Theology of Jesus Archives - Page 2 of 24

Christians are always encouraged to become more “Christlike.”

But we rarely do.

Or at least, not to any significant degree.

Over the centuries, pastors and theologians have proposed dozens of explanations as to why this happens. Some say we just need to be more “filled with the Spirit.” Others say that the problem is that people who don’t live like Christians were never really Christians in the first place, and they won’t be until they truly “get saved.” A few proclaim that the problem is a lack of Bible knowledge, and that if we can just “renew our minds” with the Word of God, renewed lives will follow. And on and on it goes.

Can I propose something radical?

Maybe the reason many Christians are not very Christlike is because the God we worship is not very Christlike.

In the minds of most Christians, God is sitting in heaven with His arms crossed and a scowl on His face about all the sin in our lives. In the minds of most, the primary activity of God is to judge sin, point out our failures and weaknesses, and decide who is truly righteous enough to be part of His family.

He is controlling to the point of determining who lives and who dies, and He is to blame for tsunamis, earthquakes, diseases, famines, and wars.

He manipulates countries, pulls strings to govern human affairs, and demands the people follow and obey Him “or else.” And although He says He loves humanity, He does not seem to like us very much. At least, not until we fix ourselves up a bit. After all, “God cannot even look upon sin. He loves the sinner, but hates the sin.”

And since humans become like what we worship, when we worship this God who doesn’t look much like Jesus, we become more like God and less like Jesus.

Just like God, we sit around with our arms crossed and a scowl upon our faces at all the sin in other people’s lives.

Just like God, our primary activities seem to include judging sin, pointing out the failures and weaknesses in others, and deciding who is truly righteous enough to be in God’s family.

Just like God, we seek to control the lives of others, telling them what they can and cannot do, can and cannot believe.

And since our God seems to be at war against “wicked people,” we feel it is our duty and responsibility to also wage war against people we think are “wicked.” You know, the Muslims, the gays, and the abortion doctors.

Just like God, we try to manipulate rulers and leaders to do what we want. We try to pull the strings behind the scenes to get others to follow our ideas and our teachings.

And just like God, while we say that we love everybody, we don’t seem to like other people very much. We do not hang out with “sinners,” because they might pollute us. We say that we “love the sinner, but hate their sin.”

We have become images of the God we worship.

And since our God is not very Christlike, neither are we.

But in recent decades, a growing number of people are beginning to see what it really means for Jesus to be God incarnate.

An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that one of the primary reasons Jesus came was to reveal God to us.

People are beginning to see that Jesus is not like God; God is like Jesus.

And God has always been like Jesus. God has always been with us and among us, sharing our pain, taking our blame, and redeeming our shame. He heals, He comforts, He restores. He hates nobody, kills nobody, and condemns nobody. He knows all, loves all, and forgives all.

And though many among Western Christianity are just now coming to understand that Jesus reveals God to us, this view is not new. It was the dominant view of the church for over 1000 years, and has always been the view of Jesus in Eastern Christianity. It is only in the West, where we allowed economics and empire to guide our theology, that God came to look more like a king on a throne than Jesus on the cross.

But that is all changing now, and I cannot wait to see what happens in the church and in the world as a result.

To become more Christlike ourselves, we need a more Christlike God, and to see a Christlike God, we simply need to look at Jesus.

And when we look at Jesus, and recognize the truth … that He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15) and the exact representation of God (Heb 1:3), we will discover that we start to become more Christlike as well.

We will bless those who curse us.

We will pray for those who persecute us.

We will serve those who wish us only harm.

We will love those who seek violence against us.

We will hang out with those that religious people label as “sinners.”

We will see all people as our brothers and sisters, rather than just those who dress like us and believe like us.

We will no longer judge and condemn others, but will freely forgive them instead.

And we will do all these things because this is how Jesus treated others and how our Heavenly Father treats us.

When we see that God is Christlike, we will become Christlike as well.

The Satanic Messiah vs. The Suffering Messiah

By Jeremy Myers

7 Comments

Have you heard of the Satanic Messiah? Probably not, since most people usually don’t think of Satan and the Messiah as having anything to do with each other.

Yet surprisingly, worship of the Satanic Messiah may be more common than we realize.

In fact, such worshippers may exist in our own town … maybe even in our own church!

What is the Satanic Messiah?

