Jesus Lived For Your Sins

Scott Bradley

This is just an exploratory fantasy; it is not intended to convey any historical truth.

The standard understanding of Jesus' 'redemptive work' is that he died for our sins. The penalty for sin is death. This is not only physical death, but also spiritual death — eternal separation from God. Original sin is that which guarantees our death whatever our individual misdeeds; when Adam and Eve sinned they screwed it up for the human race generally. We are a bad batch of creative experimentation and God decided to fix at least some of it by becoming a man, Jesus. Because he is God, Jesus is sinless; because he is sinless, he can pay the price for our sinfulness. But to whom does this apply? Only to those who believe and 'receive'; it is not a universal salvation. Here we enter one of the great ethical quagmires of Christianity.

But what if . . . Jesus was sinless not because he was God, but because he understood that there is no such thing as sin? Jesus would then be a sage who realized his and everyone else's blamelessness. Thus could he take everyone's misappropriated blame upon himself and not feel a thing. Thus could he live for our sins and not die for them.

Let's say I have a spat with you. There is blame. You are mostly to blame. No, you say, I am mostly to blame. But what if you realized that blame only belongs to a very narrow interpretation of reality and like a mist dissolves into nothing when exposed to the light of a larger view of blameless reality? Would you not be able to say, 'I take all the blame', smile, and not feel a thing? But why would you do this? Because you wished to help me to blamelessness. Seeing it in you, I would be desirous of seeing it in myself. Joy is infectious.

What Jesus would be 'saving' us from in this scenario is not sin, but the illusion of sin. And just as some relationship with him would be required in order to realize this, so also in this world where Jesus is no more; imagine present day sages who realized their own blamelessness and that of all things, and who, like heat-sinks, were able absorb all the blame of those about them and yet feel no blame at all. Imagine one such sage is you.

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