Did Christ Die for Us?

By Rev Dr Erik E Sandstrom

The idea that Christ interceded with the Father to save us, by taking on our sins, and therefore died for us, is very attractive. It leaves us with the choice just to believe, and we are saved. This belief is that the crucifixion accomplished redemption: His blood redeemed us. However, this belief is false.

TO BELIEVE THAT THE PASSION ON THE CROSS WAS REDEMPTION ITSELF � HAS SO PERVERTED THE WHOLE CHURCH THAT THERE IS NO REMAINDER OF SPIRITUALITY LEFT IN IT. TCR 132....

This idea kills the Church's spirituality. The reason is that it perpetuates a wrong idea of the Trinity: there are three Divine persons from eternity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, any one of whom could have come on earth. Why the Son came, no one knows. In any case, the "Father was propitiated when the Son died for mankind's sins, because this act revoked damnation for original sin, but only for those for whom the Son interceded. Thus Christ is Mediator with His Father, in perpetuity." TCR 132

But the belief that "He died for us and redeemed us on the cross, and saved us from hell," is not what happened: the Lord did not intercede or mediate with the Father as with another person, but instead, "He was made one with the Father." The "Father" was His Own Soul, and on the cross the Lord became united with the Father as Body and Soul. They became "at one", called the At-ONE-ment. It is today pronounced atonement, but we need to emphasize the ONE in it: At-ONE-ment. For "God and Man is one Christ." (Athanasian Creed)

This simple explanation changes dogma into doctrine: but another silent falsehood must be corrected: Original Sin. Adam and Eve's sin condemns everyone to hell. But that is false. But if we remove Original Sin, something else has to take its place: and that is the Origin of Evil. If there is no Original Sin, then how did evil begin?

Evil began from the people enjoying feeling life to be their own, so much so that they wanted more of that feeling. So "Eve" was created. When people finally convinced themselves that God was NOT the Giver of life, but it came from themselves, THAT was the origin of evil. Eve ate, then Adam. People made the appearance of self-life to be reality. They fooled themselves into thinking human beings exist on their own. Today we call that Atheism.

So evil originated from a wrong decision, based on how things seem to be. But once evil existed, it was passed on to the next generation as human hereditary tendencies to the evils of the parents and ancestors. That was because up to that time, good tendencies had been passed from parents to children. Now evil tendencies replaced the good ones. Children became prone to their parents' and ancestors' evils. This continues, generation after generation. When the Lord made His advent by being born of Mary, He took on from her all human heredity, from A to Z.

Was that the only way He could overcome the evils? "For the purpose of putting on evil, against which He might fight, and which He might conquer, He came into the world. For Him to admit into Himself iniquities and evils, except by the hereditary way, is utterly impossible." Arcana Coelestia 1573

There was no other way. Humans invented evils. They were not equal to the task of removing them. They were like a huge mountain that almost blotted out the light from heaven, substituting false ideas for Divine Truth. It threatened the end of the human race.

The Lord came to save the human race. "Therefore in order that He might conquer evil by His own powers - which no man has been able to do, or is able to do - and so that He alone might become righteousness, He was willing to be born as are other men. If it had not been for this, there would have been no need of His being born." Arcana Coelestia 1573

Our human evils brought on the need for the Lord's birth. Was this dying for us? No: if anything, He died from us, because He "bore our iniquities." But bearing our sins means to suffer from our evils. If it were not for our human hereditary evils, there would be no need for the Advent. So it we all agree that the Lord "bore the sins of the human race." AC 1573 But to bear is to suffer and die from them, not to die for us.

So the only alternative left for God to save the human race, was by taking on the human form by being born as a baby, and receiving the human heredity from her: So He provided Mary of Galilee to do so: "Behold thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women." Luke 1.28

Once the Lord had taken our heredity, He could allow the hells close enough for Him to overcome them, without actually contacting the Divine in Him. For He overcame "from His own proper power," NOT from the Divine. He was fighting just like you and I do, against the evils that we know so well. But where we would fail, He "could not but conquer." A 1812. So great was His love that He was willing to suffer the temptations of our own evils, so that once having conquered them, "He always conquers." AC 9718, 9715, 8273 [That makes the Lord alone to be righteous.]

When did the Lord redeem us then, if it was not on the cross? The Lord "redeemed" us, i.e. "bought us back" from hell during His daily personal temptations. Temptations all through His entire life were Redemption. But the passion of the cross was the complete union of body and soul, the completion of the glorification process which the temptations also accomplished. There were two processes going on: glorification and redemption. On the cross, the Son and Father were united, which was glorification, or "making Divine" the body rising from the tomb. It was a glorification so complete that after the resurrection, the Lord was not even born of Mary, but was both "conceived and born" of Jehovah (AC 2628). He is no longer the Son of Mary, which is why the Lord called her "woman", not mother.

But He had to come on earth first, to have temptations, and the last temptation was on the cross: "This union [of Father and Son, soul and body] was fully achieved by the passion of the cross," because it was "the last temptation which the Lord underwent in the world, and temptations create a link." TCR 126

"Temptations create a link." That link, or conjunction, is what redeems us today. The glorification enabled redemption to take place. His daily temptations formed that link or conjunction, and to this day people receive from this the eternal possibility of being raised into heaven, and being saved. The Lord Himself as Creator and Redeemer, mediates for us still by means of the human taken on by birth, but glorified.

The Lord removed our sins by bearing them: "He did not take away sins, but bore them.., He suffered that there should be represented, in Himself, the church in respect to its maltreatment of the Word." (Lord 65) As the Word had been crucified by human evil, so was He crucified by it, for He was the Word made flesh, and He fulfilled it.

Is it easier for us today because of His Advent? Yes, because He conquered ALL evils, all we have to face today are the tendencies to them, not the evils themselves (unless of course we have succumbed to temptation, and must repent of actual evil practices) But overcoming tendencies is the "easy yoke, the light burden." All we need to do is examine ourselves to discover an evil, then say to ourselves, "I will not do this evil because it is a sin against the Lord." We are immediately forgiven, because the Lord already caused us to see it. (TCR 539) But we are not yet redeemed: after confessing an evil, now we have to avoid it whenever it recurs in our life. We have to keep at it, all our life. The Holy Supper focuses the Divine redemption on this purpose in life. Then gradually the evil is remitted, that is sent away, and we are redeemed. Just as redemption was accomplished all through the Lord's life, so our redemption takes place all through our regeneration. But His victory over hell prepared the way, so that "where I am, there you may be also."