Superheroes and Christ the Victor

1 Cor. 15:56-58 (ESV)
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. [57] But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. [58] Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Hebrews 11:13 (ESV)
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

In the last decade several movies have been made (some with many sequels) based on the old superheroes of comic books and TV cartoons. Some of us were kids when we got hooked on watching Batman and Robin beat up the bad guys or Spiderman help little old ladies from getting mugged. There seemed to be a moral quality about these superheroes from the comics that reflected a boundary between goodness and evil and the need for justice. Yet today with the sophistication of computer generated “virtual reality” and the postmodern quest for complexity of character, the Superheroes have a dark side. Complexity is not a bad thing or unchristian. There is a dark side to us all. We know the nature of the human heart and that even among believers we do not deal with cardboard characters. Romans chapter 7 is not a make believe struggle between pretend forces. Paul knew the power of remaining sin in a regenerated heart. The Bible gives us the prayers of King David as well as his private lusts and public scandals. Paul does not hide his physical weakness or his discouragement in ministry (1 Cor. 2:3). Whitewashing heroes to make them something unreal or comical is not what biblical truth is about. Our heroes in faith are not people with unblemished records or superhuman powers, but showed remarkable complexity of personalities. They were very much ordinary men and women who in the midst of testing did something rather extraordinary; they believed in God (Heb.11). I don’t know about you, but it is very comforting to know that these where real people with real problems. They rose above the scandalous record of their past, not by moral improvement, but by the faith of the Gospel.
They were counted righteous by faith in the One who is victorious over all evil and sin. Christ is not our cardboard hero, who won the war over sin and death by superhuman strength. The early church refuted any attempt to make Jesus into a Greek demigod, part human and part god. He was every part of his being human and every part God. The Christian faith is rooted in the truth that God made a plan to restore a lost humanity by getting involved at a personal level. The message of the Cross and the Resurrection is essentially that of God pouring all of his love into the act of redeeming a people for Himself to love eternally. It is at the center a sacrifice of substitution. Justice demands that evil and sin be judged and punished. The Cross and the Resurrection, are the key events where God the Son gives finality to the problem of our lost and condemned condition. The comic book heroes have to keep at the fight, as much as they win, there is always a nemesis out there.
Our victory which Christ won, is assured and final.