If you have been relieved of a tremendous burden, then you will most probably be extremely grateful to the one who released you from it. If this burden had to do with the loss of love while simultaneously appreciating the wonder and glory of that love, then restoration to and of love itself may well mean that love itself or Himself becomes very prominent in your thoughts and aspirations.
Past actions thoughts and deeds that have caused pain to yourself and others, that have caused fears and guilts to build up or to be simply obscured because their reality within your consciousness have caused a darkness of soul, possibly creating depression and anxiety within you, come against your delight in life and your happy experience of it.
In relation to the death of Jesus, just what do you think happened? How and why did He “bear our sins” in His OWN BODY. What does this mean and how could it have happened? We assume that faith means we just accept that He was a “sacrifice for our sins”, but what exactly happened to bring that about, to make it real?
The “bearing of our sin” is something that WE DO* within ourselves, in relation and in context to the pain that Jesus felt within Himself. First let’s say that it says that “He was PRESENTED AS a sacrifice for sin, which wording is expressive of the notion that He was NOT a “sacrifice” for sin, since He was only “PRESENTED” as one, meaning He was not ACTUALLY one (as per the old animal sacrifices of the law).
The reality of Jesus bearing sin only connects to us as we exercise FAITH (IE we believe) in His sacrifice, and other than by faith we don’t and probably WON’T connect with Him. [It is the HEART that makes the connection].
So the bearing of sin* is associated with the punishment for sin, which we see or perceive, or have been told that it is so; that JESUS EXPERIENCED ‘on the cross’ but additionally in the garden, where, foreseeing this pain that He was going to experience, both physical and mental; He asked God to release Him from it if it be possible to achieve the end result any other way. Which it was not.
What pain, WHOSE pain was He to experience? There was no direct TRANSFERENCE of OUR SIN TO HIM. The sin He was to experience the pain of, was firstly from the conscious knowledge of the suffering that sin had caused all mankind, and this was heavy upon Him because He Himself, just as God Himself, was LOVE and was LOVING towards the creation that His Father had brought into being.
This love and loving was to duplicate within Himself that same pain that mankind felt, called empathy, and not without reference to HIS CONSCIENCE, where he was conscious of it all. Conscious that the creation had brought forth such suffering and sorrow on creatures who really had little power to resist all that was around them in the form of corruption of the image of the God who is.
Secondly, He Himself was an example of this creation, being one of its “fallen” creatures also by way of the corruption introduced by Adam, except His Father was not a fallen father as our own. He had to be made in every way like us, which includes the susceptibility to being tempted just like we are, otherwise His “sacrifice” would not be authentic if He could not experience REAL TEMPTATION just like us. His nature was “fallen” just as ours is, except that He Himself had done nothing of Himself to attribute to this “fallen” condition, He just ended up with the same physiology as us, which had the ABILITY and the TENDENCY and the PROPENSITY to sin loaded within Himself, in the same nature of “flesh” as we ourselves carry.
So firstly tackling the fact of His identification and empathy with us. We see His sorrow as He wept for Jerusalem, weeping in the same way within for all of fallen humanity. He felt our pain, He felt our absence of His love within us, and He wept as a Father for His children. This created in Him great pain and anguish of heart, the pain He felt was part of “the wrath of God” because he was in consideration of all those who had fallen short of the glory of God, and the “wrath of God” consists NOT of ANGER but simply of a difference of expression caused by love in antithesis of non-love. This difference or disparity creates conflict between the inner elements of corruption and non-corruption and turmoil of the thoughts and mind results in severe agitation of being, creating anguish.
Secondly the matter of temptation results in a rebuttal and refusal of those elements seeking to bring about that corruption of the God nature within, and in Jesus they sought to destroy His identity as Son of God by causing Him to act outside of that godly nature of God that Jesus contained and was. For this temptation to be REAL it had to involve the stressing of his integrity and the agitation of those fallen physiological elements within Himself, again those things which cause inner pain and anguish. In other words, the temptation had to be REAL ENOUGH to involve that corruption of the “flesh” which ALL HUMAN NATURE CONTAINS AND IS, even the Son of God. Notably then, HIS temptations were of greater strength and force and importance than ours.
