Pages

Monday, January 9, 2012

Jesus' Death: Why Was Jesus' "Temporary" Sacrifice Sufficient to Buy Back All of Humanity?

To answer the question in the title of this post, we need to go back to the Levitical laws, which state that, in God's perfect sense of justice, a requirement is made that "soul will be for soul, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." (Deut. 9:21, NWT--you can compare the KJV, I use the NWT here because it is a little clearer, and it renders nephesh as "soul," whereas the KJV, in this instance, renders it as "life," which is more of a description of the sense in which nephesh is used in this context rather than a direct translation). What this sense of perfect justice is saying is that if something is lost or destroyed, something of equal value must be given to get it back. For instance, if someone destroys your property, you are entitled to get your property back, or at least something of equal value. If the person does not have the means to repay the property, then he will be sentenced to an appropriate punishment by the authorities. In this case, the authority is Jehovah, and as described in his word, the Bible, there is only one punishment for sin--death. In other words, when Adam lost perfection, by sinning, he became liable to death because what he lost was a perfect human existence. Since the only way to buy back that perfect existence is with a perfect existence, and a sinner by definition does not have a perfect existence (and hence does not have the means to buy back what Adam lost), the only option for a sinner is to die. God, however, did have the means to buy back what Adam had lost; furthermore, according to his mercy towards mankind, he provided something of equal value--the perfect human life of his own Son. Jehovah did not have to do that, it was purely a matter of grace (or underserved kindness on the part of God--and love of humanity and loyalty to his Father on the part of Jesus) that the Son as sent to earth to die for us.

The question, however, is, why was Jesus allowed to be resurrected? It would seem, on the outside of it, that is life is for life and soul for soul, once Jesus gave up his perfect life in order to buy back the perfect life Adam lost, he should no longer be entitled to live. In fact, if Jesus had not been resurrected, he would be giving up much more than what necessary to buy back what Adam lost. This is where we also begin to see why Jesus single human life was sufficient to redeem all of humanity. What exactly was it that Adam had given up in the Garden of Eden when he sinned? What he gave up was exactly a single perfect human existence. This is exactly what Jesus offered up as a sacrifice. Although Jesus gave up his perfect human existence does not mean he was no longer entitled to his perfect heavenly existence (although he could never become human again, even if he wanted to--he gave up his right to his human existence when he offered up his human existence as a sacrifice to buy back humanity).

The reason why Jesus' sacrifice of a single human life is sufficient to buy back all of humanity, though, is because rather than purchasing each of perfect human existence, Jesus simply bought back the single perfect human existence that Adam had lost. Since Adam's perfect life has been repurchased by Jesus, we, as his descendants, will now be free to inherit, that perfect life rather than the sin and death we currently inherit from Adam. This does not mean that Adam will be resurrected--he had his chance at perfection already, when he died, he experienced the second death. What it does mean, though, is that the source of our inheritance will no longer be Adamic sin, but Jesus' life-giving sacrifice. Jesus was literally bought us back from Adam, and has essentially adopted us as his children by buying us back from sin and death.

No comments:

Post a Comment