IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 294

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LXXVIII

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment . He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:1-21).

We covered some verses yesterday that purportedly speak of the atonement of the Christ; His death to cover our sins. In the first one we came across an Old Testament reference to “sweetsmelling savour” which, in similar fashion, was used to reflect God’s pleasure with certain sacrifices. We determined however the the idea of odor could also be expressed as a savor of quietness⁴ and we found in the lexicon that the Hebrew word can be translated as soothing, quieting, tranquillising^2*and Strong’s agrees here saying that it means pleasing, soothing, appeasing ³. In the Greek translations there is no such change as the words do reflect the meaning of sweet but the lexicon points out for us that metaphorically it is a thing well pleasing to God², and for our purposes we should surely be using the metaphoric sense of this idea which tells us simply that Christ “hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:1-2) which we should see equally in His Life and His death. It is in service to mankind and therefore in service to God as well. We can take our pick of the idea here of soothing or appeasing or pleasing or whatever else is in this line of thought and, to be sure, His Life and His death are all of these things for in Him we find the Christ Within which is all these things to the attentive and formerly carnal man, the aspirant and the disciple.

In the next two we have the idea that the Master “gave himself for our sins…..according to the will of God” (Galatians 1:4) and that He “died for our sins according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). As we noted yesterday these are statements of fact but not statements that confirm the atonement as the church may believe. It was our sins, the sins of the world, that brought the Master to His fate and that this was “according to the will of God” and, as we have previously discussed, scripted. An interesting outlook on this idea of scripted is to see Life, apart from this Life in form, as Life in the Eternal Now and as one’s mind runs away with this idea, he can likely see the ALL KNOWING nature of God that is beyond time and space. There is free will in this world but, with enough resources and enough Souls in place who understand, this free will can be mitigated in favor of the Great Plan of God. Through the angels and the apostles and disciples that came into incarnation with Him, ALL IS accomplished in His birth, His Teaching Life among us, His death and His resurrection. It is mankind’s self serving and sinful attitude that brought the Master to the Cross. If the Master could say to His disciple Peter, a man that had given up ALL to be His disciple and an man through whom the Light of the Soul surly shone, that “thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Matthew 16:23), what could He possibly say to the rest of men who worked toward His demise. What could anyone say save that He “died for our sins“.

Next we come upon two Old Testament references that are presented to show the idea of substitutionary atonement. The first is in the story of Abraham who was asked by God to sacrifice His only son. We should understand here that Isaac was not Truly Abraham’s only son as he also had Ishmael, the son born to his wife’s bondservant and who also goes on in Life being blessed by the Lord. It is written in commentaries that Ishmael is not a legitimate son but is this the reality? In this time of multiple wives and concubines and in the absence of law regarding them, who can really say what legitimate really means. Nonetheless Isaac is considered to be the only son of Abraham and the narrative regarding the relation to Christ goes thus:

• “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son” (Genesis 22:13-16).

In this substitution of the ram caught in the thicket for the boy Isaac, the church finds the necessary example to the substitution of Christ for mankind. Abraham’s journey is truly a test of Faith and of one’s willingness to follow and believe in the Lord and he shows a greater understanding of Life itself that we may give him credit for. He was among the disciples of his time, a soul who had progressed to the point of KNOWING but in this all we fail to see the relevance to the vicarious atonement of the Christ.

Next is the infamous sayings of the Prophet Isaiah who prophesied many things about the fate of Israel and its people and who prophesied what follows regarding the Master. We must understand that it was not until after the crucifixion and the resurrection that anyone really applied these sayings to the Master; the Jews had these in their sacred texts which they read from in their religious services and much like the saying, also from Isaiah, that the Master Himself read in the synagogue, they saw little or no relation to their current day reality in them. These are very complex sayings which we should take as a sign and a symbol to them before these things happened that they would happen and to them after these things happened as evidence of the scripted nature of the birth, Life, death and resurrection of the Lord. We must understand also the limitations of language insofar as carrying these ideas forward for thousands of years. Isaiah’s sentiments are more those that could be attributed to one close to the Master than to the casual observer and could be imagined coming from the lips of His closest apostles. These are, in their way, statements of fact albeit colored in the mystery of a vision of things to come. Isaiah’s saying goes thus:

• “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised , and we esteemed him not.  Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth” (Isaiah 53:1-10)

In the exquisite beauty of these words we find the story of the man Jesus who came among us as the Christ of God. This scripture tells us that He is an average looking person, not one whose appearance would attract us. We are told also that He is despised and rejected and this is True insofar as the rulers and those who felt threatened by His appearance among them. A man of sorrows can be seen from the perspective of His pity on those that could not see and His grief was with those that He could not help. He saw His mission and at the same time the futility of it in the near term; He knew that few would be able to follow Him. He was aloof in men’s eyes and ever so Holy that even those who were in awe of Him and His powers could despise Him because they could not approach His level, even though His very teaching told them that they could. Looking at Him one could see His strong burden of carrying mankind into a new era and none could appreciate how He ached for everyone that could not follow Him. In the end the ways of man overcame the times and He became the central point of their actions; He was bringing the new and the different and the outwardly Holy, He was the rebel who stood strong for His cause and sensing the coming wave of the new and the different as a threat, the powers of the time seized Him although they likely knew that it was too late, that the seeds of change had already been sown. And so, because of their own recognition of sin they took Him and they punished Him and those who were His close allies fled. The Master knew what was coming, He lived His Life toward this point and as unpleasant as it was to be He stayed with the script and endured the horrid treatment at the hand of His enemies. Yes He died for our sins but He did not do it as atonement, He was not our substitute; it is our sins that brought Him to the cross and it is our sins that crucified Him; the blindness and the selfishness of mankind. He gave His Life for His friends, for His disciples, so that they would see then and now the reality of Life and the reality of the Kingdom of God. Remember His sayings: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” which should give us much insight into His crucifixion and “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you”  (John 15:13-14) which outlines for us what a friend of the Master Truly is. We should of course see this idea in this reference as well: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31) and we should understand that a disciple and a friend are ultimately the same.

We went longer with this than anticipated and will not get to the next section in today’s post but will continue on this track in the next post. We have these following sayings yet to discuss before we end our treatment of atonement as it appears in the Forth Chapter of John’s First Epistle. There is much church doctrine beside this concept of atonement to be found in this chapter; we have already covered the ideas involved in confessing the Lord, trying the Spirits and the antichrist and after these essays on atonement, we have yet much more to explore.