Invasion—by suffering and love!

There can be no doubt about it that Jesus deliberately forced the issue. At last when the time drew near he marched straight upon Jerusalem and threw everything into the crisis, pressing the nation to come to an ultimate decision, pressing the people to the supreme point when as a whole people they would take a decision in the solidarity of their sin in resistance against the revealed grace of God. That was the Christ who came not to bring peace but a sword, who came to cast fire on the earth. And so Jesus kept his finger pressing hard upon the people, deliberately provoking evil to its final and complete reaction, and then he set himself to deal with it by the finger of God, in holy love. It was an act of aggression on his part for which he had long prepared. He invaded the realm of the strong man in order to bind him, invaded by suffering and by love, in order to bind him by atonement. The cross was the culminating point of the struggle when he touched people at the very roots of their being, at the point where sin was most deeply entrenched, and did the tremendous deed that reversed all things.—T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 155