The paradox of Christ’s saving sway is that it operates on the basis of what the world would call weakness. Christ aimed to “draw all men unto” Himself by His ignominious crucifixion, not His triumphant resurrection. We are drawn to the suffering Christ, not the victorious Christ. As the Christian martyr to Nazism Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a friend, “The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. . . . The God of the Bible . . . wins power and space in the world by his weakness.”
