Love and Sacrifice

I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here. (John 14:30-31)

I love it when a plan comes together. That is a saying that I hear sometimes when people's plans work out just the way they want that pleases them. But in this case I love it when I begin to see obvious providences that remind me that the really good plans are those that God has for me that often I know nothing about until they come into my view. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV)

When I begin to notice how God prearranges events, conversations, articles or talks to come into my life at just the right time to emphasize some truth or reality that He desires for me to notice, I am sometimes surprised but most of all appreciation is awakened and I feel more motivated to want to know Him even more deeply. Over the past few years, things that He has been sharing with me, both for my head and my heart, have served to bring life-changing truths about the nature of His consistent love in sharp contrast with nearly everything I thought about Him in my past. As each new revelation emerges from the fog of confusion that obscures the truth about His character, I see how beautifully everything fits together and reinforces each other which only serves to intensify the light of His glory.

The verse I am looking at today is just such an example. As is often the case, it contains one of those puzzling phrases that I have generally brushed past in my reading because I simply could not find a good place to fit it into my concepts about truth. Though it has not been as troubling as some passages can be, at the same time it seemed to not be nearly so compelling as much of the other material in the surrounding context until this morning. Some things just seem to be redundant or fill-in material until their real significance suddenly emerges when the right light is present.

Enter the providence of God to prepare me to see much more significance in this verse. In the last couple weeks I have become engaged in some intense but enjoyable discussions with a visitor who has started coming to our church. We have spent several hours exploring various aspects of truth that have been coming alive for me over recent years but that are relatively new and different for him. Our discussions have been positive and sometimes rapidly move from one subject to another in his eagerness to try to make sense of so many new concepts. But at the end of each discussion thus far he has challenged me to help make sense out of the concept of where sacrifice fits in to everything we are learning about the true character of God.

At first I didn't understand his confusion about sacrifice and tried to explain to him as best I could how I saw it. But he kept pressing the point and wanted to know why there is such insistence in the Bible of the need for blood if the core issue of sin is not a legal problem demanding punishment. This belief in the need for punishment is the core issue that is polarizing much of the Christian community these days and that is becoming sharpened in my own thinking. How do you fit together the many references to sacrifice and blood throughout Scripture with our emerging picture of a God who has no interest in appeasement but rather is passionate to reestablish a relationship of trust and love with His children again? This fundamental dispute is at the heart of why many people find it very difficult to embrace new ideas about God that do not satisfy the traditional views of religion and beliefs about the nature of sin and a just God.

Enter another providence of God with perfect timing. I just started reading a book that is already proving to be a tremendous help in clarifying a number of these issues in my thinking. Now I want to be clear that I don't believe in being an unthinking reflector of anyone's opinions. But at the same time when a person has a right spirit and what they are teaching is consistent with the many things God has already been showing us in His Word, I am willing to consider their explanations and see if God may be using them to help me go even deeper in my understanding of His truth. In this case that appears to once again be the case. So far nearly everything I have read is helping to clarify and solidify truths that are already taking root in my thinking and that are consistent with the emerging theme that God is love; God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 John 4:16; 1:5)

Given the pattern I have observed over a number of years now of how God has things waiting to answer my needs before I even realize I have them, it came as little surprise that I began to read in this book clear explanations of the very issue that this visitor has raised. I wouldn't have even given it much thought myself since this was not a burning issue in my own mind. But because someone else has brought up an issue that I do not yet have a satisfying answer for, my interest is now peaked to pay closer attention as God has brought a valuable resource to help me understand something I need to know. The very next chapter that I began to read in this book is titled “Loving Sacrifice” and leads into wonderful explanations of this very issue.

What I am in the process of discovering is vitally important and thrilling as well. And as I am learning more about this topic it gave me the needed context to alert me to the significance of the verse quoted here at the beginning, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.

Now, I probably don't have time here to fully unpack what I am in the process of learning about this. But I will try to condense it enough to hopefully make sense and then urge you to look into this issue more carefully yourself in the light of the real truth about God's character of pure agape love. But so far what has really grabbed my attention from what is emerging in this book and that correlates perfectly with what I have been learning from the Word of God is how the Old Testament sacrificial system relates to the sacrifice of Jesus.

This brings in another passage that was even more puzzling for me up to this point. Take a look at this and see how these passages begin to complement and even reinforce each other.

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE. "THEN I SAID, 'BEHOLD, I HAVE COME (IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME) TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'" After saying above, "SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them" (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, "BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:1, 4-10)

To merge one more factor in, a couple days ago in prayer meeting someone else brought up a serious question about another verse that I now see ties directly into this issue and is reflected in this passage from Hebrews. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 NIV) They were asking an excellent question that was not easy to answer: how does this really work? What does it really mean practically that His wounds heal us? There is certainly no shortage of religious clichés to throw at someone about this, but like this man raising the question, I too would like to make more sense out of this text.

But here is where the conflict begins. If one chooses to embrace the commonly accepted belief that God the Father must be appeased, that His justice demands punishment for sin because He is so offended by sin that nothing else will satisfy Him but blood, then this whole question about sacrifice does not create any tension. It is simply assumed that in some way the death of Jesus was a substitute punishment to create a loophole by which sinners can be saved without being punished themselves.