The Satanic Messiah usually goes by the name of “Jesus,” and is often confused with Jesus. In fact, the Satanic Messiah Jesus is identical to the Suffering King Jesus in nearly every way.

There are only three things that set them apart. While the Satanic Messiah looks like Jesus, acts like Jesus, and talks like Jesus, the Satanic Messiah has accepted and adopted the three values of the Satanic kingdom which were offered to Jesus in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. In Matthew 4 and Luke 4, Jesus rejected the Satanic offerings of (1) self-reliance, (2) control over others, and (3) glory before men. And while Jesus rejected these things when offered to Him by Satan, the Satanic Messiah has accepted and adopted such offerings, and has even called them “good.”

Where is this Satanic Messiah so that we might avoid Him and warn others to do the same?

This Satanic Messiah is the Messiah which is often preached from the pulpits and beheld in the books of modern Christianity. If modern Christianity has patterned itself after Jesus, then the Jesus we present to the world is not the Jesus who rejected the offers of self-reliance, control over others, and glory before men, but is the “Jesus” who has accepted such values and now holds them up as virtues.

Where is such a “Jesus”? He can be found all around us. He can sometimes be found in our churches, homes, and in our own treatment of others.

If the church is the representative of Jesus to the world, then to the degree that the church seeks to meet our own needs before the needs of others, desires to control the beliefs and behaviors of others (both inside and outside the church), and chases after glory, fame, power, wealth, and recognition before men, is the same degree to which the church presents Jesus as a Satanic Messiah to the watching world.

Don’t be shocked by such a statement. This is not new. Mankind has always tried to make God in our own image, and God has always been trying to reveal Himself to us as He really is. We have wanted a God of self-reliance who needs nothing and nobody, who glorifies Himself by destroying His enemies and forcing every molecule into submission to His will, and who requires that all people worship and adore Him lest they face the torment of His eternal wrath.

But in the face of this grotesque depiction of a manmade-God, God has been trying to show us since the very beginning in Genesis 1, that He is a God of light, love, hope, healing, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. As a result of God’s eternal love, He created human beings so that we might love Him in return. He wants our love, but knowing that He cannot force love, He woos us and invites us and calls us to Him, but we, being the worst of all possible lovers, slander His name, drag Him through the mud, tie Him up in a dark corner, and eventually even crucify Him on a barren hill. And all the while we declare that it is God Himself telling us to do these things.

It’s insanity. When God sends His messengers of grace and love to show us what He is really like, we get so upset that someone is threatening our idea of a God-who-looks-like-us, that in the name of God we kill the very messengers of God. This is what we have been doing since the very beginning. It’s what we’re doing today. It is also what we did in the days of Jesus when the “image of the invisible God” walked among us. Jesus was not despised, rejected, condemned, and ultimately killed by the sinners and so-called “enemies of God,” but by those who claimed to know God best.

The Messianic Secret

All of this better helps us understand what many Bible scholars call “the Messianic secret” in the Gospels. Have you ever noticed that as Jesus went around preaching and performing miracles, almost any time someone recognizes Him as the Messiah, He instructs them to keep quiet about this and tell nobody else? Since we all assume that Jesus came to declare Himself as the long-awaited Messiah, we get confused when Jesus prohibits people from telling others that He is the Messiah.

Why would Jesus want to keep His identity secret? Why does He want His role as the Messiah to remain a secret?

The reason, I believe, is because the Messiah the people wanted was not the Messiah Jesus came to be. The people of Israel wanted a warrior Messiah, one who would slay the enemies of Israel, overthrow the corrupt and pagan Roman Empire, slaughter the wicked, and set up Israel as the ruling nation over all the world.

The Messiah the people of Israel wanted was the same Messiah that Satan offered to Jesus in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.

Jesus knew that if word that “The Messiah has come!” spread around the countryside, many people would start little rebellions in their towns, believing that this was what the “Messiah” wanted them to do. Thousands of people would show up with swords in hands, ready to follow the “Messiah” into battle against Rome. Since this is not what Jesus wanted, and not at all the kind of Messiah He came to be, He told people to keep quiet about Him being the Messiah. He needed to show them what kind of Messiah He was before He would let them announce that the Messiah had come.

The Confession of Peter

We see this exact same scenario play out on a smaller scale in Matthew 16. Jesus asks His disciples who He is, and Peter, by the Holy Spirit, says that Jesus is the Messiah (Matt 16:16). Jesus praises him for this answer, but then immediately tells them not to let anybody else know (Matt 16:20). A few verses later we learn why. Jesus instructs His disciples that since He is the Messiah, He must go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed.

