Jesus didn't die for our sins

Jesus did not die for our sins. The murder of Jesus was not the result of the combined wrongdoings of humanity, past, present and future. It was not a cosmological killing. Jesus’ murder was the result of oppressive Roman practices in the colony of Palestine.

Similarly the resurrection of Jesus does not absolve the combined wrongdoings of humanity. The theory that our wrongdoings are deserving of death, and that Jesus suffered that death in place of us, requires a belief in an ancient judgemental universe where the blood of an innocent has atoning value.

One can however understand the hatred and violence directed at Jesus to be reflective of the opposition radical love encounters. Love grounded in justice seems to elicit loathing. Think of the opposition to and the deaths of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. A truly good person can be a victim of others’ hate.

Opposition to radical love can manifest itself as envy, malice, greed, bitterness, self-loathing, and/or violence. It is destructive upon individuals and communities. It divides people into winners and losers. It is fearful of change and those advocating it. It can destroy the beautiful and the good.

Jesus death then in this sense can be understood as the death of radical love and the triumph of hate. Violence thought it had won. It thought it had destroyed the love power of Jesus.

The resurrection said otherwise. The grave did not overcome the love of God. Rather the weakness of that radical love conquered the mighty powers of destruction and death as it took hold in the lives and communities of Jesus’ followers.

That justice-infused-love seeped out of the ground of Palestine and into the lives of his intrepid followers. Similarly it seeped out of them and into the countless men, women, and children over the centuries that have endeavoured to live the confrontational compassion of Jesus.

The whole of Jesus’ life therefore was in a sense ‘saving’. The whole of his life provides us with the inspiration to live self-giving love and the insight that this is what it means to live in God.