Sorry for not posting much recently; I'm in the middle of a (hopefully) short-term move. We're renting out our home, and moving to a new place, for (again, hopefully) just a year or two. The other night I was working on refinishing a hardwood floor in our new place. (Looking at that after I wrote it, it makes it sound like I'm some sort of handyman; I am not. But it's amazing what you can do if you're willing to learn and make mistakes.)
But I digress. Last post, I spoke of the blood of Christ. In the New Testament, this is the essential element of salvation. The cross was not just spoken of as a great example of love (though it is certainly that--but also much more); the cross is at the very center of the Christian concept of salvation.
But why, some might ask? Why should the shedding of blood be so central to the Christian faith? Isn't that some kind of bizarre pagan holdover, or a twisted vision of an angry god who must be placated by death (and the death of an innocent bystander is ok, as long as someone--anyone--dies)?
In my encounters with Muslims and Islamic literature, as well as my encounters with liberal Christians, this is a frequent question. Why, indeed, is the cross so necessary? Couldn't God--if He is all powerful--simply say "your sin is no more; I forgive; you are free from its penalty."
It is a very good question. For some Christians, the cross is merely some kind of psychodrama, a demonstration of love, but in and of itself of little or no value. Or is perhaps a concession to a common worldview at the time of Christ that the gods needed blood to be happy, but in more enlightened times we can see through this as folly and simply use the story of the cross as a useful myth? (By "myth" I don't mean falsehood, though some might believe it to be false. Rather, I mean a story that teaches us a greater truth, though the specific facts aren't that important. And this--this mythological view of the Bible--is one of the key differences between conservatives and liberals in the church.)
Let's start at the beginning, in what caused the need for redemption in the first place. We read of Adam's sin, and the consequences of that. After the curses are pronounced, and before the ejection from the garden, there is this little verse:
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. --Gen 3:21
Garments of skins...why is this even recorded? Why is this important enough of a detail to include in the Bible?
Remember, Adam and Eve made garments of fig leaves to cover their now-apparent nakedness. I doubt if these hasty garments were of much value, so God gives them new ones. Now, remember He had just finished making an entire universe in just six days, just by speaking His word. He fashioned humankind out of lifeless dust. But, to make a covering for Adam and Eve, what does He do? Simply speak, and make garments ex nihilo? Or does He take some never-living dust and form that into suitable garments? Or ask the sinful pair to make better, more permanent garments, a work to demonstrate how sorry they were?
No; God, the giver of life, takes the skin of a living animal to cover the sinful pair. He kills in order to make this specific creation. Not words, not dead matter--no, the first death in Scripture is recorded not as a punishment to a deserving sinner, nor as an inevitable consequence of a degraded creation; no, an innocent life is taken--for what? To cover the naked sinner; to cover the guilty by the flesh of the guiltless. And this was no work of the sinners themselves; they sinned, but God provided the covering. God did not tell Adam and Eve "You did a lousy job sewing your garments! Try harder to show true repentance!"
And this theme is revisited again and again in Scripture. Lord willing, we will continue on this in future posts.
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