But the disciples do not want to hear this. Peter, the one who just proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah, pulls Jesus aside and tells Him to stop saying such things (Matt 16:22). The Messiah is to kill His enemies; not be killed by them. The Messiah is to rule and reign and conquer; not suffer and die. At least, this is what Peter thinks.

How does Jesus respond? He rebukes Peter as speaking for Satan (Matt 16:23). He says that the Messiah which Peter has in mind has nothing to do with the ways of God, but is based entirely on the ways of men. This is the Satanic Messiah.

Jesus then goes on to say that if we truly follow Him, we will follow Him into death and self-sacrifice (Matt 16:24-26), not into power, glory, self-advancement, and control over others.

The Spirit of the Anti-Christ

When we put all this together, then we also begin to understand the New Testament teaching about the anti-Christ.

If the Christ is the Suffering King who bleeds and dies for His enemies, who loves and accepts all, and who has no desire to control others but only to serve them, then any “Christ” which is used to defend war and violence toward enemies, to reject and divide from others, and to control and manipulate others for personal gain, is the anti-Christ.

Any portrayal of Christ that allows Jesus to accept the offers that Satan made to Jesus in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 is a false Christ, an anti-Christ, a Satanic Christ.

The Church and the Satanic Messiah

But has not the church accepted and adopted for ourselves the very things that Jesus rejected in Matthew 4 and Luke 4?

If so, are we not wanting, desiring, proclaiming, and following a false Christ, an anti-Christ … a Satanic Christ?

In many ways, the church has become just like Peter.

Though Peter understood that Jesus was the Christ, he did not understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ. The church has been making the same mistake ever since. The Messiah that Jesus rejected is often the Messiah that much of the church proclaims.

When we lust for power over others instead of giving power to others, we are following the Satanic Messiah.

When we desire to control the beliefs and behaviors of others instead of trusting that God will lead them as He leads us, we are following the Satanic Messiah.

When we call for the death of our enemies “in Jesus’ name” instead of seeking to serve our enemies in His name, we are following the Satanic Messiah.

When we chase after wealth, power, prestige, glory, and fame instead of choosing to love, give, bless, and forgive, we are following the Satanic Messiah.

Instead of helping people in hopeless situations, we give them authority figures who tell them what to do.

Instead of seeing that we are all brothers and sisters on this earth and that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, we create false divisions based on skin color, cultural traditions, religious preferences, and invisible geographical boundaries called “borders.”

Instead of seeking to be reconciled to our enemies, we seek revenge upon them by asking leaders to bomb them, kill them, or at the bare minimum, round them up and lock them away.

We cry out for freedom from oppression, not so that oppression can cease, but so that we ourselves can become the oppressors.

We vote in leaders who promise to change everything else so that we ourselves do not need to change.

The Satanic Messiah is alive and well, and I sometimes think he is worshipped and followed more than the one true Messiah, Jesus, our Suffering King.

Which Messiah do you worship, and why?

Did the Death of Jesus Appease an Angry God?

By Jeremy Myers

61 Comments

In many Christian circles, when people think about why Jesus died on the cross, the following is the basic logic that many believe:

God is infinitely holy and righteous. As such, any sin against God is an infinite offense. Therefore, an infinite sacrifice is required to cover an infinite offense. Because humans are sinners, we deserve eternal punishment for our eternal offense. But God wanted to show mercy to us, and so He sent Jesus to die in our place. Since Jesus is God, the death of Jesus is an infinite sacrifice, which is therefore sufficient to cover the infinite offense of sin.

Though different authors, pastors, and teachers will explain the death of Jesus in different ways, this is the basic outline many will use. I used to teach and write about the death of Jesus in this same way, and in fact, many of the posts and sermons which you can find on this blog will contain this exact sort of theological explanation about the death of Jesus.

But let us look a little deeper at what this sort of explanation says about God, sin, righteousness, and the death of Jesus.

The logic of the argument above basically teaches that God gets so worked up over sin, He wants to burn forever and ever those who commit any sin. And since James 2:10 says that even one sin makes us guilty, it doesn’t even matter if we only commit “small” sins. Sin is sin, and even “small” sins deserve eternal hell fire. So if you get mad at your neighbor when his dog digs through your trash, or if you are not completely honest with your boss about why you were ten minutes late for work, God’s justice demands that you get punished the same as if you were serial rapist and mass murderer.