But there are huge problems with this rationale, not the least of which is the fact that such logic is actually 'legal fiction'. Even in our diminished perceptions of justice this practice simply would not be tolerated in a criminal court of law. That in itself should raise a red flag, for God will never participate in deception or dishonesty which is exactly what this penal substitution teaching relies on to hold it together. In addition, it simply makes no sense that if God demands payment for sin that He could pay Himself. As the author of the book I am reading put it, you can no more appease or bribe yourself than you can steal from yourself. (Healing the Gospel p. 32) If God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself on the cross, then it simply makes no logical sense to claim that He was being paid off in order to make Him able to forgive our sins. The more I think about these commonly accepted teachings the more illogical they appear.

But if the penal substitution, justice satisfaction theories don't hold water – and in my growing understanding they cannot – then how are we to understand the purpose of all the sacrifices in the Old Testament system that God Himself put into place? And how does this all fit the way we see the sacrifice of Jesus? This has been a question in my own mind as well as with many others who are wrestling with these concepts and trying to see how they all fit together without twisting logic to force things to fit. I now realize I should thank the visitor who brought this to my attention, for I can see that he was sent by God to make me aware of my own need to look more closely into this issue.

What is now becoming clearer to me is what is found in this passage from Hebrews. I have not seen it previously mostly because I have not looked at this with enough other pieces of information in place to see what it was really saying. But here is the core issue which suddenly came over me in the light from everything else I have been learning about God recently. The most important part about Jesus coming to this world was not the fact that He died but was the in His living and how sinners reacted to His love. Hebrews states clearly here that He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

I had always assumed that what He took away was the animal part of the sacrificial system by replacing it with the sacrifice of His own human body. But now I am starting to see that this is not at all what this passage in Hebrews is saying. What is being revealed here is that the whole idea of sacrifice itself was in essence a sort of shorthand for something far more significant about Jesus and had nothing to do with appeasement of a desire for blood on the part of God. That kind of thinking drives a wedge between the Son and the Father that is promoted by the great accuser but has no place in the heart of a true Christ-follower. Jesus did not come to appease an offended, angry God but rather came to explicitly reveal the heart of a passionate, loving God longing to change our minds about Him so He can once again bring us back into an intimacy of close fellowship with Him that has been missing for 6,000 years.

So what is it that Hebrews says replaced the sacrificial system altogether? Jesus, the one being referred to here, said that it was His purpose to do God's will. It was not God's will that Jesus be offered as a substitute punishment through some sort of legal fiction to satisfy His alleged fury against sinners. That itself is one of the most satanic lies promoted by popular religion that must be exposed and expelled. What it says here in Hebrews is that Jesus came to do the Father's will, and the Father, just like the Son, is pure, agape love. The will of love is to love, to demonstrate what love looks like, to reveal the truth about love that has been obliterated by myriads of lies from the accuser and promulgated by most all religions throughout history. Love is what love does and living a loving life is the ultimate will of the great Lover.

So, what does love look like lived out? That is what Jesus' life was all about. He did not just come to reveal love to the world in person but also came to convince us that the Father is exactly like the Son – total love and nothing else. This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5) This verse has been hammering itself into my thinking for several weeks now as I am starting to see the enormous significance it has on how I view the big picture of sin and salvation.

So, the real reason why Jesus came to this earth, contrary to the emphasis that religion has placed on His death, is really the demonstration of love that He gave us throughout His life. Then why did Jesus die if it was not intended as a sacrifice of appeasement to satisfy wrath of an offended God? Jesus died because sinners were so hateful, resentful and filled with wrath in reaction to that pure love that they had to kill Him to escape the suffering they experienced in His presence. The atmosphere of love that surrounded Jesus was a constant source of extreme irritation to all who were unwilling to submit to its drawing influence. So what resulted was that His death became the inevitable evidence of God allowing sinners to have their way with the Personification of all love. Rather than the lies that have been used to terrify people into embracing religion warning of what might happen when sinners fall into the hands of an angry God, the reality that was demonstrated in Jesus torture and death was what happens when a loving God falls into the hands of angry sinners. That is the essence of what Hebrews is trying to convey.

The more I learn about this and the more my heart perceives these emerging revelations about God's passionate love for me, the more I find myself responding spontaneously with growing affection for Him. This is so opposite of the inner terror that I grew up with ever perceiving God as an angry, offended deity constantly holding me under a heavy blanket of condemnation and guilt in order to force me to obey Him or else. For some time as I began to emerge out from under that heavy, suffocating view of God, I was very angry that I had spent so many years of my life suffering under these lies.

But now I feel myself starting to move to another stage moving from resentment toward compassion for those still stifled and living under constant fear like I suffered from for so long. And though they are usually very defensive about their fear-based beliefs about God, I can recognize those reactions as typical symptoms of starvation for love. The human heart was never designed by God to live close to Him motivated by fear but only in mutual love and joy. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:18)

Now I want to be so transformed in this love myself that God can begin to use me more effectively to help others escape the trap of Satan's lies about Him and begin to see and experience for themselves the love found in the real truth about God that can deliver them from the terrible slavery of fear.

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14-15 NKJV)