What do we mean when we say, “Jesus died for my sins?” I’ve grown up in the church so I’ve heard this a lot. When we say that, “Jesus died for my sins,” what are we actually saying? Did the death of Jesus pay off the debt I incurred from an action that dishonored God? If this is the case, it can dramatically affect the way we see God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son. With this view, the Father and Son tend to lose their “oneness”… their unity that Jesus referred to in John chapters 14-17.
The belief that God gets offended by sin leads us to an understanding that Jesus saved us from God. This belief eventually causes us to make conclusions about the nature of the Father that are drastically opposed to the nature that the New Testament ascribes to Him. What is the main point or message of Christianity? Usually it goes something like this…“Jesus died on the cross for my sins and if I put faith in Him and say the ‘sinner’s prayer,’ then I get to go to place one day called heaven. But in the meantime, I just need to behave myself.” If this is your understanding of faith, then moral behavior becomes the message of Christianity, and to many, thats exactly what its about. If you don’t believe the world thinks this way about the church and Christians, then you need to get out more.
But the authors of the New Testament lead us to a different conclusion. They reveal to their audience that Jesus came to represent the Father… meaning… what had represented Him, up until that point (the law of Moses) wasn’t doing a good job. Jesus demonstrated a life contrary to Israel’s belief about who God was. He ate with sinners and was numbered amongst them and yet we still hold onto a belief that God is dishonored by sin and can’t look upon it, mean while it was the sinners that Jesus got along with the best. Jesus told His disciples in John 14:6 that “If you’ve seen me you’ve see the Father.”
In fact…
- John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”
- Colossians 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God.”
- Hebrews 1:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of God’s nature.”
- 2 Corinthians 4:6 “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Is God some ethical agent
who gets easily offended by
sin or is God like Jesus?
I’m not making a case for sin or trying to down play its affects in your life. I’m simply trying to understand what we mean when we say “Jesus died for my sin.”
The majority of the time sin is viewed as the wrong actions we take. But the wrong actions we take are usually because of the way we think and believe. So much of Christianity fails to take trauma into consideration. When you hear the stories of people who have been raped, abused, or even tortured you begin to have compassion and understanding for them. But too often we get so focused on the headliner we fail to read the story. You can’t simply tell someone to stop living an immoral lifestyle unless you are going to take the time to help correct wrong patterns of destructive thinking and believing. To believe you can correct the behavior of a person without bringing healing to the heart is like trying to shoo away the flies without taking out the trash. Like the flies, the bad behavior will only return if you haven’t dealt with the root issue behind the “sin.”
Wrong moral behavior is simply a product of sin. Real sin goes much deeper than failure to conform to a moral code of conduct. The authors of the New Testament used the word sin to mean to miss the mark or to fall short. But to fall short of what? God? Jesus? Angels? The Prophets? The Ten Commandments?
This simple phrase, “Jesus died for my sin,” can unravel a lot of theology and cause us to entertain, or worse, believe unhealthy ideas about the nature and character of God.
Think about this… the authors of the new testament all seem to agree that Jesus makes the Father known. They also use a lot of ink trying to convince their audience that the Old Testament (Covenant) is over, done, obsolete. They spent a lot of time trying to convince their audience that God the Father has been misrepresented by the Law of Moses.
If you have ever picked up a Bible and looked at the table of contents you would discover that there is a divide between “The Old Testament” and “The New Testament.” The problem that exist today is that people who study the Bible can often make the mistake of understanding the New Testament through the lenses of the Old Testament when in reality it should be the other way around.
Most of the new Testament is about how the Old Testament (the Law and the Prophets) were coming to an end. Jesus announced the destruction of the temple in Matthew 24. He predicted the desolation of Jerusalem in Luke 19:43-44. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul called the ten Commandments given to Moses the ministry of death and condemnation and that it was coming to an end.
Keep in mind who wrote most of New Testament. The Apostle Paul who was once name Saul and understood the Law of Moses inside and out, is now telling everyone, that the Law of Moses (Old Testament, Old Covenant) isn’t what we are doing anymore. If you aren’t convinced go read the book of Galatians and the strong language that he uses in an attempt to convince the church of their folly in believing they could try to live by Old Covenant and New Covenant at the same time.
The writer of Hebrews also makes it clear that the old covenant is now obsolete: Hebrews 8:13 “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete and what is obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
The prophets spoke of the Messiah to come and Israel was given the signs to look for but when Jesus came they completely missed his birth. Israel thought the Messiah was going to set them free from Rome. As it turned out, the Messiah, was there to set them free from the LAW of Moses, a belief system that was ingrained into their culture for 1600 years that blinded them from seeing the reality of God’s nature.
