Who Was the Cross For?
A new friend of mine posted a thought on our website, www.afamilystory.org, after listening to our newest PODCAST with John MacMurray.
Here were her thoughts and my response.
“…My friend and I were talking on the subject of ‘why did Jesus have to die’ recently and she put forth an interesting thought. She said, ‘what if it was like in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It wasn’t Aslan who required Edmund to die for being a traitor, it was the White Witch…
…I was brought up to believe that God requires death as a punishment for sin. It’s quite different if it was actually the devil who required it and God only died to save us from THAT, not to enact his own requirement for death. This is all new to me and I’m trying to wrap my brain around it, so I would appreciate your thoughts. Thank you for this awesome, inspiring podcast.”
My response was greatly enhanced by fellas like C. Baxter Kruger and Francois Du Toit …
I love the insight into The Lion Witch and Wardrobe! Yes, it was the Witch and her fallen paradigm of justice that required a death for a life. It wasn’t on Aslan’s end that death was required. But Aslan, knowing Edmond was trapped in his punishment paradigm, stepped inside Edmonds delusion, laid His life down, rose, and set Edmond free from his fallen, retributive thinking.
If you haven’t listened to the Baxter Kruger Podcast I would recommend it.
Baxter says it like this, “Jesus has stepped into our delusions, into our darkness. And the discovery of Christ in us — that is the hope of glory, life, wholeness, and freedom.”
The requirement for punishment that we both grew up with — it wasn’t required by God, it was the implicit demand we felt because of our partnership with the way Satan thinks. It was a partnership with a behavior-focused retributive mindset. But Jesus stepped into our broken ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ thinking and took that lie to its conclusion. He stepped into our delusion and blew it up from the inside.
I so appreciate The Mirror Bible by Francois du Toit, and I think his commentary from 1 John 3:12 speaks clearly on what was happening at the cross.
“…(See also First Peter 1:18-19) It is clear to see that you were ransomed from the futile fallen mindset that you inherited from your fathers, not by the currency of your own labor, represented by the fluctuating values of gold and silver, and the economy of your religious efforts.
But you were redeemed with the priceless blood of Christ; He is the ultimate sacrifice; spotless and without blemish. He completes the prophetic picture! In Him, God speaks the most radical scapegoat language of the law of judgment and brings final closure to a dead and redundant system!”
In Psalm 4:6-7 it is clearly stated that God does not require sacrifices or offerings!
Jesus is the Lamb of God! He collides victoriously with the futile sacrificial system whereby offerings are constantly made to the pseudo, moody, monster gods of our imagination.
This is the scandal of the cross! God does not demand a sacrifice that would change the way He thinks about mankind; He provides the sacrifice of Himself in Christ in order to forever eradicate sin-consciousness from our minds and radically change the way we think about our Maker, one another and ourselves!”
Isn’t that amazing!
Jason Clark is a writer, speaker and lead communicator at A Family Story ministries. His mission is to encourage sons and daughters to grow sure in the love of an always-good heavenly Father. He and his wife, Karen, live in North Carolina with their three children.
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I’m still in awe of this and it has dramatically helped myself and my inner circle to step into a whole new world. Thank you!
Haha, yay God!! This good news we were discussing was too good not to post as an article 🙂
I’m so glad you did!
I’m down east in nc. I really love your podcast rethinking God with tacos. The one with Tommy Miller really introduced me to some deeper thinking. Let me know if you know of a like minded group near greenville nc. Thank you!
Hey, Diann,
Great, to hear from you-sounds like we’re practically neighbors. My friend, Matthew Hester, pastors a church in Greenville. I know he is tracking with us and has even been on the podcast a couple of times.
The church is called Dominion, and this is their site https://www.dominionchurch.net/
Also, we are in the process of putting together a way for listeners to connect with others in their area. We are getting requests like yours often. Stay tuned 🙂
Ahhh, thank you so much for addressing this and bringing some clarity to this topic. I am the friend who had the Narnia question! I have been eating up your blogs and podcasts since Tineke introduced me to them about a month ago. They have been a source of life to me after a long period of just questions and ponderings and wondering if the ‘revelations’ I was receiving were actually Holy Spirit or just heresy 🤪. I’m a Preacher’s Kid and have been ‘saved’ and serving in the church setting for nearly my whole life (since I was 3) but in this last couple of weeks I have felt reborn! Like I’m meeting the Jesus that I always knew was there, but couldn’t see, for the very first time and man he is GOOD!
Hey Janette! Nice to meet you!
I loved the back and forth you guys are having and it’s fun to be a part of it! I also loved the thoughts on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I have had similar conversations with folks around what was happening at the cross over the last few weeks. So, I thought, let’s post our convo!
As a preacher’s kid myself I imagine I know some of the journey; lots of goodness and lots of relearning or deconstruction and reconstruction. Sorry about the heretic stuff, it’s just fear. That said, if you haven’t been called a heretic at least once, you probably aren’t growing hehe.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Unless you are born from above, born again, unless you are set free from the delusion of sin conscious punitive thinking, you can’t really know me…” (Jason paraphrase 🙂
Man is He good!!
I pray grace and joy over your days and nights!
God bless!
Jason, there are 5 of us who have a group chat in Messenger called “Rethinking God” where we comment and chat as we listen to each podcast and receive revelation of God’s goodness. The group emoji is a taco. haha. It’s been incredible. As we tentatively reach out and share this good message with those who have been in God a long time, it has been encouraging to see their eyes opening and lighting up and receiving the Love he is offering. I really can’t thank you enough for this work you are doing.
Ha, that’s awesome! I can’t tell ya how much fun we’re having with this podcast. It’s been amazing to connect with folks who are chasing down the goodness of God! It’s also encouraging to realize how many people are growing daily convinced in His love. What an amazing honor to be a part of the journey! Grace over you guys and all the taco times haha.