When all of this was taken into account in the garden and on the cross, we find that Jesus was subjected to those stresses due to the confounding of and “breaking”, transgressing of God’s “laws”, which is only saying that Jesus “felt the Father’s wrath” on account of those sins and transgressions. Except it is NOT WRATH BUT LOVE which is in action here and causing those immense painful mental stresses in His body and causing anguish of soul. Not only had He to deal with the accusations of bringing into being a creation which became corrupt and introduced evil to mankind, He also had to deal with those self-same corrupted elements within Himself, in His OWN BODY.
The conflict between Himself who was innocent in all respects of being anything to do with the emergence of evil from within Himself, or from the rest of mankind for that matter; was experienced by Him as pain and suffering as the conflict between His own loving nature and the corruption of the human body took place, resulting in what we call WRATH and attribute to God, when it is really His LOVE doing it all.
He was tempted in all ways, yet WITHOUT SIN. ALL that He was subjected to, mental torment and anguish and physical torment as well, resulted only in righteousness from Him, steadfast even though He called “My God, My God, WHY have you ABANDONED ME?”.
When we see Him on that cross, experiencing OUR pain grief and sorrow INNOCENTLY, as well as our guilt and condemnation as HE died for US; then LOVE is defined and observed and hopefully capitulated to in our empathy with Him and HIS empathy with us so as to cause us to believe and recognise the great tragedy of sin and suffering due to the corruption of our inner selves that we have been involved in.
“We love because He first loved us”.
It is our capitulation to the truth of the grief of our own sin that turns us away from it, to the one who bore it for us out of the love he bears towards us. The greatness of the debt PAID IN FULL changes our hearts as we believe and embrace Him and His loving purpose towards us and all of His creation, His death frees us from our own because we turn away from it and turn towards Him who by His love HAS removed AND DOES ONGOINGLY remove our corruption as we remain in Him for His loving forgiveness to do so, as we embrace it and Him in totality.
So our sin and sinful nature is removed, or changed, AS WE ALLOW HIM TO DO SO by His forgiveness of us and by allowing the love that He is to work in us. As we join with Him, with His resurrected SPIRIT BODY, we are empowered to cleave to Him in ongoing participation of the embrace of His power through love to change us, even as He has already done so.
The effect of Him dying on the cross was to bring into power and effect the reality of Him dealing with sin once and for all so that believing mankind may accept, embrace and “participate in the divine nature”.
So there is no trickery here, redemption means you have been brought and bought out from under the power of sin and law. Once you were called “sinners”, now you are not. Jesus, having rescued “the woman caught in adultery” said to her, do any condemn you? Neither do I, go now and SIN NO MORE.
Salvation and redemption is so only because people are brought out from under the power and control of sin so that they can then have victory over it all, that they truly are able then to “go and sin no more”. But if they do sin, they have an advocate.
So Jesus bore within His own body, every aspect of the fallen nature of mankind, and in the process of confronting it with His loving righteousness, destroyed and converted it to that nature that was of Himself, and that by His Spirit, the Spirit that He Himself is, though He be seated in Heaven with the Father, He takes us to sit with Him also in heavenly places, as we are born again, which means we have experienced “The First Resurrection” WITH HIM who WAS the “First Resurrection”.
Other aspects include the natural man’s consciousness, in his conscience, of being separated from the nature of God. Having been made in the likeness of God he becomes conscious of things which are in opposition to that nature and contrary to it, within himself. This awareness is by that which we call “law”, which exists to some degree as a natural form of conscience, but which becomes ever more acute as we are subjected to increasing knowledge concerning that “law” or character of God, E.G. by “The Law”, or in fact as it has bearing on our conscience, by any socially accepted standards of cultural behaviour, be they right or wrong.
This guilt or awareness of “sinfulness” provides a permanent barrier between us and God, as we are only aware of it and of Him through our “transgression” against His nature. We are aware of the transgression but not of any way to be able to restore ourselves to moral rightness. We become aware only of a God of “wrath” because of the inner consternation it causes in us through it. Judgement is there, but without mercy or forgiveness, even though we are able to discern correct judgement ON OURSELVES, we are unable to bring mercy and forgiveness to ourselves, such being the nature of the now truly besmirched image of God within us which is unable to redeem itself, by itself and of itself, and with which we identify.