Though this seems unjust, people explain that it only seems unjust because we are sinful human beings and think that some sins are not as bad as others. We are told that since God is infinitely holy and righteous, all sins, no matter how small, are an infinite offense to His holiness. So even getting angry at our neighbor’s dog or lying about why we were 10 minutes late for work is an infinite affront to the righteousness of God, and therefore, deserving of infinite punishment.

But … things don’t seem so cut and dry when we rephrase the question a bit …

Look what happens when we turn the question around:

So it is wrong for me to get angry at my neighbor when his dog digs through my trash, but it is perfectly righteous for God to be eternally angry at me for getting angry at my neighbor? And while I vent my anger by muttering under my breath while I pick up the garbage in my lawn, God gets over His anger … never … while I burn for all eternity in hell?

When the question is presented this way, this sort of god just doesn’t seem very godly. Or at least … this sort of god doesn’t look at all like Jesus.

The typical response, of course, is that this why God sent Jesus. God didn’t actually want humanity to burn forever for muttering under our breath at our neighbor, but His justice demanded that He behave like this. God was sort of captive to His own righteous justice.

But since He loves us so much, He sent His Son Jesus to suffer and die in our place, so that all that “righteous” rage can get poured out on Jesus instead of on us.

Again, this is exactly what I used to believe and teach.

But in recent years, I have begun to have doubts that this is exactly what happened (Get my series of posts on the death and resurrection of Jesus to learn more.)

Problems with the Traditional Explanation of the Death of Jesus

Does it make sense to think that Jesus came to rescue us from God? Does it make sense to think that God sent Jesus to rescue us from Himself? Or at least, from some aspect of Himself?

IF so, God now appears rather schizophrenic. Does God want to kill us for all eternity or love us for all eternity? The theological explanation above makes it sound as if He wants both.

Furthermore, what good does it do for God to pour out His wrath upon the innocent victim, Jesus?

Let us say that after I get angry at my neighbor for letting his dog spread garbage all over my lawn, I go down the street and set a different neighbor’s house on fire. Does my act of arson do anything to relieve my anger at the first neighbor or his dog? No! Setting an innocent third party’s house on fire does not alleviate my wrath toward the guilty party at all. This would still be true if the innocent neighbor noticed my anger at my neighbor’s dog, and said, “Don’t be angry at him; instead, come burn my house down.”

I would look at him like he is crazy. How would burning down his house help me at all? Yet this is what we think happened with God’s wrath in the killing of Jesus. Somehow, though God was angry at us, His anger was appeased by letting us kill His Son? I just don’t see how that would help the situation.

But there are other problems beyond this.

God’s love and grace for us is supposedly unconditional. But if He couldn’t actually show us love and grace unless Jesus first came to die on the cross in our place, then isn’t that a condition on His love and grace? It seems that if Jesus had not come to die, then according to this traditional understanding of the death of Jesus, God could not have shown His “unconditional” love and grace for us.

Furthermore, people say that God had to pour out His wrath against sin upon somebody (either us or Jesus) in order to satisfy his justice. Yet then we say that God did this out of His mercy.

But this is logically impossible.

By definition, mercy and justice are mutually exclusive. If a man robs a bank and then goes to prison for 20 years, this might be considered justice. But what if, after the crook spends 20 years in prison, the judge meets him at the prison gates and says, “Aren’t I merciful to let you out of prison today?” The recently-freed man would say, “You’re not merciful. I just spent 20 years in jail. Mercy would have been setting me free 20 years ago.” You see? If justice is satisfied, there is no need for mercy. And if one chooses to show mercy, then by definition, they cannot also demand justice. Yet if God poured out His wrath upon Jesus to satisfy His justice, then God is a just God, but He is not merciful. On the other hand, if God decides to show mercy to humankind, then, by definition, He cannot demand justice, even justice upon Jesus.

I could go on and on about this, but here’s the point: There are numerous flaws with the idea that the death of Jesus paid the penalty for our sins or satisfied the wrath of God.

Logically and theologically, it just doesn’t work.

