by Brent King
What is the price of Adam?
Come gape at his misery,
And we’ll lay him deep in the dust of death
For all eternity.”
Jesus fixed glassy eyes on the Prince of Darkness. The rebellion of demons and men fell on him, slamming his face into the earth, crushing him like the great block of stone that had killed his dad. Their self-reliance nauseated him. It had taken them to such vulgar depths. Yet he couldn’t escape the thought: could his failure to rely upon his Father instead of himself take him to the same depths?
He cried out. Why did it have to be this way? Why was his Father’s will so far away from his own? He was loath to obey, for to do so would surely identify him with the kingdom of evil and separate them forever. He wouldn’t survive this darkness. He clenched his fists in the dirt. Sweat and blood dripped from his tangled hair.
He could still refuse. He could still leave Adam alone. The price was too high.
A lurid voice above him echoed his thoughts. “Yes…the price is too high.”
“The price of what is too high?” asked another voice in his mind. The voice of the wisest of men answered. “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its ardor as inflexible as hell. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.”
The words seeped into the tortured mind of Jesus. Was it the price of love that was too high—even if its fee was hell? Didn’t he love his Father enough to obey him? Jesus broke into body-wracking sobs. How could he betray his Father’s love? Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the struggling form of Adam in the grip of the shade above him. Adam choked, gasping for breath. If the price of love were too high, then Adam would die—and the very flame of the Trinity would go out.
Blood, death, and hell came face-to-face with love, and he decided at last. He would not turn from the path before him. He would honor his Father. He would save Adam at any cost to himself.
“I surrender my will to yours, Father,” he said. “If this is the only way to save them, I will do it.”
A shriek met his words and the garden filled with shadows. They rushed at Jesus with all the malevolence of hell.
“Adam!” Jesus cried out one last time before the darkness overwhelmed him.
CHAPTER SIX
Jesus stared along the length of the crossbeam at the fruition of his obedience: a careless soldier holding a spike above his wrist. His body and soul fainted before the price of love, the price of choosing his Father’s will. How vulnerable it made him, how—
His body screamed as the hammer fell. Spike by spike, he counted the cost, swooning as the soldiers skewered him to the beam and thrust it into the place prepared for it. He revived to the shrieks of his nerves. They wouldn’t shut up. Nor would the men below him—or beside him. They assaulted him with twisted faces.
“If you are the Christ, save yourself!”
Rulers, priests, and soldiers chanted the mantra again and again, as if they believed he was God and wished for death. A still greater evil targeted the cross—a darkness that stole Jesus' breath—for many beneath him weren’t human. The Prince of Darkness stood amidst priests and soldiers, inspiring their vile jests and taunts.
“He saved others. Now let him save himself! Let him come down from the cross!”
He wanted to save himself, but he steeled himself against the thought, for his decision was made: he would follow the will of his Father; he would follow the will of love; he would not come down.
As if in answer to his resolve, a plague of demons swarmed him. They brought with them the guilt and gloom of the ages of earth. A pandemic of evil overwhelmed him. The world shifted before him. A million shadows hemmed him in. They grew sharper and deeper until a yawning chasm—so broad, so black, so deep that he shuddered before it—split the mount in two. He clung to the spikes that held him fast on its brink, surveying the depths beyond and down, down, down...
This was the abyss! He knew about sin, every detail of it. He and his Father discussed it often. But now its maelstrom caught him in its riptide and threatened to suck him deeper and deeper, away from his Father, away from light, away from life.
Jesus cried out in the darkness. “Father, where are you?”
He waited for the answer, but got none. Where was his Father? He had always been with him, yet now he was gone.
He was shut out—like a corpse in a tomb, a tomb that would hold him forever. Forever was surely the price of offending love, and he was paying that debt to bring the guilty mercy. He would never see his Father again. The physical world—his lacerated, skewered, and breathless condition—faded before the horror of it.
His desire to escape eternal separation from his Father tore against his desire to obey his Father’s will like the nails that pulled him apart and dislocated his joints. He wanted to obey. He yearned to save men. He knew their helplessness, and that they would perish without his help, but the cost! Now that he stood on the brink, it seemed too high! It was too much! He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t do this alone.
At the height of his conflict, a warrior rescued him, the same familiar guardian whom he knew from his youth: the scriptures.
“But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.”
The words tore the mask from his quandary in an instant,
and he beheld the true issue: he didn’t want to do his Father’s will. It was a matter of volition. Would he submit to his Father and stay on this cross, even though the price was an eternal tomb, or would he exercise his own power as God and save himself? Why must God’s will feel so much like damnation? He was going to hell for love, for love was the only course that didn’t lead to hell. He struggled, without success, to fathom it, yet only one thing was clear: to leave this hell betrayed both God and men.
A cry penetrated his agony. “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself! Come down from your cross.”
Jesus shook his head. His delight had always been in obeying his Father, and his Father had reciprocated by honoring him before the world. He would not stop obeying now. He must not betray his Father’s love. He would trust his Father no matter what: even if he didn’t answer, even if he slew him forever.
He would not come down.
Jesus turned from the rabble and faced the abyss that wrung his heart. He couldn’t breathe. His spirit panted. Yet he had tarried long enough. To delay further invited temptation. He drove his body down upon the spikes that pinned his feet and drew a shuddering breath. With a cry, he let it out and plunged into the darkness.
In the same instant, the sun went out. It groped in the void with its maker, a tortured orb portending the doom of all men.
Jesus struggled in the soldiers’ arms—reaching, reaching for his Father—as they dragged him farther and farther from home. At last, his Father disappeared from view, and he was alone. He waited for the dream to end, but it didn’t. He waited for his dad’s touch, but it didn’t come. Instead, he wandered in a timeless place, futilely searching through the darkest rooms of the cosmos for the love of his life. Beyond the release of tears, an eternal ache wracked his soul, mounting in intensity until it reached measure of the guilt of men and the limits of a human heart.
Seizing the end of his strength, Jesus wrestled for one last breath. The sun surged through the hell about him, as if to support his endeavor. His final cry pierced creation.
“It is finished! Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”
Light encircled him, and his face shone like the sun. With the light came the words of Isaiah the prophet: “And when he sees all that is accomplished by the anguish of his soul, he shall be satisfied; and because of what he has experienced, my righteous Servant shall make many to be counted righteous before God, for he shall bear all their sins.”
A smile trembled at the lips of Jesus. He turned the truth over in his mind like a child who has safely jumped into his father’s arms for the f
irst time. Yet he had known this before, ancient knowledge muddled by a faulty human nature: the will of God could be trusted.
A man’s way to life was through death; the crucifixion of self led to the survival of self. Now he would take this flawed nature of his—this inclination to rely on his divine self—to the grave to be reforged to the likeness of God. Spring was coming, the spring of the soul: a radical rebirth of his procuring. The conquest of his divine self would enable men to vanquish their sinful selves, and the would-be hell of repentant men would be transformed, the desires of their hearts reclaimed like his—redeemed in death by the mysterious power of love.
His body shuddered as the light faded, and he bowed his head and died.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
James Rafferty is the inspiration behind this book. His book, How Jesus Was Like Us, opened my mind to truths that have always eluded me. Thank you James.
A special thanks also goes to God for the inspiration to write, and to Ellen White for expanding my understanding of the concepts in this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brent is a freelance writer of Christian fantasy and historical fiction, who also works as a massage therapist and health consultant. He lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Email Brent at [email protected].
Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, or his blog.
