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Original Message
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I got this in an email and just had to share it. Reading this explained so much for me. It gave me peace. I hope it does the same for many of you who take the time to read it.
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By Andre Rabe On December 27, 2012
I have glimpsed into a mystery and its beauty has captivated my gaze. Never will I see anything the same again. It hides in the ordinary; takes cover under that which is plainly seen, and conceals itself in what we assume we know the best.
Whenever I have failed to see it, it was because I looked for it too far away. The brilliance of its disguise, is the fact that it is so near. But its nearness is also what makes it so accessible. The mystery revealed, is Christ in you. (Col 1:26,27)
You are invited to look with me into a portion of this mystery: the cross of Jesus Christ.
Why the cross?
Why such a horrific violent death?
Why such a costly sacrifice?
Let’s first examine where the practice and concept of sacrifice come from.
The practice of sacrifice seems to be universal, and all seem to begin with violent human sacrifices. Many historic studies confirm the widespread practice of human sacrifices across many cultures. These studies together with many legends and myths reveal the following basic storyline:
During a time of crisis within a community, the social order becomes disturbed, conflict grows, turmoil escalates … until a scapegoat is found.
All the ills and disturbances are blamed on this victim. Such communities becomes blinded by their own confusion, their own violence, and collectively condemn and murder the victim.
The effect of the joint persecution and murder is almost magical. Old enemies are reconciled as they find a new joint enemy and release their anger on him or her. Their blood-lust is satisfied, the conflict subsides and the social order is restored.
In many cases the effect is so great that the sacrifice becomes revered as sacred and consequently becomes part of religious practice. Myths develop. The concept of angry gods, appeased by sacrifices becomes widely accepted. The community remains blind to the fact that it was their own violence and their own evil that murdered an innocent victim.
However, the real problem that originally caused the crisis, soon surfaces again, and so more sacrifices are needed. But maintaining a human sacrificial system is difficult and costly, consequently humans are substituted with animals and often animals are substituted with food and drink. This is basically how sacrificial systems developed. An informative study on this scapegoating principle can be found in Rene Girard’s book: The Scapegoat.
Unfortunately these myths of angry blood-thirsty gods, who demand sacrifices, have had greater influence upon christian understanding of Christ’s sacrifice, than what we realize.
Much teaching that goes under the banner of ‘Christian’ promotes the idea of a ‘just’ and therefore wrathful god who simply can’t get over our sin; a god who demands blood to appease his sense of justice. Indeed God is just, but not in the limited way we have often described His justice…
Ancient Jewish ritual of atonement:
To understand the sacrifice of Jesus in context, lets begin by looking at the ancient Jewish ritual of atonement.
Once a year the high priest would prepare himself to enter the most holy place.
The Holy of Holies was not simply another religious place – it was beyond space and time; it was the place where the Creator himself dwelt. As such, it contained a microcosm of creation and was the place from which all of creation began and from where all of creation was sustained in existence.
The high priest would prepare himself by sacrificing a bull and a calf for the cleansing of his own sin. He would then put on a brilliant white robe, together with a small leather box tied around his forehead and arms with the name YHWH contained in it. This would signify his transformation into the angel or messenger of the Lord and interestingly, one of the names of this messenger was: ‘the Son of God’!
From this moment onwards, the high priest acted, not on behalf of the people, but on behalf of YHWH.
Two lambs were chosen and prepared for sacrifice. The first lamb was known as ‘the Lord’ and the second as ‘Azazel’ or ‘the Devil’. The high priest, acting as ‘the Son of God’ would take the first lamb, ‘the Lord’, with him into the holy of holies and sacrifice it there, sprinkling its blood on the mercy seat between the Cherubim angels.
This microcosm of the universe, would thereby be cleansed from all the impurities that gathered there.
The act of atonement was an act initiated, performed and completed by the Lord himself, by YHWE Himself. The saying “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord” is a reference to this rite of atonement. When YHWE himself completed the act of atonement, through his own sacrifice, he would then come out of the Holy of Holies, sprinkling the rest of the blood and so cleanse the rest of the temple.
It was God emerging from the Holy of Holies, forgiving, cleansing and restoring His creation. He would then put the accumulated impurities and sin onto the head of ‘Azazel’. This ‘scapegoat’ would then be driven out of the camp, over a ledge and killed, symbolizing the taking-away of the people’s sins.
The rite of atonement was therefore the exact opposite of the the rites of sacrifice initiated by men. YHWE does not need to be bribed, appeased or persuaded to be good to us. He takes the initiative to sacrifice Himself and in so doing invalidate each and every sacrifice we could make.
Jesus’ act of Atonement.
Jesus did not come to give us a theory of atonement, He came in the name of the Lord to enact atonement. In the incarnation He begins this work of at-one-ment with humanity. He is the ‘Lamb of God’ who comes, not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God. He does not come, like every other imaginary deity, demanding a sacrifice, rather, He comes supplying the sacrifice in His own person.
The cross does not satisfy the anger of God, it satisfies His most holy love. The self-sacrifice of Jesus reveals that God is not the bloodthirsty deity we imagined. It was humanity that murdered him. We were the angry deities that needed to be satisfied. Humanities violence is exposes by the cross.
In this act, in which He allows evil to do its worst to Him, He exposes and thereby destroys evil.