But there is a bigger problem still …

Jesus: The Pagan Sacrifice to God

A short while back I wrote a post about a few things Christians can learn from Pagans. A guy on Facebook blew up about this, leaving comment after comment after comment about how ridiculous it was to suggest such a thing. He argued that Paganism has infiltrated Christianity in numerous ways, and we must root out and destroy all such pagan influences, traditions, and customs.

I know where he is coming from, but I just think that (1) his position is logically, theologically, and realistically impossible, and (2) the most pagan things about Christianity are found at the core beliefs and behaviors of many Christians — especially those who are on the war-path against pagan influences.

In my experience, for example, those who are most concerned with getting rid of all pagan influences in Christianity, are also those who tend to be the most judgmental and critical toward those Christians who still incorporate some of those pagan traditions and customs. But which is more pagan: putting tinsel on a Christmas tree or judging and condemning the people who do?

What does all this have to do with the death of Jesus?

At the core of much of Christian theology is the pagan idea that God requires blood sacrifice to forgive sins. The vast majority of Christians believe that God hates sin so much that He is filled with wrath toward sin.

He hates sin so much, we are told, that He cannot even be in sin’s presence.

But, we are told, God’s wrath toward sin can be appeased with blood. God needs someone to pay for the eternal offense of sin against Him and His holiness. Thankfully, as the theory goes, just when God was demanding that all of us wretched sinners open our veins for God to appease His wrath toward us, Jesus stepped up and said, “I’ll take the bullet. I’ll die for them all.”

So Jesus came to earth, died as a sacrifice for our sins, poured out His blood upon God’s heavenly altar, and in so doing, appeased the wrath of God.

When God looks at us now, He doesn’t see sin; He sees Jesus. Therefore, instead of wanting to incinerate us, God can now love us.

Again, this is the basic sort of theology we hear in most churches about the death of Jesus and why He had to come and suffer and die.

But do you know where this entire theology comes from? Not from Scripture, but from Paganism!

Almost every religion in the world has the idea that the gods are mad at us for our sin, and we must do things to appease their wrath. We must sacrifice our goats, and make vows to visit holy places, and commit to treating people with more love (or commit to killing certain “enemies” of the gods).

When our sin is really serious, the gods want blood, whether it is our own blood, or the blood from someone in our family. As a last resort, the gods may accept the blood of a valuable animal.

And yes, I know that the most popular way of reading the Old Testament sees support for this idea in the Mosaic Law. When most people read the laws that are recorded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they see an angry god who wants blood.

But this sacrificial way of reading the Bible is influenced heavily by paganism, and is not at all what Scripture teaches.

When the Pentateuch is understood in its entirety, it appears that the message of the Pentateuch is that God was never angry at people and never wanted sacrifices and offerings, but wanted instead a people for Himself who lived by faith in God and with justice and mercy before a watching world. See Sailhamer’s magnum opus for more on this.

Furthermore, when the Israelite prophets come on the scene, nearly all of them decry and condemn the sacrificial system as not at all reflecting what was in God’s heart. Jeremiah says that God never commanded his people to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings (Jeremiah 7:22-23). Amos says that God hated their religious festivals and burnt offerings (Amos 5:21-24). Micah points out that God doesn’t need thousands of rams and rivers of oil, and definitely not a family’s firstborn son. Instead, God wants justice, kindness, and humility (Micah 6:6-8). God is not delighted with sacrifices and offerings, says the Psalmist, but with a broken and contrite spirit (Psalm 51:16-17).

So it is no surprise, when Jesus comes on the scene, that He tells people through His words and His actions that God is not angry with His people, that He does not want more sacrifices and offerings, that He loves, accepts, and freely forgives all people, no matter what.

While Jesus did proclaim freedom from sin, He did not do so on the basis of the sacrificial system (or even His own sacrifice), but simply on the basis of God’s limitless love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

God forgives, simply because He is a loving and forgiving God. End of story. No sacrifices, offerings, blood, or death are required.

So Why Then Did Jesus Die?

When Jesus went to the cross, He did not die for God.

There are numerous reasons Jesus died. One was to put death to death. Another was to defeat sin and the devil (cf. Heb 2:14-18; Rom 6:4-13; 1 Cor 15:22, 45). But one reason I want to focus on here is that Jesus wanted to expose the lie of the scapegoat: the religious lie that an innocent victim must die for sin.

To put it bluntly, Jesus died to expose religion as a big, fat, satanic lie.

