Acronyms are wonderful inventions. Governments and self-help speakers use them, assisting people to remember and refer to complicated ideas in simple ways: USA. IRS. FBI. UK. LOL. KISS (Keep it short and simple). I would like to introduce a new acronym. It’s spelled JOCI, and pronounced jō’si. A JOCI is a Juxtaposition Of Counterintuitive Images.
What does this mean? Juxtaposition is putting two things alongside one another in order to compare or contrast them. Counterintuitive describes something that is very much different from what might ordinarily be assumed. So the juxtaposition of counterintuitive images is putting two pictures or ideas alongside one another in ways that are not expected, resulting in an unsettling contrast. It just doesn’t seem right. You may never have thought of it this way, but the Bible is filled with JOCIs.
Some JOCIs are easy
We’ll start with a couple of easy ones: The apostle Paul writes,
“For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).
This is an easy JOCI. The two ideas are absolutely contradictory: Paul says he is, simultaneously, weak and strong. How can that be? In the immediate context Paul explains that, for Christ’s sake, he has joyfully endured great hardships because in doing so he has come to understand more perfectly that the Lord’s power will be made perfect in his weakness (vs. 9). Paul now knows that, even when he is weak and without help, naturally speaking, Christ’s power gives him a spiritual strength. Thus he can hold in his mind two contrary ideas at the same time: I may be weak (physically), but through faith in Christ’s love I can be strong (spiritually), in the promises and the hope of eternal life.
Here’s another easy one: Jesus says,
“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24).
How can you work hard to save your life but lose it at the same time? How can you deliberately lose your life, but also save it? The simple answer is in two little words in that quote: “whoever loses his life for me will save it.” Whatever you given up now for Christ’s sake is not really lost. It is more like transferring funds from one bank account to another: from your Here-and-now Daily Account to your Heavenly Treasure Savings Account.
The teaching here is, indeed, counterintuitive, but it is at the heart of the gospel. The preceding verse (vs. 23) says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” When you deny yourself to follow Christ, you may choose present disadvantage. Maybe, each day, you defer, perhaps only slightly, what you’d like to do, and instead do something for someone else, which is more difficult. You “lose your life” every day, in something greater than yourself, to save your life in Christ.
In Christ, we become weak so as to become strong. We lose ourselves so as to save ourselves. And we die a little every day in order to live forever with him.
A more complex JOCI
Let’s look at one other JOCI. This one is more complex, and somewhat jarring.
In Revelation 4 and 5, a door is opened into heaven. This reveals a throne, with some special characters and a great number of observers or worshipers (angels?). They are praising the One who sits on the throne (the LORD God Himself). In His right hand, God holds a scroll in which are written future events. The scroll must apparently be taken from His hand and unrolled before those events can come to pass. The future of the world itself depends on this scroll being opened, not only in order to see future events, but to allow future events actually to take place. Without someone who can open the book, the future is unknown and unfulfilled, and it may remain unrealized. In short, it may never happen!
Seemingly, no one can open the scroll. In all the great host of heaven, absolutely no one can open the special book. As John stands there, in his vision, he weeps and weeps because no one has been found who is worthy to open the scroll and look inside — and the future may never come to be. Then one of the elders says to John, “Do not weep! Don’t worry. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will come and open the scroll.”
The great assembly around God’s throne hopes that the Lion of Judah, the most powerful and fiercest of creatures, with the most royal and dignified bearing, will come to open the scroll. But he hasn’t come yet, and no one — absolutely no one else — can do what the Lion can do. The Lion must come! The whole group is waiting, weeping, praying for the Lion to come. We can feel ourselves joining with this group: May the Lion come, and may he come soon, for nothing can happen until he arrives. When will the mighty and kingly Lion appear?
The stage is set now, for an extraordinary juxtaposition of counterintuitive images. It happens so subtly that, if we read quickly and superficially, and fail to visualize the scene, we may miss it altogether. So let’s imagine that we are all sitting in the audience at a play. The tension mounts. The audience is waiting breathlessly, hearts pounding, for the climactic moment. Somewhere, offstage, the Lion is preparing to make his majestic entrance. He will come, the King of Beasts, and his mighty roar will cause the earth to tremble, and strike fear in the hearts of all men.
The excitement grows. He must be coming, any moment now. Just wait, one more second, and he will be here! Do we hear the sound of his coming? Then from offstage enters, not a lion, but a lamb! Not a great lion with flowing mane and a roar that shakes the ground. It’s only a little lamb, which can scarcely utter a mild bleating sound, the quietest of animals, and the least threatening. This is the one who is going to strike fear in the hearts of evildoers? The one who is prepared to exercise a magisterial control over the unfolding of the world’s history?
Besides which, the lamb looks to be half-dead. It is “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). What a letdown. What a disappointment. Maybe this is a lamb that has only, for a moment, survived the attack of the mighty Lion? Maybe the Lion is in the wings, about to appear and finish off the little lamb? But no, we see that’s not the case. The Lamb, the one who “had been slain”, with blood dripping from his throat, actually comes forward and takes the scroll. He is the One who will open the scroll. In fact, he is the Lion!
In our minds the mighty Lion and the gentle Lamb are set beside one another, in harmony and perfect peace. It is contrary to all know of nature now, and it is very troubling. What it is, also, is yet another JOCI; we’ve been caught off guard by this paradox.
We all thought one creature would come, and we all knew what he would be like. And he did come, but he was altogether different, the total opposite of what we expected. The bleeding, feeble, passive, submissive Lamb is the One who is worthy. How can that be? He has overcome; he is worthy to receive all the power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise that we were prepared to give to the Lion. He will sit on the throne with the LORD God.
In this juxtaposition of counterintuitive images, there never was a Lion, not really. First of all, there had to be a lamb, ready and willing to be slain, to lay down his life: “Not my will, but Yours be done.” A lamb to wear the crown of thorns and be sacrificed on God’s altar, the terrible Roman cross. That lamb had to die, in the way God Himself appointed, and be raised from the dead on the third day, “a Lamb that had been slain”, before the Lion of the tribe of Judah could ever appear. And when that Lion did appear, it would be as a lamb, to subdue the nations and rule on the throne of his father David over a redeemed world. When the Lion finally appears, he will command praise and honor and glory as a Lamb. He will rule over the world as though he were a Lion, but those who have faith will always see him as the bruised, suffering, slain lamb.
An old proverb says, “Better is the patient man who controls his temper and his anger than the mighty warrior. Better is the man who conquers his own spirit than the man who conquers a city.” That’s a paraphrase based on the various renderings of Prov 16:32. It defines the person, and the character, of Jesus Christ just about perfectly. Only the man who can be the perfect Lamb, in submission and service and sacrifice, can ever be the Lion who rules. Only the man who wore the crown of thorns can ever wear the golden crown.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One