Theology Archive

Died for us

The question of why Jesus had to die on the cross remains unanswered for many Christians to this day. There are plenty of interpretations, but none of them are conclusive – none are really convincing. So what is the meaning behind the statement that the cruel death of a man 2000 years ago could bring about redemption and forgiveness? The answer to this question is the subject of the following article.

How could our guilt be forgiven through the death of Jesus 2000 years ago?

For the last two millennia, Christians have been content with the statement that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. This statement was regarded as a truth of faith. In other words, it was seen as a statement with a dogmatic claim that could not be questioned, but simply had to be believed. And since this statement is a basic component of the Christian faith, it could not and did not need to be understood in terms of content. It is therefore sufficient for the vast majority of Christians that this statement, where it is believed, has a salvific effect and cancels their own guilt. But is that the case? Is the Christian faith based on such automatism?

The biblical sources

I do not want to say at this point that such a belief is wrong in itself – on the contrary, I consider it to be formally correct. However, today this statement calls for a conclusive explanation – an interpretation that people today can understand mentally, provided they are interested in this topic. In fact, Jesus Himself interpreted His death in this sense. This means that the conscious giving of His life for the redemption of many or for the forgiveness of sins is clearly documented in the New Testament of the Bible:

The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life for the redemption of many.
Matthew 20,28

And he took the cup, gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; this is my blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Matthew 26, 27-28

Jesus‘ image of God

In order to understand the meaning of these statements by Jesus, we must first understand Jesus’ image of God.

For Jesus, God is omnipotent, he is the author of all things, everything flows from God and nothing can resist His will.

God is also a single and united God because everything that is divided or disunited does not endure, is not God. Only that which is one in itself and the only one, which is God Himself, endures. This means that in God there is no contradiction, no counterpart, no alternative, no outside of Himself. In other words, apart from God, there is nothing but nothingness.

But Jesus answered him: „The greatest commandment before all the commandments is this: ‚Hear, Israel, YHWH our God is one God …'“
Mark 12:29

If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand …
Mark 3, 24-25

The will of God – the cause of all things

Against this conceptual background that nothing can resist God’s will and that he works all things according to His will, a statement by Jesus takes on a very special significance. He teaches it in the Lord’s Prayer, it reads:

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done …
Matthew 6:10

However, He did not only encourage His listeners to have the inner readiness to want what God wants, but He also showed this attitude Himself immediately before His arrest when He asked that, if it were possible, He be spared his passion.

Jesus walked a few steps, prostrated Himself and prayed: „My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me and spare me this suffering! But not what I want, but what you want shall be done.“
Matthew 26:39

In this willingness, this unconditional consent to God’s will, lies the key to our understanding of God and Jesus‘ understanding of Himself: „… not what I will, but what you will, shall be done.“ Jesus believed, indeed he knew, that God executes all things without exception and that nothing can resist His will. He, therefore, wanted only one thing; complete unity with the will of God, even if this will meant injustice, suffering and death for Him. In this selfless consent to the will of God, Jesus proclaims his gospel, which is: God is life itself and all things, without exception, flow from God, not only beautiful, pleasant and beneficial things, but also ugly, painful and obstructive things.

God constantly produces new life

But all things that God does, He does for one reason only. He does them for His own sake, namely to constantly bring forth new life.

So, to the extent that we become one with the will of God, we become one with God Himself. But if we become one with God, we will also live for His sake.

Even if the will of God means our own death, God must still give us new life again. Why? Because everything that is subject to God’s will necessarily comes to life, since God is life itself. This is the commandment that Jesus received from his Father, as He Himself explained:

… that they all may be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you; that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. And I have given them the glory that you have given me, that they may be one, just as we are one, …
John 17:21-22

Therefore, my Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. I have received this commandment from my Father.
John 10:17-18

Redemption for many

So what is the redemption that Jesus brought us through his death? Redemption is based on accepting the attitude of Jesus, who possessed the divine power of the Spirit to recognise God’s will even in injustice, suffering and death. For in all events in which we seek God’s will, God will allow Himself to be found by us. And where we find God, we will necessarily find life itself.

Now one could argue that this is not good news if God wants us to suffer and die. The good news, the gospel, is that through this attitude, our suffering and death, which no one can escape anyway, takes on a deep meaning through which we receive comfort. Why? Because Jesus showed us in an exemplary way in His Passion that His own suffering and death had a deep meaning and for Him, this meaning lay in God. If we now accept His teaching and understand our own lives in the same way that Jesus understood His life, our own suffering and death will also be able to experience the deep meaning that lies in God.

God – spirit in the spiritless

Our redemption is based on the fact that nothing meaningless happens to those who accept and take on the unchangeable according to God’s will. Rather, everything is for the best for those who trustingly seek God’s will in all events but, especially, in the painful, unjust and difficult ones.

The meaning in Jesus knowing about His own suffering and death lay for Him in the certainty that it was good for us if He laid down His life. Indeed, He even tells His disciples that they should rejoice when he lays down his life for them.