In His death, Jesus put to death the religious requirement of death. In His death, Jesus exposed the emptiness of the sacrificial system for what it was: a form of satanic enslavement by which humans think they are appeasing God for that which He had already forgiven them for.

Religion says: God is angry with you, but will forgive you if you do great things for Him and offer valuable things to Him. By going to the cross under the condemnation of religion, and then being raised again to new life, Jesus exposed the powerful and satanic lie of religion.

Through His death and resurrection, Jesus announced loud and clear that God is not angry at sin, and that just as sin, death, and the devil have no hold on God, they have no hold on us either.

God is not angry at sin. If He’s angry at anything, He is angry at enslavement. God wants us to live free.

And while sin does enslave, the greatest slaver of all is religion.

As such, God wants to free us from religion more than He wants to free us from sin. This is what Jesus proclaimed through His life, death, and resurrection.

The Resurrection of Religion

Sadly, within a few short years of Jesus’ ascension, Christians returned once again the sacrificial mentality of religion. They took the satanic desire to appease God through sacrifice and applied it to Jesus Christ, saying that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice which appeased God once and for all. And ever since this shift was made under Augustine and Anselm, Christianity has been little more than another world religion which seeks to appease God through good behavior and personal sacrifice.

So if people truly want to rid themselves of all things pagan, they need to start not with their holidays and traditions, but with their theology.

Most specifically, we need to rid ourselves of this idea that God is angry at us for our sin and needs to be appeased through blood and sacrifice. This has never been true of God and is not true today.

The sacrificial reading of Scripture is a pagan reading of Scripture, which does not represent the heart of God, but represents a pagan view of God in which God is angry and must be appeased through sacrifice and human merit.

In contrast to this, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is not angry, but loves freely and forgives freely. No ifs, ands, or buts. The death of Jesus did not secure for us the forgiveness of God. God already forgave us freely by His grace.

Now, some of you might be thinking about Hebrews 9:22. But this post is already WAY too long, and an examination of Hebrews 9:22 deservers a post of its own.

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Are Christians infatuated with the Blood of Jesus?

By Jeremy Myers

33 Comments

Have you ever listened to some of the songs Christians sing around Easter? We seem to be infatuated with the blood of Jesus.

Take this song as an example:

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Or this one:

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Refrain:
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Then there is this song:

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Refrain:
O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know; nothing but the blood of Jesus.

These songs have images of a bloody river and a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. Yikes! Some Christian songs sound more like a gruesome and gory scene from a Freddy Krueger movie than from something having to do with Jesus Christ.

And what’s this about washing in the blood of the lamb? That sounds an awful lot like some ancient Pagan sacrificial rituals where worshippers pour the blood of bulls, goats, and lambs over their heads.

Is this really what God wants from us? To take baths in the blood of Jesus? To swim in rivers of blood and dance around in bloody fountains?

What is the deal with the blood of Jesus?

I fully admit that I used to focus a lot on the blood of Jesus as well. In fact, I once preached a whole sermon about the painful trial and bloody ordeal that Jesus experienced on the cross.

But in recent years, I have begun to wonder if all this emphasis on the blood of Jesus, including His suffering and pain on the cross, is what Jesus really wants.

Does Jesus want us to focus on the blood He spilled and the pain He endured on the cross?

I used to think so, but in recent years, I am not so sure.

Reservations About the Blood of Jesus

One of the first things that made me wonder about our infatuation with they blood of Jesus is the realization that the Gospels don’t say much about the blood of Jesus. Similarly, there is hardly any mention about His suffering and pain. For the most part, the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus are fairly benign.

They report the details of what happened and what was said, but they report almost nothing about the gruesome nature of crucifixion or the pain that Jesus must have endured.

Then more recently, I read the following section from Darin Hufford’s book The Misunderstood God:

We have scientifically based teachings that walk us through the pain and suffering Jesus must have gone through during the Crucifixion. We make movies that dramatize the flogging and beating He underwent on our behalf. At Easter we put together pageants and invite outsiders to come and watch Jesus get the tar beat out of Him for their sins.

We have come to believe that it is God’s heart to hold this moment over the heads of His children in an effort to get them to obey the rules. If we are graphically reminded of the pain and suffering He underwent on our behalf, perhaps we will do our best to repay Him by living a right life.

The God I grew up with was like the mother who constantly reminded her kids of the pain she went through during childbirth in an effort to guilt them into doing what she wants. … Sadly, the gospel message has been affected by this way of thinking. “God loves you; come to Him,” has been turned into, “Jesus got a major beating that was meant for you, so come to Him.”

