THE FAULTY PREOCCUPATION WITH THE DEATH OF CHRIST

THE FAULTY PREOCCUPATION WITH THE DEATH OF CHRIST 

Our interpretation of the following two verses is normally the opposite of how we would understand it if we look at the WHOLE context of Scripture, especially the Torah and how the early Christians understood it.

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up"  John 3:14

In Numbers 21:8, God instructed Moses to set the serpent on a pole for everyone to see it and live. But why, oh why, do most illustrations render the pole as a CROSS? This imagery was unfortunately inherited from Medieval Christianity which was fixated on the crucifixion and death of the Christ. The actual "pole" however is simply a straight stick! 

Strong's Concordance translates "lifted up" as [hupsoó: to lift or raise up, to EXALT, uplift]. So why would DEATH especially by CRUCIFIXION (penalty given by Romans for capital offenses) be an EXALTATION??? Absurd. Ridiculous! Right? That is because Christ really meant "lifted up" to refer to His resurrection and enthronement at the right hand of the Father!

Even the great St. John Chrysostom asked, "How can a criminal death draw people to Christ and make them believe?" What he meant was it has to be the miracle of the Resurrection that would draw men AND make them believe! It has to be LIFE and NOT death that would make men believe.

So why is Christianity preoccupied with DEATH when it should be preoccupied with LIFE? In fact, Christianity  should even be fixated on LIFE - the divine life and being a new creation when united with Christ after water baptism and onwards (John 3:5).

Penal Substitutionary Atonement?

Again, when we mention the Atonement, even scholarly translators render this as "propitiation", i.e., satisfying the anger of an angry God by penalizing a substitute. But this is what the pagans do. It is not biblical at all??? God forbid! Why would God punish His innocent and blameless Son? If this is true, then God is NOT a FAIR JUDGE.  Look up the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16. If you think this is talking about the death of one goat, you are again "medieval" in your thinking and unable to see the bigger picture.

Both goats were blameless (and they were NOT SHEEP). One goat was not killed or sacrificed. The other goat was killed WITHOUT ANY RITUAL. The only purpose of killing was to extract the blood of this goat. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH DEATH. Blood? YES. Death? NO! This blood is then sprinkled on the altar, the holy places especially the Holy of Holies. WHY? Because God told Noah and Moses that "life is in the blood"! The High Priest sprinkles blood on the places corrupted by its contact with the world and sin so that the presence of God through the Shekinah glory will find it fit to dwell in the "purified by blood" Tabernacle!!!

So the Day of Atonement is NOT AT ALL PREOCCUPIED with death but with LIFE ("the life is in the blood") as a type of the blood spilled by Jesus on the Cross being able to forgive, cleanse and purify the heart of every believer whenever they REPENT of sin or having displeased God in any way. The Holy Spirit (the Shekinah glory of the New Testament) cannot dwell in a temple (the believer's body is the temple of the Holy Spirit) UNLESS it is first forgiven, cleansed and purified (1 John 1:6-10). The Day of Atonement does not talk about penalty, substitution, nor a wrathful God. Instead it clearly portrays a loving and holy God who desires to dwell with sinful man and finding a solution to make it happen.

Again, our Christianity has to perform a paradigm shift and be more preoccupied with the DIVINE LIFE given to us instead of DEATH.

The believer's only preoccupation with death is his death to sin and subsequent deliverance from its bondage because he is supposed to be CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:1-11). The true believer should also be dead to the world (James 4:4) and dead to the elemental spirits of the world (Colossians 2:8,20).

From the beginning of creation, God wanted his human creatures to be bearers of His image. But man fell and subjected himself to death and sin. But "Christ became man so that man can become [like] God" and become true image-bearers again. And when we inherit the divine life through the Holy Spirit and become a new creation, we then have the right and authority to be called "sons of God (John 1:12) because we bear His image in much the same way that Christ bore the image of the invisible God.

"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the DEATH (in context, it's actually THE BLOOD) of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, SHALL WE BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE. " Romans 5:10. The Bible is NOT about death, it's ALL ABOUT LIFE!!!