You have heard that I said to you: I am going away and coming back to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am.
John 14:28

God is spirit and mind. He alone is able to make spiritual things out of spiritual things – He is able to make meaningful things out of meaningless things. God is the meaning sought and found in the meaningless. Through our consent to His will, God will be able and willing to act on us in the same way as He acted on Jesus Christ. There is no difference but without our consent to God’s will, all suffering and death must remain meaningless for us.

For the forgiveness of sins

But to what extent can our guilt be forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus? According to Jesus‘ teaching, the forgiveness of our guilt is also based on the fact that our human weaknesses are given a deep meaning.

This is the gospel, that everything that is humanly weak and evil ceases to be bad and evil in Christ.

But how is this possible in concrete terms? The only weakness that Jesus had was the weakness of His human body, and He willingly took this weakness upon himself as His cross. In this weakness, He handed Himself over to His enemies, who were only after this weakness because they could not oppose His spiritual strength. In His passion, Jesus thus lived out what He had previously taught so forcefully:

But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them who spitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5:44

Jesus was the Son of God because He recognised the will of God in everything He encountered. In weakness and in strength. In friend and foe alike. In love as in hate, in honour as in insult, in discipleship as in persecution, in life as in death. This realisation made Him a descendant of the Most High – the Son of God.

Childship to God

By adopting this attitude of Jesus, we ourselves can now become sons of God – we can become children of God, and God becomes our Father. In His call to love our enemies, Jesus shows that God is also the cause of our enemies. But we should love what is subject to God’s will so that it can serve us. Only in such an all-encompassing and universal understanding of life, as Jesus taught and lived Himself, can every thought of guilt, punishment and retribution finally come to an end. Only in this faith are we able to forgive in a truly fundamental way. Why? Precisely because God deals with all things without exception. And for those who trust in this, God acts on all things in such a way that they serve Him for good.

If we recognise God’s will and interact even with our enemies, even with injustice, suffering and death, there is no longer any reason to condemn anyone.

Through our consent to God’s will alone, all human guilt is cancelled. For it is undisputed that Jesus recognised and obeyed the will of God in His passion. His consent to what is unjust, difficult and painful is what is meant when we talk about Jesus‘ obedience to God.

As a ransom for many

However, Jesus‘ statement quoted at the beginning can also be translated differently, in which case it reads:

The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Mark 10, 45

Where the term „ransom“ has been understood literally, it has caused much confusion and justified head-shaking. It is not the case that God demands a tribute from us humans so that He can be gracious and merciful in return. Especially not from his Son. This idea would also be absurd. For since God is the source of all things, He cannot demand anything other than what He Himself is able to fulfil.

In this respect, the term ransom is to be interpreted in the sense that Jesus accomplished the work that was „necessary“ on God’s part so that man would be reunited with God (life) and find his way back to God. What was needed was a sign through which man could see and recognise that God is the author of all things and that all things serve those who trust in Him. Jesus came to give us this sign and to convey this realisation to us.

The prerequisite and condition for this message to reach us humans was that a person should be able to recognise the will even in evil and unrighteousness and take this burden upon himself. But this was not possible for any human being. Only God Himself could do it. That is why He became man in the form of Jesus and gave Himself up for us.

Jesus gave His life so that the message would reach us that God is at work in all events, in which He is trustingly sought and found.

Summary:

Jesus taught that divine forgiveness would be granted to us if we ourselves were willing to forgive. And he Himself acted in accordance with this teaching when He granted forgiveness to those who had Him executed.

But Jesus said: „Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Luke 23:34

Jesus was able to forgive in this way because he recognised the will of God in His enemies and in His passion. Jesus knew that everything in which man finds the will of God, he also always finds life, even if this means certain death.

I am the Resurrection and I am life. He who believes in me will live, even if he dies.
John 11:25

Why is that so? Because God influences all things without exception and because nothing but life and spirit can flow from God.

To the extent that we, like Jesus, take upon ourselves all things that we encounter or cling to according to God’s will, be it illness, weakness, injustice, suffering and death, we make God (like Jesus) the reason for our own passion. But where God thus becomes the reason for our passion, there is no enemy, no evil circumstance and no misfortune that hinders us. Rather, everything serves us to live. Only when the reason for my weakness, my illness, my suffering and death no longer lies in this world, but in God, do I myself become free from blame and retribution. But if I become free from accusation, I will be able to forgive just as comprehensively as Jesus forgave.

In order for this message to reach us, Jesus was prepared to take His passion upon Himself so that we, like Him, would be free from accusation and retribution, enabling us to become one with God, who effects all passion without exception only in order to create new life.

Only when we, like Jesus, trust that all things, without exception, serve us for the best, are we redeemed.

Jesus was prepared to set this example of overcoming for us. And it is in this sense that Jesus‘ words are to be understood:‘

This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Matthew 26:28

Blog post with a similar topic:
Sin, the sinner and the fall

What was the purpose of Jesus’ mission?

