Christ is not a metaphor.

Everything is a metaphor. The calculus is simply a series of equations representative of the physical world; words are symbols that represent meaning; dollar bills are not inherently valuable, they are simply representations of abstract value and can be exchanged as such.

It's doubtful whether our human minds could even learn apart from the exchange of metaphors. Metaphor is transfer, and to understand that which we cannot requires a transference, a swapping of something we grasp in order to grasp what we do not. It's more art than science, more poetry than logic, but true metaphor is neither unscientific nor illogical. It's simply another way of putting the difficult-to-articulate truths that surround us.

Nowhere is metaphor more profound or profuse than in the Bible. It begins in Eden: each true truth (to borrow from Schaeffer), each physical reality, also represents other truths, both physcial and spiritual, earthly and heavenly. The Tree of Knowledge is not simply the harbinger of Death, the catalyst of unlawfulness, or even a tree with bark, leaves and fruits: Christ died on a tree just as Adam, trees represent wealth and abundance and peace, and trees (ironically) symbolize life.

All these metaphors are mutual. If the Tree of Knowledge represents Death, Death also symbolizes the Tree, at least indirectly through man's sin. No metaphor only works one way; that would make it not a metaphor. None, that is, except one.

The life and Passion of Christ is the only event in human history that is not a metaphor. There is nothing representative of His work, nothing that can better explain it except the narrative of His deeds, nothing that connects us to it besides the blood spilled and the body resurrected. Adam may be a foreshadowing of Christ, but Christ is no mere holy duplicate of Adam—Christ is the First and Last Man, the sum of creation, the consummation of God and humanity in a single violent, righteous, flaming union. Christ is the final, the only, the supreme superlative.

Why do we treat Him otherwise? Why do we filter Him through our truncated understanding, insisting on likening His death and glorious return to the transitory elements of life we think we know so well, but which in fact we only know in relation to other things, as metaphors? We talk of redemption as though it were just another modest blessing, or (worse) as though redemption is something of which humans are capable.

Christ is the one thing we are able to understand without the aid of metaphor. Not that we understand Him entirely or even fractionally, and especially not that we understand Him apart from His willingness that we should do so, but He has given us life and presented Himself as the unfailing stream from which we are to drink truth and salvation and wisdom. Yet we just as unfailingly look elsewhere for drink, places infinitely less pure and satisfying.

Why?

The power of the Holy Spirit within us calls us and strengthens us to approach Our Lord without fear, in hope and submissiveness. He moves within us and speaks directly, without the use of metaphor, through His Word. God's Word in us, and we look for knowledge elsewhere. Why?