶ It is a mind—“a way of thinking, feeling, and acting” ¹⁷ —that is fundamental to Christian community, to the formation and expression of what John Barclay calls a Christian habitus. ¹⁸

The first verb form we find in this poem is the participle hyparchōn in v. 6, simply meaning “existing” or “being.” The NIV actually translates this word with the English participle “being,” but most, like the NRSV, interpret the participle concessively: “though [or “although”] he was in the form of God.” ¹⁹ Many commentators have supported this interpretation.

It is possible, however, that the participle should be understood causally: “because he was in the form of God.” This interpretation—for which I have argued at length elsewhere—has also been suggested by such scholars as C. F. D. Moule, N. T. Wright, Stephen Fowl, Markus Bockmuehl, Lynn Cohick, and John Barclay. ²⁰ Although the meaning of the phrase “form (morphē) of God” has been debated, it most likely refers to outward appearance and thus to divine glory (radiance). ²¹ The phrase is glossed in the same verse as “this equality with God,” ²² and it stands in stark contrast to the phrase “the form (morphē) of a slave,” referring to Christ’s humanity, in v. 7. In other words, in the beginning Christ shared in the divine nature and status (cf. John 1:1).

There is obviously a radical difference between understanding “although” or “because” as the starting point of the Philippians narrative. Did Christ do what the narrative indicates in spite of his divine status or because of his divine status? If “because” is the correct translation, then Christ’s self-emptying (kenosis) in incarnation and his self-humbling in crucifixion were not antithetical to his deity, but demonstrative of that deity. This two-stage action manifests God’s humility and vulnerability in participating in our life so that we could participate in God’s life. Kenosis (understood in this way) is in some sense inherent in, or at least expressive of, the character of God. ²³ It is theophanic.

There is some truth, nonetheless, to be preserved from the “although” reading of Phil 2:6. What Christ did was indeed in contrast to expectations of a deity in the ancient world—that they should protect and exercise their power and status. That is, by not fulfilling expectations about a “normal” deity, Christ manifested the true, if “abnormal” and counterintuitive, character of God.

If Christ did what he did precisely because he was in the form of God (despite our expectations of what a deity does), then humble self-giving to and for others is an essential dimension of what it means to be not just Christlike, but Godlike. This indicates that such vulnerability and self-surrender are not simply for those with status and power. ²⁴ Paul urges the entire community, not just the powerful, to look out for the needs of others in humility (Phil 2:1–4; cf. Rom 12:9–10). Indeed, the Philippian believers were among the Macedonian churches who overflowed in joyful generosity despite their affliction and poverty, and they did so voluntarily as a response to and channel of God’s grace (2 Cor 8:1–6). In Galatians, moreover, Paul urges all in that diverse community to be in a state of mutual, loving “enslavement” (Gal 5:13–14).

Paul is not calling for the marginalized and powerless to be further humiliated, but for the community as a whole to allow the counterintuitive, powerful grace of God to be unleashed through reciprocity in self-giving love, both within communities (e.g., Phil 2:1–4) and between communities (e.g., 2 Cor 8:13–15). To be sure, the powerful or strong have a special responsibility to relinquish power and to aid the powerless or weak (see Rom 15:1; 1 Cor 8:7–13). But Jesus’s theophanic display of vulnerability and humility—the gift of self—is a model for all those who are in Christ, just as his exhortations to humble service in the Gospels (e.g., Mark 9:33–37; 10:35–45) were for all disciples.

The divine humility displayed on the cross is inseparably interwoven with God’s love. Although Paul does not use the word “love” in Phil 2:6–11, he does use it twice in 2:1–4 (vv. 1, 2). He also employs an idiomatic expression in 2:4—“look not to your own interests”—that is nearly identical to a key idiom in 1 Cor 13:5: love “does not insist on its own way.” Philippians 2:1–4 and 2:6–8 are mutually interpreting: Christ’s humble self-emptying rather than self-seeking act was an act of love, while the love and humility to which Paul calls those who are in Christ reveal Godlike/Christlike humility. This humility is not just one virtue among many, but the community’s fundamental way of life. ²⁵ At the same time, it must be emphasized, this sort of mutual humility is neither a call for, nor a justification of, any form of inflicting or absorbing abuse. Kenosis without love is not kenosis.

We find a text similar to Phil 2:6 in 2 Cor 8:9 (right after Paul mentions the Macedonian churches), where Paul’s concern is the collection for the Jerusalem poor: “For you know the generous act (charin) of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich (plousios ōn), yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” The “though” in this sentence interprets the participle ōn (“being”), essentially synonymous with the hyparchōn of Phil 2:6. It too can be translated causally, as “because he was rich,” as John Barclay has vigorously and convincingly argued. ²⁶ God’s grace, like God’s love, is expressed as voluntary self-emptying, here depicted with the similar metaphor of self-impoverishment: a supreme act of humility and vulnerability for the benefit of others. This self-impoverishment does not contravene the character of God but, rather, incarnates it. The “in-Christ” community will embody a similar, vulnerable generosity toward those in need.

John

Nowhere in the Gospels do we see Jesus’s humility and vulnerability more dramatically on display than in the foot washing scene in John 13. This famous text bears a close relationship to Philippians 2, as even the church fathers noted. ²⁷ Philippians 2:6–11 might be a poetic interpretation of John 13, or John 13 might be a telling of the foot washing event in light of Philippians 2.

In antiquity, offering water for guests to wash their feet was a sign of hospitality and could sometimes be carried out by a slave if the host had slaves. Stooping that low, however, both physically and metaphorically, was not normal for the host or for anyone with significant status. In Jewish contexts, such an act was sometimes even beneath the dignity of a slave, who would only provide the basin, not do the actual washing. ²⁸ As “Teacher and Lord” (John 13:13), Jesus did something “unparalleled in ancient literature” and “unrivalled in antiquity.” ²⁹

Many of the Fathers note the profound theological irony in the fact that the one who, clothed in light, made both the waters and our feet of clay now stoops to wash those feet, clothed in a towel. This irony, however, makes perfect sense in the Gospel of John. Since, as Schnelle says, Jesus is the “self-exegesis of God” in John, then Jesus’s self-humbling foot washing displays not only his character, but also God the Father’s character. In this act we find “the extraordinary revelation of God—‘God at our feet.’” ³⁰ The “Jews” did not misperceive the implications of Jesus’s claim that “My Father is still working, and I also am working” when they concluded he was “making himself equal to God” (John 5:17–18). In fact, we can paraphrase Jesus and interpret John 13 to mean, “My Father is still washing feet, and I am also washing feet.” ³¹

Theologically for John, Jesus’s death completes his mission, which is the Father’s mission: “to make the Father known . . . to manifest the Father’s love . . . to bring life to the world.” ³² The foot washing represents Jesus’s death and thus makes known the Father and the Father’s life and love. To put this conclusion even more starkly, we can say that it is the cross that reveals Jesus’s divine identity, as John 8:28 makes clear: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me” (NRSV alt.). Richard Bauckham concurs: “When Jesus is lifted up, exalted in his humiliation on the cross, then the unique divine identity . . . will be revealed for all who can see.” ³³

Ultimately, of course, in John 13 Jesus calls his disciples to engage in this sort of divine foot washing and cruciform humility as participants in the divine life, love, and light he offers them.

Conclusion

In both Paul and John, divine love is manifested as vulnerable self-humbling. The cross reveals that the divine attribute of love has as its corollary the divine attribute of humility. Those who are in Christ, and are therefore also the Father’s children, will exhibit that humility too.