Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/20



The rejection of Jesus by the Jews was a representation of their rejection of the Word of God and of the Divine Being. It is perfectly true that God in Jesus completely identified Himself in His assumed humanity with the human race, taking upon Himself tendencies to sin through his human inheritance, and also bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and bore our sinful tendencies in his own body on the tree: but he did not suffer as a substitute for us, nor pay the penalty or our sins. His death on the cross represented the rejection of the Divine Being and His Word by the Jewish nation. Jesus was the Word incarnate. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." There was no God in heaven demanding the death of the sinner but willing to be appeased by the death of His son. Jesus was God in the flesh come to earth in a limited humanity in order to share with us our life and overcome our enemies of the underworld and set us free from their ruthless power. He poured out His life for us in that fierce combat against the hells, They had power because the human race had yielded to their suggestions of evil. He died to release humanity from their grasp by overcoming the hells as they tempted Him. And He overcame.

He became sin for us representatively, not actually, for He knew no sin. He did not assume our guilt, for He was a representation of the Divine Innocence, representatively the Lamb of God who bore the sinful tendencies of humanity, but not its sin. There was no other God to appease, for God is one, one in Essence and one in Person,—manifested in the flesh. He that saw Jesus saw the Father as one seeing you sees your soul manifesting itself through your body.

But it was not God that died upon the cross, but the son of Mary, the assumed human. God cannot die. Because we are God's children we cannot die, but our bodies can,—our carnal nature can. He