This Deserves Your Attention
A crazy story that deserves our attention comes from Matthew 17 where Jesus is transfigured before three of His disciples, Peter, James and John. Along with Jesus appear Moses and Elijah who represent the LAW and the Prophets. Peter gets it into his head that he is going to build three tents or tabernacles, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. But God the Father had other plans. God interrupts Peter and says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
God didn’t say to listen to Moses. He didn’t say to listen to Elijah. God told them to listen to His Son. The three disciples at this point were so scared they had fallen on their faces after hearing God’s voice but the advice that God gave them was to listen to His Son who tells them not to fear. Its states in verse 8 “When they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”
They only saw Jesus
because Jesus represents
the Father
fully and completely,
not Moses, not Elijah
… just Jesus!
Why does the Father only want us to see Jesus? I’m so glad you asked… Because Jesus makes the Father known (John 1:18). In fact, the Apostle Paul goes on write that when you read Moses you will become blinded to who God is. I’m serious…. he actually wrote that!
2 Corinthians 3:15-16 “Yes to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts but when one turns to the Lord the veil is removed.”
Why is it important that we see Jesus and only Jesus as the full and complete revelation of the Father?
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord (JESUS) are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
1 John 3:2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he (JESUS) appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
You become the version of God
you behold.
Try as you might to shoo away the flies and correct immoral behavior, it will only return unless your understanding of who God is lines up with the God that Jesus displays. This is also why John goes through such lengths to define God as love. The people of that time weren’t getting it because their view of God was so distorted which is why the church was so focused on sin and why Paul has to reveal how the Law of Moses and that focus on religious morality actually empowers sin in people’s lives because it keeps everyone from seeing the love of God the Father.
1 Corinthians 15:56 states, “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.”
Hold up!… Is Paul actually writing that the law of Moses empowers sin in people’s lives? How could the law do that? Romans 7 talks about how Paul was alive apart from the law but when the commandment came, sin came alive and he died.
Romans 7:7b-9 “For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”
Romans 6:14 states that “Sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under the law but under grace.”
But that would mean that sin would have dominion over you if you were under the law of Moses. Sin only takes dominion over you or becomes empowered in your life when the entire focus of God and the Gospel becomes about religious Morality and correct behavior.
Romans 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Sin and morality were never
meant to be the focus of
Christianity.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m all for behaving rightly but there is a stark difference between religious morality and Christlike morality. Religious morality is motivated by fear and blinds people from seeing that nature of a God of love, while Christlike morality is love motivated and enables us to see the love of the Father.
So what do we mean when we say Jesus died for my sins? Did he actually die for my sins or did he die to reveal who the Father is?
The answer is… Yes. These two ideas are actually one and the same. Jesus died for our sins by revealing the Father.
We are in sin when we have fallen short or missed the mark when it comes to seeing God rightly. If we saw Him rightly our lives would be transformed into the same image of who He is because our lives are a reflection of our perception of who God is. Which means we are all sinners, because no one has the full picture. Did Jesus die for my sins? Absolutely. Jesus went to the cross to clear up the misconceptions people held of Him because of the law of Moses (the Old Testament) that corrupted people’s view of God. Jesus set the record straight about who God was by revealing a God of love at the cross and in so doing He crushed the power of sin (the law of Moses) that blinded all from the truth of who God is.
Jesus truly is the Light of the world; the revelation of the Father to those who are in darkness.
This action of revealing the Father is why the the veil in the temple of Moses was torn from top to bottom. It was the action of God ripping the blindfold off of the world so that the love of the Father could fully be displayed. Jesus had cried out, “It is Finished!” He defeated the power of sin by shattering the world’s concept of God created by the Law of Moses by revealing the truth of God’s nature and the extent of His love at the cross.
This changes the way we present the Gospel. It helps us to focus not on what someone is doing wrong but where they aren’t seeing God right. Our job isn’t to carry signs that state, “God Hates Sinner.” That isn’t true at all! Romans 5:8 declares, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
God is Love (1 John 4:8) and if you are still trying to convince yourself of that reality there is a good chance its because you’ve made moralism the message of the Gospel. A return to a focus of religious moralism is to return to the very thing Jesus died to set us free from. Jesus came to take the blindfold off of the world and to fully reveal the Father by giving His life on the cross. God isn’t revealed in Moses. He isn’t revealed in Elijah. God is fully revealed in Jesus at the cross and its this truth of who God is that sets people free!