The Sacrifice of Jesus

Let's continue our discussion on the concept of sacrifices. We have said in a previous post that sacrifice is a way of getting rid of negative emotions by taking responsibility for occurrences in our lives, especially losses, in such a way that they become like incidents we chose for ourselves rather than conditions we unwillingly received. In this post, we are going to consider the sacrifice of Jesus, the Son of God. The universe that God made was designed to be good. In the creation story that we find in Genesis, we see that God made everything there is and subsequently called it all good. In other words, he designed the world to be as perfect as he is. He wanted everything to fit together in smooth harmony; in perfect peace. But as time progressed, because of free will in humans, the species he created to master the world and coordinate its parts in a seamless symphony of praise to him, the world did not in fact resemble the perfection of the creator. Rather than rising up to him, it fell further down and away from God. This state of affairs, of the earth not sufficiently resembling heaven, caused God concern, and he decided to intervene.

The evil in the world, which is the privation of godly perfection, causes negative emotions; it causes grief, pain, regret, insecurity and every other negative emotion known to humans. For example, if we are stolen from, we experience loss; if we are hurt, we experience pain; if we are cheated, we experience anger, and so on. The fact that the world is not as perfect as God intended it to be causes manifold negative emotions in us. The fact that there is wrongdoing and injustice in the world means that there is suffering and pain; that the world does not currently live up to its potential. This is the situation God sought to change. He sought to save people from the persistent onslaught of negative emotions. And so he set a salvation story in motion.
 

He befriended Abraham early on in the story. He had an end-goal for salvation in mind, but he wanted to see if humans deserved what he wanted to do. He decided to test Abraham. After giving him a son late in the poor man's life, God subsequently asked him to sacrifice the son, Isaac. Abraham was distressed, but he decided to obey God. And so he took his son up the hill to sacrifice him. He made the altar ready; bound his son; laid him thereupon, and began to raise the knife to cut the boy open when God stopped him, and just in time I might add. Phew - lucky Isaac! But Abraham had done something for humanity. He had told God by his conduct that it was reasonable to do what God had in mind. God was going to sacrifice his own son, so as to remove the deluge of negative emotions that persistently plagued humanity. Recall in this regard in any case that we have already said that sacrifices are efficacious in doing away with negative emotions.

The book of Matthew gives us a concise genealogy of Jesus, from Abraham, through David, all the way to Jesus Christ. This Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the one that performed the sacrifice God had had in mind for so long. He was God's salvation mechanism for humanity. Now, we have already established that the presence of evil in the world leads to pain and suffering. In other words, because of the freely chosen wrongdoing of people, negative human emotions abound. Jesus himself was without sin. He did not share in the responsibility of wrongdoing and its consequences. Recall in this regard that in a previous post I said that sacrifice does not entail guilt. I gave the example of how backtracking and taking responsibility for say, may dad's death did not mean that I was actually guilty of such death. This element is important. And so, Jesus had to be born without sin. He had to have no share in the sinful nature the consequences of which his sacrifice was supposed to take away. And that was exactly the case: Jesus was born without sin; a spotless lamb to be sacrificed for the redemption of the whole world.

God understood clearly the mechanism of sacrifice. First, the person performing the sacrifice must be innocent of the deed. So, for all the friendships I sacrificed, I did not initiate the friends' leaving me. When things in my life started to get better, such as my joining the seminary or progressing in my vocation, these friends just stopped talking with me. I would call them, and they would refuse to answer. I would send them emails and they would refuse to respond. One of them actually blocked my number from his phone; another would reply my messages with covert insults. All of this would ordinarily cause me grief or loss or bitterness or shame or make me feel depressed or insecure, or like a loser who could have no friends. But mentally backtracking, I went ahead and claimed responsibility for all these abandonments by friends. I mentally accepted that I was the one who, by my own choice and deed, drove the so-called friends far away from me. In other words, even though they were the ones who left me, I went ahead and said to myself: I have removed these people from my life. I am responsible. And having done this, the next logical question was: Why? Why did you remove your so-called friends from your life? And the answer was: so as to grow in my vocation. And so, instead of self-pity, or loneliness, or sadness, or any silly, negative emotion, all I now have is grim determination, and a sense of power.

The concept of sacrifices like I said in an earlier post may sometimes be used in not-so-good ways, but the mechanism is the same. So for example, a person looking for wealth goes to a voodoo priest, and he is asked to sacrifice his mother or his wife or anyone close to him. If the seeker does this, in his quest for wealth, he replaces fear, insecurity, timidity and so on with boldness, ruthlessness and courage, with which he relentlessly pursues wealth and does in fact get it, because his mental state creates the situation he craves. And the persistent thought that his sacrifice cannot have been in vain makes him go all out to get what he wants, and he often does. It's the way the world works. Recall in this regard everything we said about The Secret of Rhonda Byrne. Having said all this in any case, let's get back to the sacrifice of Jesus, God's son.
 