God is not bound to the limitations of our narrow ideas of strict justice.
He is not interested in getting even; He is interested in saving and bringing healing – a restorative justice that far outweighs a retributive justice.
His justice is served not by forcefully subjecting us to himself, but by exposing himself willingly and in the most vulnerable state, to the greatest injustice. And when evil and injustice did their worst to him, he responded with forgiveness and salvation.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; He was despised, and we didn’t value Him.
Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.”
(Isaiah 53:3–5 HCSB)
Humanity despised and rejected Him, He responded with adoration and acceptance.
We did not value Him, but turned away from Him. He responded by placing the highest value on us and pursuing us to the greatest depth.
The affliction and pain we caused Him, exposed our sickness. Yet, He responded with healing and comfort.
And it was our same sick mindset that thought His death was his just reward, a punishment given by God. All we saw was another guilty scapegoat. We did not recognize that it was us punishing God. It was in our blindness, that we pierced and crucified our Maker.
He responded by making us whole, giving us peace.
He came, not as the persecutor, but as the persecuted.
He came, not as the judge, but as the one being judged.
He sided with the victims, with the outcasts, for this was the only way to heal both the perpetrators and the victims.
It is the very myth that violence can overcome evil, that is debunked by Jesus. He overcomes violence, not by greater violence, but by self-sacrificing love.
On the night before his execution, at the meal in the upper room, Jesus specifically reverses our substitutions of bread and wine offerings, with Himself. He declares that the bread is His body and the wine is His blood. He places the original human sacrifice back in the place of the symbols and thereby shows that at the heart of the sacrificial system is a human sacrifice, violently murdered.
This action has a double meaning. It exposes the evil of the human violence, the domination system, and simultaneously reveals the depth of God’s self-sacrificial love.
What God communicated in the Word that became flesh in Christ Jesus, is the unveiling of how He wants His kingdom to come – a kingdom that is not enforced on anyone, but a logic, a word, that enters into the the very heart of the conflict and contradiction of human life and brings its peace there.
Resurrection life is the kind of life that can even enter death and be victorious there. The only way He ever wants to bring all things into subjection to Himself, is from the inside out through willing participation, for it is God who is at work within us both to will and to do His good pleasure. (Phil 2:13)
He became the ultimate scapegoat to expose the fallacy of our sacrificial systems. The fallacy that our conflict and disorder is the fault of the scapegoat. Like the many scapegoats before Him, His sacrifice brings temporal reconciliation of old enemies: “That very day Herod and Pilate became friends. Previously, they had been hostile toward each other.”
(Luke 23:12 HCSB).
In the resurrection Jesus is vindicated by God as being blameless. As such He reveals the innocence of all our scapegoats … and in so doing exposes the real source of our evils! The source of our conflict, our problems, our evils, is not our conveniently chosen scapegoats, neither is it an angry god.
In the violence of the crucifixion, we are faced with our own violence, our own evil, a blameless scapegoat and consequently, no one else to blame. But in the same act of atonement, He also reveals our forgiveness and consequently, our innocence.
If God was in any way vindictive or revengeful, the resurrection would have been the ideal opportunity to get even. But instead, in the resurrection we meet our victim coming towards us with open arms, and forgiveness in His eyes. In the resurrection, the One we murdered comes to us with the gift of new life. Such lavish grace unsettles mankind, because it does not fit into our structures of justice, vengeance, or punishment.
The depth of the meaning of the cross, means that we have only started to scratch the surface of its meaning, but lets try and summarize what we have seen so far.
The cross was not necessitated by an angry revengeful god.
Neither was the cross the necessary payment to satisfy a god who is bound by a sense of justice that demands blood.
In other words, the idea that God is a judge who just couldn’t get over our sin, is replaced with the revelation that God is a Father, who simply couldn’t get over His children.
It is God who takes the initiative to identify with us to the uttermost, and in doing so, bring healing to both the victims and the perpetrators of evil. Jesus reveals a God who would rather go to hell than live without you.
Jesus did not solve our problems by waving a magic wand from afar. He entered into the middle of the conflict, stepped into the domain of contradiction, entered our hell, faced death itself and from there He conquered.
He saves whatever He becomes. His method of salvation is not by unattached legal judgements, neither is atonement achieved by abstract theories of exchange, rather, it is by His very at-one-ment with humanity, that He forges a unity with us even in our most desperate and ugliest state, and in doing so, He brings the saving knowledge of a loving Father.
The depth of His identification with you, reveals that He knows you, He understands you better than you understand yourself. He is fully aware of every details of your life … and He loves you.
He is not uninvolved or unaware. The incarnation is the event in which God demonstrates His union with your humanity, with all its challenges and contradiction … bringing His peace to you, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in.
He demonstrates the robustness of His life, not by avoiding death, but by entering into the heart of it, and there in the midst of the greatest contradiction He bursts forth into resurrection life.
The cross shatters our illusions – our illusions about ourselves, our illusions about our victims, our illusions about God.
"Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is TRUE, whatever is HONORABLE, whatever is JUST, whatever is PURE, whatever is LOVELY, whatever is COMMENDABLE, if there is any EXCELLANCE, if there is anything WORTHY of PRAISE, THINK OF THESE THINGS."
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May the eyes of our understanding be opened.
Peace!
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