"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?"

From today's installment of the C.S. Lewis Daily:

Today's Reading I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, ‘because it must have been so easy for Him’. Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude and ungraciousness of this objection; what staggers me is the misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of course, those who make it are right. They have even understated their own case. The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because ‘it’s easy for grown-ups’ and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no ‘unfair’ advantage), it would not get on very quickly. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage—call it ‘unfair’ if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself? From Mere Christianity Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Of course, it's also true that suffering and death were made more difficult for Jesus than it is for us because, from the evidence of the Gospels, He knew far in advance of the events just how horrible His death was going to be and exactly when it would happen. It was by His deity that Jesus knew these things and it was this fate He prayed to be spared and then accepted in His prayer in Gethsemane.

He forged ahead to the cross (Luke 9:51), despite. As God, He was, as Lewis says, armed with the foreknowledge that if He fulfilled His mission, dying and rising, He could offer new life to all who repent and believe in Him. Only God could save us from sin and death. We should be glad to accept this help from the one who is stronger than us.