I had someone ask me today, "Why did God wait to send Jesus? God would save; the people would fail. The people cried out, and God would answer. Why not send Jesus in the beginning and just skip all of the ups and downs?"
My wife and I recently replaced our family mini-van after the transmission failed. I have actually known for a long time that it needed replacing. There were hints and clues all along the way. It would jerk and change gears in awkward ways -- only on occasion. Most of the time, we were cruising along just fine.
Whenever trouble arose, we addressed it. We would send it to the mechanic for repairs. We flushed out the old transmission fluid and put in new. But we never considered replacing the van with a new one until the old one no longer worked. Why? Because of the cost.
The repairs for transmission maintenance were expensive, but we were able to handle them within our budget. A new vehicle was more than we could squeeze into a single year -- it would cost us thousands of dollars; a price we only wanted to pay if there were no other way.
I imagine that the same could be for God. Sure, God could have sent Jesus to save the world years earlier, but instead, there were countless times of restoration, countless moments of forgiveness. Why? Because of the cost. The recent days through Holy Week we recalled the sacrificial death of Christ. These days point to the cost Jesus paid for us -- the agony, the shame, the loneliness.
More than this, we fail to recognize how impossible it would be for one of us to have a child die for someone else. And not just anyone else, at that, but to die for someone who had turned their back on you...who had hurt you...who had abandoned you.
This is not to say that God hesitated to offer Jesus. No, this was not the case. Instead, the length of time in human history that passed before Jesus came and walked among us is an acknowledgment of the true breadth and depth of the love offered. People had failed to be faithful. We could not save ourselves. We needed a great High Priest who could stand in our place and make a perfect offering for our forgiveness. In spite of the pain, regardless of the cost, God sent Jesus when we needed him most.
