Today I was reading through Hebrews, and God showed me something I had been missing. It seemed so simple, but somehow I have been missing this the entire time.
Let me start by explaining how I see the God and Satan thing. I will not get into the big questions that I can not answer such as, why did God allow Satan on earth in any form, ever. Or the question of how can a being created good by God turn evil in the first place. I leave those for God to answer, and I always hold dear the reality, that just because I have a question that I can not answer, it does not mean anything, other than there is a question I have that I do not have an answer for. Some people take that lack of a good explanation, and believe what they want to believe, and say, well I don’t have an answer, so God must be evil for things to be like this. To think that way would be arrogant to the greatest extreme. I believe that I know a little, and in the vast domain of knowledge and understanding that I do not have, in it could exist a perfectly reasonable and moral explanation to these questions.
With that out of the way, I see this earth as a court room, where someone is trying to hold a charge against God’s ways. Satan is the one making the accusation, and at least one of these accusations is against mankind for betraying God, and going against His ways. Satan claims that because they believed him over God in the garden, and time and time again throughout history, that mankind belongs to him and he has dominion over them, like God. Much of this perspective is pulled from the setting laid out in Job, and it seems to fit in such a larger scale, that I suspect that much of the goings on here and in heaven with regard to humans, earth, and Satan, are just like what was revealed in Job. You can find other hints of how God recognizes authorities set up by mankind in Daniel 10. It seems clear that God has set up rules, such as free will (required for the existence of love), and authority, which He will not break or ignore. Mankind, who He originally setup to have dominion over the earth, also has the ability to stet up over them rulers, and by taking Stan’s word over God’s word, we believed God was a liar and what Satan said was true, and thus set him up as our “god”. Satan has since then perpetuated these lies, that God is bad, His ways suck, and that Satan’s ways are the only ways that work, or something like that. It is hard to follow what Satan’s point is, when you know God, because all of his arguments against God just fall apart, especially after Jesus.
On to my point, I understand that by God extending Himself into the human flesh, Jesus, and then giving Himself up, showing what sin does, and at the same time showing His love and forgiveness, that He also fulfilled something powerful in the heavenly court case going on since the beginning. I understood that humans sinning is an offense against God, and that the offended legally can forgive the offense. That made sense. It also made perfect sense that by dieing on the cross, Jesus proved the point that in the garden, the first lie by Satan, that God is selfish, holding back things from mankind, was false. That alone is enough to throw out the entire case, because all of the accusations of Satan are based on a deception now proven wrong. Think of it this way, if a piece of property is obtained by a false pretense, in court, it would go back to the previous owner. In this situation, we are the “property” obtained by false pretense, and now with Jesus and His selfless giving up of His life on the cross, and continual forgiveness and love, that false pretense was fully demonstrated as false. God is not selfish, He is the opposite, He is love. I got that, but what I didn’t get was the rest of the story. This is so totally God, when He does something, it means far more than just one thing, it ripples and echos truth and goodness in all different directions. The wrong that was done was not a simple theft, the wrong that was done in this court scenario is sin, and the wages of sin is death. If it were just theft, the wronged person could forgive the theft, and he himself would simply suffer the loss of what was stolen. In this situation, with the wrong being sin, and the wages of sin is death, the wronged Person can forgive that wrong, but only by suffering the wages of the wrong, which is death. The wages of theft forgiven is loss of the stolen item. The wages of sin forgiven is the loss of the life of the one who is forgiving.
I don’t know if you can follow that, but it was a very neat piece that I had been missing. Now it all makes logical sense, that is why He had to die, at least one of the reasons. The other reason was to show the most pure expression of love, which is being willing to lay your life down for someone. When I was a little kid, maybe kindergarten to 4th grade, somewhere around there, I called out to God, what is this love thing, how can I know if I love someone. His answer was clear, if you are willing to lay your life down for someone, then you love them.