Jesus didn't die for our sins: Agape is a risky endeavor

[The Great Open Dance]

The crucifixion reveals God’s self-risk for us.

At great risk, truth became enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth. After ministering in northern Judea for some time, Jesus went to Jerusalem. He went there in the service of life, knowing he would die:

Christ, though in the image of God, didn’t deem equality with God something to be clung to—but instead became completely empty and took on the image of oppressed humankind: born into the human condition, found in the likeness of a human being. Jesus was thus humbled—obediently accepting death, even death on a cross! (Phil 2:6–8)

As the Author of life, Abba (our Creator and Sustainer) determines that intensity depends on contrast. Light has more existence in relationship to darkness; warmth has more existence in relationship to cold. Recognizing this, Abba creates a universe of contrasts, including the contrasts of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, celebration and grief. Christ, emissary of the Trinity, then ratifies this decision and expresses sympathy for the world by entering the human situation, as Jesus of Nazareth. Tragically, having granted us the freedom to reject truth, Jesus’s ministry leads to the passion and crucifixion.

Truth moves.

By defining Jesus as truth (John 1:14), the Bible denies truth any heavy, inert characteristics. Like a good cut that a carpenter would call true, Jesus is perfectly plumb with reality. He is truth, so truth becomes a way of being in the world rather than an unchanging thing to possess. Truth is more verb than noun: “They who do the truth come to the light, that their works may be revealed, that their works have been done in God” (John 3:21 WEB [emphasis added]).

Recognizing that truth is an activity, early Christians sometimes referred to their faith as the Way (Acts 19 ). This reference made sense, because the first Christians were Jews and practitioners of halakah, the totality of laws, ordinances, customs, and practices that structure Jewish life to this day. The term halakah derives from the root halak, which means “to walk” or “to go.” For this reason, halakah is usually translated as “the Way.” It is not an inert mass of unchanging rules. It is a way to go through life well, as community.

The way we go through life must constantly adapt to the way things are. In Judaism, this need has produced a long tradition of debate and argumentation. Jesus participated in these debates, producing his own interpretation of halakah, which his followers eventually came to call the evangelion, gospel, or “good news.” According to Jesus, the Way expresses itself through time in loving activity. In this view, an act of kindness is just as true as a skilled carpenter’s cut, balanced mathematical equation, or logically demonstrated argument.

Love suffers.

Alas, being the Way is dangerous. Prophets are always in danger: to patriots, they seem pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to those in authority, seditious.

According to the Gospel of Luke, after a last supper with his disciples Jesus retreated to the Mount of Olives and prayed, “Abba, if it’s your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The cup would not be removed. Later in the night a crowd, led by Jesus’s disciple Judas, approached Jesus to arrest him. Infuriated, one disciple swung a sword and cut off a man’s ear, but Jesus rebuked him and healed the man (Luke 22:51). Then Jesus was led away to die.

Over the next few days, Jesus was mocked, beaten, crowned with thorns, and flogged. Finally, the Romans drove nails into his hands and feet and hung him on a cross, naked and humiliated before the world, until he suffocated to death. As he was dying, Jesus prayed, “Abba, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34a).

Crucifixion is an incomprehensibly “grotesque and gratuitous” act invented by the Romans to terrorize subjugated peoples. This torturous execution was public, political, and prolonged, reducing the victim to a scarred sign of the Empire’s power. In this instance, it also reveals the absolute participation of God in human history, in the person of Jesus.

Jesus, God’s fleshly form, is meek. Jesus is not the master of embodied life; he is subject to embodied life. He inhabits what we inhabit—the plain fact of human suffering, the mysterious joy of religious community, and the intimated assurance of a loving God. He symbolizes divine openness to the agony and the ecstasy, but also to the unresolvable paradox of faith: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries from the cross (Mark 15:34). He simultaneously acknowledges the presence of God and the absence of God. He accuses God of abandonment, demands of God a defense, yet dies before receiving one.

Perhaps God has no adequate answer. Theologically, the crucifixion of Jesus testifies to the unholy within the universe, useless suffering that freedom produces but God abhors. From the gift of freedom, something emerges in creation that is alien to Godself. God did not intend the unholy, but God allows it out of respect for our autonomy and moral consequence.

Love risks.

Crucially, God suffers from this demonic fault in reality. God in Christ undergoes alienation from God through crucifixion. In other words, freedom is of God, but the results of freedom may not be. Faced with a choice between freedom and insignificance, God has chosen to preserve freedom and allow suffering. We may wish it otherwise, but God prioritizes vitality over security.

Yet, God does not make these choices at a distance. In the incarnation, we see that God has entered creation as unconditional celebrant. On the cross, we see that God has entered creation as absolute participant. No part of the divine person is protected from the dangers of embodiment. God in Jesus is perfectly open to the mutually amplifying contrasts of embodied life, and God is perfectly subject to the grotesque and gratuitous suffering that God rejects but freedom allows. God is completely here; God is fully human, even unto death.

For the cosmic Artists in positions of creative responsibility, authentic love necessarily results in vulnerable suffering. Creation necessitates incarnation, and incarnation results in crucifixion. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 141-144)

*****

For further reading, please see:

Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Prophets. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.

