Reflection This Week
DID JESUS DIE FOR OUR SINS?

   The short answer to the question as to whether or not Jesus died on the cross for our sins is “no”. The almost automatic response is, You heretic!”  For generations, maybe even from the very beginning, theologians and especially preachers have maintained that that is precisely what Jesus did on Good Friday. He died for our sins, which are now forgiven, all of them.

   The problem is that those who maintain that Jesus’ death on the cross has forgiven all our sins still demand something more. There is hell. There is purgatory for some. There is that seemingly felt need that not to have to suffer for our sins is somehow simply wrong. Yet to maintain that God demands that we suffer for our sinfulness in this life in the life to come means that Jesus’ death on the cross was not enough.

   Either it was enough or it wasn’t enough.  If it was enough, then there is no purgatory where we are cleansed from our sinfulness and made perfect before entering into the perfection of heaven and even no hell. If Jesus died for our sins, they are all forgiven, always and at all times. Thus, we all get into heaven, from the greatest sinner in this life to the greatest saint.

   It seems so unfair, doesn’t it? Hitler right there with Mother Theresa and St. Francis of Assisi? And it isn’t fair, certainly not as the world deems fair – or right and just. But, then, Jesus’ death on the cross was also unfair: a totally innocent man put to death for something he did not do. Jesus did not die for our sins. Jesus died because of the sins of this world.

   The real problem we have, as my old English professor would have it, is that we, in this country (and I would say in this world) are too Puritan in our thinking. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” “God helps those who help themselves” (and blesses them as well). We are all, to use the famous title of a famous Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards, “Sinner in the hands of an angry God”.

   That thinking plays well. It sometimes even preaches well. A former Senior Warden of mine used to encourage me to give a hellfire and brimstone sermon once a year because, he said, the people needed to hear it. It even seems to make sense. God should be angry with us, sinners that we all are. However, since God loves us so very much, so goes the thinking, much more than we sinners love God, God was forced to send his son to die for us so that we could be with God forever in heaven. Otherwise heaven would be a rather empty place.

   Why do we think that way? The answer is obvious: we think God thinks and acts as we do. As James Alison in his Undergoing God says, we’ve “all got it the wrong way round. It is human beings who demand propitiation. By letting himself be put on the cross in the place of shame, God is declaring that the whole system never made sense, is not the way human life should be lived. What God offers is forgiveness, a new relationship.” (Cited Context, 01/08,A)

   God always forgives. We humans do not. Therein lies the difference. That is why our relationships with one another remain broken. Jesus did not come among us to die for our sins. Jesus came among us to remind us of God’s never-ending love, which brings with it unconditional forgiveness and the restoration of a relationship broken by our sinfulness and to show us the way to live a life of thankfulness for that love and forgiveness. That way is to love as Jesus loved. No easy task because we, as happened to Jesus, may not be so loved in return. WJP