… Imagine if a man broke into my home and was planning on killing my wife and children, but I convinced him to take my life instead of theirs. If he let them escape and then proceeded to take me into a back room and film himself torturing me for hours until finally taking my life, do you think I would ever want my family to see that videotape? Absolutely not! I would want them to remember my life and my love for them. There is nothing inside me that would ever want them to view the pain I underwent to save their lives. That would break their hearts.

This is how God feels when we reenact the stations of the cross in an effort to riddle people with guilt and condemnation. It doesn’t motivate; it exasperates. This is not what love desires (pp. 63, 67).

He makes a good point, doesn’t he?

One could argue, I suppose, that the Gospel authors barely mentioned the blood and gore because the original readers of the Gospel accounts were quite familiar with the agonizing nature of crucifixion, and since most of us are not, the details need to be presented. To some degree, I hold to this argument myself, which is why I continue to keep online my study about the pain of crucifixion.

Yet at the same time, if we want to truly understand what the Gospel authors were saying, we need to do our best to let them provide the details they think are important, and try to set aside the rest as nothing more than interesting historical side notes.

And when it comes to understanding what the Gospel authors are saying about the crucifixion of Jesus, they have chosen to focus very little of their attention on the suffering and blood of Jesus.

So if we want to understand the Gospels, we should do the same.

The blood of Jesus is not that big of a deal in the Gospels, nor is His pain and suffering.

Jesus went to the cross out of love, to rescue us from sin, death, and devil, but since the Gospels (or the rest of the New Testament for that matter) don’t place much emphasis on the blood of Jesus or the pain He went through on the cross, maybe we shouldn’t either…

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

Transform your life and theology by focusing on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus:

Fill out the form below to receive several emails from me about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

(Note: If you are a member of RedeemingGod.com, login and then revisit this page to update your membership.)

How Central is the Cross of Jesus to your Life and Theology?

By Jeremy Myers

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Do you understand everything that occurred in the crucifixion of Jesus, and how central it is to your life and theology?

Whether you think so or not, let me introduce you to the cross of Jesus and how truly significant it really is.

For me, the death and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation to how I read and study Scripture. The cross is at the center of my theology. What Jesus did on the cross provides the pinnacle example of how Christians are to live our lives. Without the cross, there is no Gospel. And as Paul says, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain (1 Cor 15:17).

I have written a lot on this blog about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and some people have asked that I make these posts more accessible to readers. So to help you see the same thing, I have decided to make several of my central blog posts about the death and resurrection of Jesus available to people by email.

If you want to receive my posts on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in your email inbox for you to read at your leisure, I have now created a way for you to do just that. To get started, add your name and email address in the form at the bottom of this post.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus forms the foundation for everything I write on this blog. Everything.

What Jesus accomplished on the cross and through His resurrection is central to everything else. The death and resurrection of Jesus are not only central to Scripture and the Gospel, but are also central to learning (maybe for the first time) what God is like, and how we are supposed to live our lives as followers of Jesus.

By reading these emails, you are forming a firm foundation for understanding Scripture, theology, church, and life. You are gaining what I like to call “crucivision.” You will learn to see everything through the lens of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Fill out the form below to get started. I cannot wait for you to start fully understanding the significance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

There are about 26 emails in this series, and you will get one every Friday, which means that by getting these emails, you can spend the next six months focusing your mind on “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.” This will be revolutionary for you. See you soon!

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

Transform your life and theology by focusing on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus:

Fill out the form below to receive several emails from me about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

(Note: If you are a member of RedeemingGod.com, login and then revisit this page to update your membership.)

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What is the Satanic Messiah?

Where is this Satanic Messiah so that we might avoid Him and warn others to do the same?

The Messianic Secret

The Confession of Peter

The Spirit of the Anti-Christ

The Church and the Satanic Messiah

Did the Death of Jesus Appease an Angry God?

Problems with the Traditional Explanation of the Death of Jesus

Jesus: The Pagan Sacrifice to God

So Why Then Did Jesus Die?

The Resurrection of Religion

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

Are Christians infatuated with the Blood of Jesus?

What is the deal with the blood of Jesus?

Reservations About the Blood of Jesus

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

How Central is the Cross of Jesus to your Life and Theology?

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

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