[Norrrm]

1. How long has God been the Trinity? Did the Trinity only start after Jesus was crucified?

[TomSlick]

2. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John 1:1

[Norrrm]

3. Good words but does not answer the question.

[TomSlick]

5. The meaning seems clear in context.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

"The Word" is Christ. "The Word" was God in the beginning. While the doctrine of the Trinity was not fully developed until long after the drafting of the Gospel of John, it is clear that the author saw "the Word" as divine and preexistant.

[standingtall]

6. The direct answer if from eternity

Jesus didn't become the Son of God when he took on human form,or when he was baptized or when he was crucified, but he always was he is the eternal Son of God. Jesus being the 2nd person of the Trinity took on a 2nd nature in human form.


John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

[Norrrm]

9. So there were two Jesus entities existing at the same time for approx 33 years.

[standingtall]

10. No there is 1 Jesus, but that 1 Jesus has 2 nature

1 Of God and 1 of Human and Jesus is still fully God and fully man now too.

[Norrrm]

11. Then there were two Jesus entities (natures) existing at the same time for approx 33 years.

[standingtall]

12. The 2nd nature Jesus took on didn't disappear

When he ascended to heaven it still with him and will be with him forever going forward. By the way the 2nd nature of Jesus the human nature was taken into union with Christ at once. So there is still only 1 Jesus not 2 of them.

[Norrrm]

13. That's ok . There were two Jesus entities (natures) existing at the same time for approx 33 years.

And acc to you, there still are...

And acc to you, that second entity (nature) did not exist prior to his birth.

It was not present from eternity back, the beginning.

[standingtall]

14. The Trinity still existed from eternity though

In one being exist 3 divine persons God the Father,God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Which have always existed.

Yes the 2nd member of the Holy Trinity did not take on his human nature until his incarnation in human form. That doesn't negate the fact the Trinity is eternal.

[Norrrm]

15. The Trinity was not in question. You have adequately shown that for 33 years, there were two Jesus entities.

The second one was not part of the original Trinity.

[TomSlick]

18. That's not at all what is being said.

According to Christian orthodoxy, Jesus - the Word - has always existed. The same Jesus took on human form. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John 1:14.

There is no scriptural basis for the conclusion that there were two "Jesus entities" at any point. There have been numerous heresies through the centuries about the nature of Christ. I am unfamiliar with any historical heresy to the effect that there were two "Jesus entities" during his ministry on earth or at any point.

[Norrrm]

19. Refer back to 2 natures

[TomSlick]

20. I don't understand how having two natures means that there are two distinct persons.

The foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity is that God has three natures, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet remains one God. "The LORD our God is one." Deuteronomy 6:4.

I see nothing in Jesus being eternal and assuming human form in the incarnation that means there have ever been two distinct persons.

The problem may be that God's nature as three persons yet still one God, as described in the doctrine of the Trinity, is beyond clear understanding by human minds. God understands that much is beyond human understanding. "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand." Job 38:4.

If we were capable of understanding everything, there would be no room for faith. It is not essential that we understand the doctrine of the Trinity, only that we accept it.

[Norrrm]

21. Good sidetrack, pretending that Jesus having two natures is not true.

[TomSlick]

22. Vade in pace.

[The Great Open Dance]

16. The Trinity's development

Since no historian recorded the transition from Jewish monotheism to early Christian Trinitarianism, we cannot know exactly how or why it happened. But given the vigor of the young church, we can infer that the liturgical expressions recorded in the earliest Christian Scriptures were generated within the Christian community and resonated with that community’s experience. In worship they preached, prayed, and sang the healing that they had received, a healing which came through three persons but led congregants into one body.3 In other words, the early Christian community’s experience of salvation was Trinitarian—one salvation through three persons as one God.

To assert that their experience was Trinitarian is not to assert that their theology was Trinitarian. The earliest Christians did not think the same way about God that later Christians would think. They felt that their lives had been transformed by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom they worshiped as one. (Please note: when discussing historical theology, we will use the traditional, gender-specific terminology of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the book progresses, we will substitute our own, gender-inclusive terminology.)

The early Christians’ liturgy expressed their experience, and their initial, unrecorded theological speculations reflected it. The early church laid the foundations of tripersonal (three person) theism on the experience of tripersonal salvation. By the time the church wrote its new Scriptures, it could not talk about God without talking about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Euclideans needed three lines to draw a triangle; Christians needed three persons to talk about God. So John writes: “There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one” (1 John 5 DRA). (Sydnor, Great Open Dance, 43-44)

[Norrrm]

17. OK. It does not address that there were (still are?) two Jesus entities existing at the same time.

[standingtall]

7. Jesus absolutely did die for our sins though

1 Corinthians 15:3
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;


Galatians 1:4
Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:


Ephesians 1 verse 7
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

Colossians 1:14
In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:


Hebrews 9:28
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

1 John 2:2
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 3:5
And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.

1 John 4:10
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Revelation 1:5
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

Matthew 1:21
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

[standingtall]

8. Jesus wasn't accussing of abandonment on the cross either

He was quoting Psalms 22:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

In order to fulfill it

Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.


Jesus was fully God and fully human, but that doesn't mean his divine nature was locked away and inaccessible to him here on earth.Jesus did not empty himself. He humbled himself there is a big difference. Philippians 2:8
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Versions that say he emptied himself are in error. Wasn't humanity that raised Lararus from the dead.

John 10:18
No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.


Jesus chose to endure the suffering as a human and would not lean on his divine nature on the cross.