Jesus did not come to earth to die.
This belief (that Jesus' purpose was to die) is the biggest misconception today in Christianity. The point of Jesus' life, in my humble opinion, was not to die! If death was his purpose, it would have made logical sense for Herod to kill him when he was an infant. If Jesus purpose was to die, why did he spend 3 years teaching his disciples? Why debate with the Pharisees, rabbis, scribes, and priests? Why heal the sick, touch the lepers or eat with the sinners?
The fact of the matter, is Jesus is trying to do something else with his life. It is this purpose that leads him to heal, teach, touch love, debate, eat, and even go to the cross. Also, we should probably notice that Jesus goes out of his way to be killed, it is not an accident that he is killed. It is very purposeful. Not everybody was crucified, Jesus seemed to have done enough to make the right people angry in order to warrant the cross. So where ever Jesus is going with his life, he is heading in a very intentional fashion.
I think Jesus' mission was focused on living. He was bent on restoring life. Not on death and dying. Even his death resulted from challenging a religion that was no longer bringing hope to people but instead was power hungry, abusive, and was filling its coffers with dirty money. If we are to understand his death we should begin to ask questions about why he was killed. (funny I just wrote a post about that: here)
How should we understand Jesus' death? I think we should understand Jesus death by studying his life.
What do you think?
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1 comment:
I would also add that even in his death, the point was his resurrection. For all our debates about the meaning of Jesus' death, it seems the NT writers were much more concerned with the meaning of his resurrection.
And, his resurrection vindicated the actions and innocence of the life which he lived, as you said.
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