A fundamental Christian concept! It indeed cannot be denied that Jesus our Lord died for our sins. It is the way this death has been interpreted which leaves us with so many unanswered questions.

The prevailing concept and belief of the death of the Lord is that He came for the sole purpose of dying for our sins and that with this death He ransomed us and took all our sins away with Him. While this is a beautiful concept it flies in the face of justice and common sense. In order to understand what is going on it is necessary to discuss this matter in many chunks as there are several aspects to it.

Firstly, we need to discuss the issue of His coming to this earth, then the issue of the events that led to His death and then the logical reasons for this death.

Jesus came to this earth because mankind could not find their way back to God. Over many centuries our materialistic way of living had estranged us from God. Our religious teachings had also become materialistic which made it impossible to approach God through our religions.

This situation of our spiritual darkness opened the floodgates to all evil whereby there was no longer the will or the inclination to find and approach God. In the midst of all this, however, there were still a few people who still longed for God and prayed ardently for His help. Our earthly religions were no longer able to open a path to God in their practices of worship and doctrines. The representatives of these religions knew only one thing, which is the continued earthly expansion of the religion through tithes and all manner of taxes on the people. It had become a business. The way to God could never be found under such circumstances.

The yoke that the people of Israel bore was great and many people suffered enormously under this religious tyranny which enforced obedience to the priests with the alternative being ostracism from the society with all its dire consequences. The people then submitted themselves apathetically without any joyful awakening or worship whenever they went into the synagogues and the Temple.

All these could only lead to one thing: the certainty that the greater part of mankind would be completely subjugated by the darkness with the eventual result of spiritual death. God in His infinite Mercy sent Jesus to stem this happening. He sent His Son to bring His Message so that those who are willing to listen to It could free themselves from this darkness. With His Word and Teaching He showed the way so that mankind would cling to this Way and attain to salvation.

It was the bringing of this Word which necessitated the coming of Jesus to this earth. It was this Word which could be the saving grace for mankind. We were meant to listen to the Word of God brought by Jesus and reflect upon its truth and change our lives for the better. It is only this change for the better which we strive after through the reading and accepting of the Word and through the practice of this Word that would be the Salvation for men.

The priests who already thought they were masters of the people of Israel felt their authority and their hold on the people waning and in self-defence used the earthly power at their disposal to bring the slanders and calumny which Jesus had to endure, resulting eventually in the crucifixion.

Jesus stood His grounds on the assertion that He was the Son of God. He stood for what He believed in and was and He was ready to embrace physical death as a result. He faced death so that His Word might be preserved for mankind. If He had fled His Word would have run to sand and He would not have fulfilled His Mission which was to bring the Word of God to mankind so that we might continue to have this Word and live accordingly.

His death therefore was nothing more than the result of a persecution by those who envied Him and who as a result used the earthly power at their disposal to kill Him. So Jesus came as a result of our sins and died to preserve the Word He brought which was the saving Word from this sin. He died so that we might continue to have His Word and so that we might continue to study It and use It to change ourselves for the better and follow the road shown.

So Jesus died for us! But only in the way explained and not in the way that conventional religion would like to have us belief. This debases the Work of the Creator and His Justice. All His utterances speak to the contrary of what is conventionally believed. He was sad about the impending events, He called it a betrayal and He said that it would have been better if Judas had not been born! Now why would He say that if His death was meant and planned by God. He also said that whatever a man sows he shall reap, nullifying the assertion that His death would take people’s sins away.

“Whatever a man sows that shall he reap” means that each and everyone of us would have to atone for our sins ourselves! Only now it is easier for us to do so because with the Word of Jesus we know exactly how to go about it. Before His coming nobody knew what to do about atoning for their sins. No one knew how to set about doing this. With the Word of Jesus, however, He showed us the way to the atonement as long as we obey His Word which explains the Laws of Creation. It is this obeying the Word that would set us free from our sins.

Let us therefore thank the Lord for sending His Son and let us make the promise to accept the true Word of Jesus and act accordingly. This is where our salvation lies.