Jesus – Not the Hero We Deserve; the Hero We Need

The astute Superhero movie fan will look at my title and be reminded of The Dark Knight. You will also notice that I made a change to the line from the movie. The change is because of my philosophy when it comes to evaluating Superhero entertainment. It has to do with how I look at every form of entertainment. You can see my philosophy when you read my blogs. I usually will not make statements such as “Jesus is the Greatest Superhero” or “Rather than worshipping this superhero, we ought to worship Jesus.” I don’t tend to look at superheroes as Christ-like figures. I usually evaluate them as people. I think “What characteristics does this superhero share with me that remind me that I need Jesus?” You might find examples from my writing that don’t follow my usually philosophy, but for the most part, I tend to look at fictional characters as imperfect people who need a Savior just as much as I do.

The reason that I don’t think of Jesus as the Greatest Superhero is because he is something different. He is the Savior of the World. As the Savior of the World, he has a different purpose than a Superhero. When you look at Superheroes, you see heroes who save other people in a different way than Jesus saves people. A Superhero may save a person from falling off a building, they may stop an evil supervillain from destroying a city, or they may stop an alien invasion. The Superhero saves people from earthly problems. And that is typically what people want. We want a hero that is going to be there to protect our lives. By nature we don’t want someone to tell us that there is a problem with us and with our nature. We just want them to protect us so that we can continue living the way that we want to live.

That is exactly what many people were looking for when Jesus came to this world. They wanted a Messiah who wasn’t going to interfere with their sense of morality. They simply wanted a Messiah who was going to rally the troops. They wanted a military leader who was going to overthrow the Roman Empire so that Israel could be a great nation once again. They wanted a kingdom like what was enjoyed under the rule of King David. They didn’t want a Messiah who was going to tell them that they were sinners. They didn’t want a Messiah who was going to tell them that their outward good deeds were actually rubbish because they were tainted by sin and were putting them on the path to hell rather than the path to heaven. They didn’t want a Messiah that would suffer and die on a cross.

The same is true of us at times. We don’t always want a Savior who is going to disrupt our lives and tell us that there is something wrong with us. We want him to bless our lives and tell us that our choices are just fine. We want him to bless us with good health by taking away any sicknesses. We want him to bless us with a good career even if our job causes us to make morally questionable choices to get ahead. We want him to bless our relationships even if we follow paths that break the sanctity of marriage as God intended it. Our sinful nature wants health, wealth, and happiness on our terms and we want a Jesus who is just going to approve of that. There are times that we don’t want a Savior from sin. We just want a Jesus who is going to give us the life that we want.
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Our sinful nature doesn’t see the need for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Our sinful nature wants Jesus to be like any Superhero that helps us when we want his help. Our sinful nature doesn’t want a Jesus that confronts our sin. But Jesus doesn’t do what our sinful nature wants him to do. Jesus is our Savior. The true Savior of the World is far superior to any Superhero. Like I said, I don’t even want to classify him as a Superhero because he is so different. He is not the hero we deserve. The hero we deserve is described in the first part of Romans 6:23. “The wages of sin is death.” Because of our sins, we deserve death. We deserve eternity in hell. Before God all sin is despicable. We tend to think that our sins are small but that is not true. Our lies, our lust, our greed, our jealousy, and whatever other sins we have, are just as despicable before God as sins like murder. We don’t want to admit it but we deserve eternity in hell. That is the hero we deserve. We deserve a judge who will condemn us.

But that is not what we find in Jesus. Jesus gives us what we need. What we need is a Savior. We need what he accomplished on Good Friday. On Good Friday he was brutally beaten because of our sin. The punishment that we deserved was put on him. He was flogged, beaten, and crucified. As I think about the crown of thorns pressed on his head and the nails pounded into his hands and feet, I think about all my sins. My sins did that. My sins put him there. And so did yours. We all did that to this innocent man. But that is exactly what we needed. We needed a Savior from sin because we could never save ourselves. Romans 6:23 summarizes it well, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Because of Jesus, there is hope. He paid for my sins. That is something that no Superhero could ever do. He saved me from myself. He saved me from an eternity of suffering. That is why he is superior to any Superhero. We can give thanks that our salvation does not depend on us in any way. Give thanks for the eternal life won by Jesus. He is the hero we needed. We needed a Savior from Sin. Rejoice in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He saved us from our sins.