We need to be able to re-identify ourselves with that image of God by the way of the forgiveness and love which we only realised within us as we found ourselves to be in transgression of them, which then stirred up that knowledge of good and evil which we gained through Adam.
We can only remediate all of this by the knowledge and assimilation of the love God has for us and has put forward towards us and made known to us through the sacrifice made by His Son Jesus, and which and in whose pain He himself participated by His love.
God is love and only love, and His nature is incompatible with ‘other’ nature, that which was not derived from Himself. When the two natures meet together there is a collision which we call “wrath”, but which is really only His love meeting with the ‘other nature’ whatever it be, and in this case it is man who ‘comes off the worse for wear’ if he is not ultimately found to be in Jesus. Those in Jesus are not being destroyed by this love force or nature, but are themselves through being outside of their natural nature but inside the Jesus nature (and He in them) being CHANGED by the confrontive and corrective action of God’s love on them.
So the conscience of Jesus, as assailed by the knowledge of our sin and pain, was therefore also assailed with the selfsame consciousness of sin and pain by the knowledge of it in the face and presence of His love, [also magnified by God consciousness] and that for us. He was empathetic. It is the recognition of this on our part, that then simultaneously gives birth to empathy and love within us, with the bond of great indebtedness of ourselves towards Him, with intense thankfulness.
[Jesus is not God because Jesus could be tempted whereas God cannot be tempted. God could be in Jesus but only as Spirit interaction with their respective identities always separately and clearly defined. Jesus became the Spirit, they did not exist simultaneously as two entities. There was God’s Spirit and then there was either Jesus OR the Spirit that He became. Jesus recognised the “Spirit” that He was to become, as a separate entity to Himself, but that which He had NOT YET become. Jesus was always subservient to His Father.]
[So Jesus bore that which was in Him in His “flesh” nature that was a corruption of the creation because 1. It (He) was able to be tempted, and 2. It (He) was potentially able to fall to that temptation, both aspects which are unattributable to God but ARE attributable to US; with the modifier that the “God in Jesus” as Him being the Son of His Father, having the Spirit of His Father guiding Him at all times into His own spirit of righteousness, when tempted was able to REFUTE its authenticity utterly and completely.]
LOVE then, comes [is perceived] as (destructive) wrath towards those corruptive elements wherever they may be located, whether they be in us or external to us; but comes as corrective LOVE [can be perceived as] pertaining to the recovery of His creation and its (His) purpose. In either case, PAIN may be felt as this action takes place. This interaction within the body of Jesus was complex because He Himself was “of” the creation, but while also being the Son [from heaven] of the Creator, in which status He accepted responsibility for the sin of mankind and for the love which was to recover it from its fallen condition.
The love that Jesus was, felt the pain and anguish of His fallen creation within Himself, His own body, suffering all that it [we] do and have done. He felt the antithesis of love, even of Himself, so that He truly became sin for us in Himself, and wrath for us by the consciousness of it. By the action of [the Father’s] love, He Himself was subjected to the full recreative force of the correction action of love on sinful flesh, involving the full stresses of the reality of a creation without love, without God, its very Father and Creator, and in full recognition of the responsibility for it.
Love then, identifies with pain as being its antithesis, and therefore its nemesis, and the difference in its inevitable conflict is evidenced as suffering. Jesus so loved. God so loved. Love hurts where there is no love when and where there should be, especially in the creature that we are.
All of the pain of the absence of love in mankind as evidenced in sin, pain, suffering, guilt, anguish, torture, depression, guilt, anxiety, darkness; as being the world without God; was consciously evidenced in the body of Christ. As He loved us “unto death” death on a cross.
[‘Those who are His HAVE CRUCIFIED* the flesh with its passions and desires – We were crucified WITH HIM (just as it says we died with Him) the word says, and it is because of this that our empathetic reaction causes us to also ‘crucify our own flesh’ [as we see it crucified with Him and BY Him] along with Him. We join with Him in the revealed TRUTH of all things pertaining to sin and guilt that was shown on the cross. So in this sense we bear our own sin alongside Him having born it for us. “Let us also go and die with Him…” the disciples said, and this is an extension of that statement. There was no transference of our sins to His body, it was all a communication of and identification with, LOVE and our response to that, to Him.]
Believe with the HEART.
[If only we die a death like His. Romans 6:5]
CROSSROMAN 