Now, here was Jesus, a person who had met the first requirement. He was born free from sin. He was not born of a physical father, but only of a mother that had previously been immaculately conceived, and the Holy Spirit. Next, he had to feel the sorts of emotions he wanted to help rid the world of. Or at least have a sense of them. So, he had to be true man, a true and actual human being in every sense of the word. So for example, before I sacrificed my parents, I used to feel the sadness and grief of their loss; before I sacrificed my so-called friends, I used to feel rejected and abandoned. So, performing the sacrifices, I knew what I was going for. I knew what the emotions I was seeking to rid myself of looked like. And this knowledge, this sense of what I was doing, made me all the more motivated to make the sacrifices, for my own good. Similarly, by sharing our humanity, Jesus got a firsthand glimpse of what he was dealing with: the pain, the grief, the sadness, the sorrow - everything. He encountered lepers and saw their pain by himself, with his own eyes; he encountered outcasts, such as prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors, and the poor, and he went ahead and befriended all of them. The Gospels are replete with stories of how Jesus ate and drank and fraternized with all these otherwise rejected elements of society. He felt what we feel.

The next thing is to be able to have the rational power to actually perform the sacrifice. Depending on the extent of the sacrifice to be made, the rational power of the person sacrificing has to surmount the task. Jesus' sacrifice was for the benefit of all humanity, literally gazillions of people, including those that had lived before him, and those that would live after him, stretching into the ages of the ages. Only one person could have the rational power to do this: GOD. And so Jesus had to be true man, but also true God at the same time. He got his humanity from his mother, and his divinity from his father. Let me here jocularly say that he was biracial, a kind of mutt; a mix of God and man. Just kidding - you know, but you kinda get the picture. In my case, for example, I had the rational power to step back from the negative-emotion-causing losses in my life and say no. I was able to mentally assume them as sacrifices and thus rid myself forever of the emotions. Not everyone uses their rational power to make sacrifices. Rather, they let the losses overwhelm them. They stay in the guilt and sorrow and sadness and never find any relief. Some resort to psychotropic and psychedelic drugs to calm the pain of loss and regret brewing within.

Jesus saved us once and for all by his sacrifice (1 Pet. 3:18). He was not responsible for our wrongdoing and its consequences; he felt or at least understood our emotional predicament; he had the rational capacity to make the required sacrifice, and he did not resist when the opportunity came to make such a sacrifice. He could have played into the hands of the world. He could have become a politician, a magician or a business tycoon. Rather, he lived his life in a way that was bound to get him killed even though he was innocent. The wages of wrongdoing are always some form of pain, and the end-goal of pain is a despairing death. A person can be reckless for only so long. Eventually, he or she has to pay the price, and it ultimately is a painful, spirit wracking death. This is what all of us - especially the really terrible ones among us - deserve. But not Jesus. Jesus was sinless and so he did not deserve a painful, spirit wracking death.

But he mentally took responsibility for all the sins - the ones that deserved the punishment of painful death - as if he had committed these sins by himself. And if he had committed these sins by himself, then he deserved to die for them, and so he did. And by performing this sacrifice, he replaced in himself all the concomitant negative emotions with only positive ones. And as many as identify with him; embody him; live by his example; become other Christs, these individuals would similarly replace in themselves all the negative emotions they would otherwise feel, with positive ones only. Recall in this regard that when Moses built the bronze serpent, the injured still had to look upon it to be saved. They had to participate in the salvation (Num. 21:4-9).

What I'm saying is this: sinful people in our world deserved to be punished by God for our sins. Jesus, true God and true man, even though guiltless, assumed responsibility for all these sins as if he had committed them himself, and so he was the one punished. And in so doing, he removed in himself as God the feeling of negativity that all our sins would ordinarily cause him. Because when we sin we hurt God. "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me" (Matt. 25:31-36). But God, as Jesus, applied the concept of sacrifice so that he could replace in himself the negative emotions our hurting him (like my parents' unwittingly hurting me and my so-called friends' unwittingly hurting me) otherwise occasioned. But when we do evil we don't just hurt and spite God that created all, but we also hurt ourselves and others; we hurt humanity as well by making it less than perfect. But Humanity, as Jesus, applied the concept of sacrifice so that it could replace in itself the negative emotions our hurting it otherwise occasioned. And the foregoing can be said in the present tense, especially as for God and Spinoza, reality is timeless: Jesus, as God and People, applies the concept of sacrifices to replace a deluge of negative emotions with positive ones.

And when we, people, ape Jesus; when we as people emulate Jesus, we can sacrifice along with him; we can learn to be like him. We can copy his example and make our own sacrifices. We can accept that he has set us free, and we can live as free as he made us. Jesus said on the cross: "Father, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). Theologians say this was when God was forced to look away for a second because of the weight of sin weighing on Jesus on the cross - a truly ugly sight. But then, Jesus also said: "It is finished" (John 19:30). And so, all our sins are gone. We can pray to Jesus, join the community of believers; embody him, and behave in the way he would, and so be free from sin on the last day. The same self in which he replaced negative emotions with positive ones he leaves available for us in the Eucharist, so that we can have him in us, and us in him. We should have faith. And we should make sacrifices. Like Jesus did.