Even If Not

Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods. — Daniel 3:17-18

We have spent two days with the cry from the cross and the answer that came from the empty tomb. But there is one more thing worth lingering over.

Not a different story. A deeper layer of the same one.

When Jesus cried out My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Mark 15:34), He was not only expressing anguish. He was praying Psalm 22, a psalm that begins in desolation and ends in vindication. But here is the question worth turning over slowly: did Jesus cry from the beginning of that psalm because He was looking ahead to its ending? Was His faith: although I am forsaken now, I trust I will be raised later?

Or was something else happening altogether?

Three men stood before a furnace that had been heated seven times hotter than usual (Dan. 3:19). King Nebuchadnezzar gave them one last chance. Bow, or burn.

Their answer has echoed through twenty-six centuries: our God is able to deliver us. But even if not, we will not serve your gods.

That last sentence is the one that arrests us. But even if not. They did not say: we trust God because He will save us. They said: we trust God. Full stop. The outcome was not the ground of their faith. God was.

This is a different kind of trust than most of us practice. Most of us trust God toward something. We believe He will come through. We hold on because we expect it to turn. That faith is real, and it has carried many people through many dark seasons. I have leaned on it myself more times than I can count.

But the three men in Daniel were not leaning on an expected outcome. They were leaning on God Himself. And that is a different weight entirely. And it is, I think, the most beautiful thing a human being can do.

Now consider what was happening on the cross.

Jesus did not carry the cross because He was calculating the resurrection. He carried it because He knew the Father. And knowing the Father was already enough.

The Apostle Paul uses a precise word for what God did there. He delivered up Jesus, gave him over for us all (Rom. 4:25; 8:32). This is the language of purpose, not abandonment. And Jesus, in the absolute trust of the Son, received it that way.

One faith says: although God has given me over, I trust He will raise me.

The other says something that goes even further. Not He will raise me. Not even He is raising me. But: in the very act of being given over, I am already raised. The cross is not the prelude to glory. The cross is glory.

The proof is in what Jesus said the moment Judas walked out into the darkness to hand Him over: “Now is the Son of Man glorified” (John 13:31). Not soon. Not eventually. Now. The moment the betrayal was set in motion, Jesus declared glorification as already present.

In that faith, there is no gap between death and resurrection. No distance between the giving over and the raising up. They are not two events connected by hope. They are one movement. The Father’s love. The Father’s purpose. The Son’s absolute trust. All three, holding together what looked like the end.

To be given over by God is already to be held within His saving will.