July 17, 2011

• One Hypothesis…

  There is so much we don’t know about Christianity. It’s good to make hypotheses and theories on how things work, but when we try to turn our hypotheses and theories into doctrine, we forget the way in which God works: mysterious ways. We have to allow there to be an element of mystery to our faith because we simply don’t have a full revelation of God. I stand firm in the idea that one day, it will all be clearer for us. For the time being though, I’d refer to just talk about Jesus’ love and sacrifice.

  I do enjoy the multiple theories out there though. One of my favorites involves the way look at Jesus’ sacrifice, and why God required a blood sacrifice to begin with.

  Remembering the story of Adam and Eve, we know that they disobeyed God and “fell” into sin and death. God cursed the serpent who tempted Eve, He cursed Eve who tempted Adam, but He didn’t curse Adam. Instead, He cursed the ground (Adam’s punishment was to work the cursed ground). This is significant because we read in the story that human kind was created from the ground, which God originally declared to be good. Now, it’s cursed.

  Now God knew that Adam and Eve were ashamed of being naked so he provided them with clothes made from skin. This was probably the first death and the first sacrifice made in the Bible- Except, God made this sacrifice for man.

  Moving on to Cain and Abel, most of know what happens in the story. This story shows how evil humanity became and how quickly it became evil. Cain and Abel made offerings to the LORD, and the LORD accepted Abel’s and not Cain’s. No one knows why, for sure, but there are many theories here that we won’t get into now. Anyway, Cain became jealous and killed Abel. God came to Cain and said, “Where is your brother, Abel?”
  Cain said, “How should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?” (The answer to that question is “Yes” [Rd. Matthew 25:31-46]).
  God saw Abel lying dead in the field and said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!”
  He then sent Cain away from the land, but let’s get back to that. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” In many cultures, especially in archaic cultures, blood was sacred. This idea is no exception to ancient Judaism. This blood seems to have life. This is a theme, even in Christianity- the blood holds life. Without blood, we are nothing. This sacred substance spilled on the ground in the first murder. A man killed another man out of jealousy. Now, this sacred blood had spilled on the ground, which God had cursed. When the blood touched the cursed ground, the blood itself became cursed. This became a poison for all of humanity. Now that a man’s blood was cursed, we are all cursed before God. We are impure… and God requires purity before we can go before Him.

  Now, God requires a blood sacrifice. People slaughtered animals for purity, but it was only temporary. They had to do this again and again…. the problem was, even the blood of the most perfect lamb in the flock wasn’t pure enough. God decided that He would come to earth to take matters into his own hands. He became the perfect lamb to be slaughtered and sacrificed, so that we can be pure before him.

  A man’s blood was spilled by a sinner, and we became cursed in the name of pride and jealousy. God’s blood was spilled by sinners, and now, we are able to become pure before God, in the name of grace and forgiveness. Christ’s blood is the medicine we need to cure ourselves from this deadly disease. This sin. This curse.

   

  I find this theory to be very fascinating. We often look at the story of Cain and Abel as just a story of how bad we’ve fallen… but look at how well it ties into the story of our salvation!

  • 10:06 pm
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