The purpose of Jesus’s mission was, and still is, to convey a new, universal attitude towards the suffering and burdensome aspects of our existence.

The basics of understanding the teachings and passion of Jesus

The meaning of the mission of Jesus is revealed, on the one hand, in his words passed down to us (Gospels) and, on the other hand, in his Passion, i.e. in His path of suffering which He chose quite consciously. Both are fundamental aspects of His message that belong together. In His teaching, Jesus makes it clear that all the „disorder“ of our human existence, such as injustice, weakness, error, deception, suffering and death „cannot“ be put in order, i.e. healed, in an external way. He makes it clear that evil can only be mastered and thus „overcome“ in a certain inner attitude, whereby it becomes fundamentally good. To convey this attitude of mind verbally, and at the same time, to live it consistently Himself, was what He had come to do.

What attitude to life did Jesus convey in concrete terms?

The new attitude towards life that Jesus conveyed in his message is all-encompassing and universal. It says that God acts upon all events without exception – even the painful and arduous ones. Therefore, we should transmit them into God so that they can experience a change in meaning. They are brought into God when we perceive them as meaningful for us „individually“ and therefore accept them trustfully, even if they are burdensome, unjust or sorrowful. This universal understanding of the life of Jesus becomes clear in instructions such as the following:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect? Do not tax collectors do the same? Mat. 5:43-48
Matthew 5:43-48

Since God processes all occurrences, according to Jesus’s teaching, nothing happens to us by chance. In the light of His message, everything becomes meaningful to us, a deep sense that wants to be sought and found by us, is hidden in all things. This meaning is God Himself – the hidden meaning in the supposedly meaningless. In this understanding, Jesus calls on us to yearningly seek God and our inner spirit.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Matthew 7:7

The first invitation describes an inner longing for Spirit (God), without which we cannot be given a new understanding of life. The second invitation conveys to us a deep trust through which God (Spirit and sense) cannot close himself off to the sincere seeker, but must reveal himself. And the third invitation refers to all the hard limits that life sets for us.

Suffering, death, injustice, slander, exclusion, humiliation, etc.

We are to touch these boundaries consciously, whereby they become doors that open up new spaces for us.

In doing so, only what we recognise and accept as meaningful for „ourselves“ can cease to happen meaninglessly. In this respect, it is not possible to instruct someone how to live and act properly. Right living in the sense of Jesus comes from the trust that everything that we encounter and suffer has a meaning if we bear it in the spirit of Jesus and take it upon ourselves. It is irrelevant whether the limitations lie in ourselves (weakness, error, deception) or whether we endure them at the hands of others.

Thus, in the spirit of Jesus, we are called upon to take our own weakness as an occasion to practise forgiveness and mercy towards our fellow human beings.

In Jesus’s case, it was the weakness and vulnerability of his human body that he took as an occasion to give it up for us.

What is meant by the truth that Jesus Himself embodied?

It was to teach us this attitude of mind that Jesus had come; this was the meaning of the mission of Jesus. He not only proclaimed this teaching of the fundamental change in our attitude to life, but He also lived it consistently Himself in his Passion. In this context, He refers to Himself as the truth:

I am the way and the truth and the life …
John 14:6.

This is about a transcendent understanding of truth – that is, about that truth which reaches beyond our mortal existence. In other words, it is about a timeless understanding of truth and self. In this self-understanding, Jesus was able to expose Himself to betrayal, slander, injustice, humiliation, suffering and death. For this is precisely the essence of Jesus’s truth, that it cannot be diminished or destroyed by any sanction of the world, but that it always and exclusively experiences advancement, and exactly there where it takes it upon itself and bears the obstacle from the hand of God.

Sin, the sinner and the fall

The Old Testament myth of the Fall describes the consequences for man of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but these consequences were not exclusively negative. The serpent promised Eve that they would be like God and know what is good and evil if they ate the fruit from the tree. This very tempting prospect made Eve see the fruit as beautiful and edible.

What is sin?

What exactly is meant by the biblical concept of sin and the so-called Fall? There are very different and, sometimes contradictory, opinions within the churches and denominations. However, without a clear idea of the concept of sin, of sinning and of the sinner, the meaning and significance of the message of Jesus cannot be made clear to us, since sin and the sinner play a very central role in it.

The story of the Fall

The oldest biblical reference to what the Judeo-Christian religions call sin is found in the Old Testament story of the so-called „Fall“ in which Adam and Eve eat illicitly from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even though Jesus himself neither knew nor used the term „Fall of Man“ in this way, it has become a fixed concept for Jews and Christians alike in the course of religious history.

The Old Testament myth of the Fall of Man describes the consequences of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but these consequences were not exclusively negative. The serpent promised Eve that they would be like God and know what is good and evil if they ate the fruit from the tree. This very tempting prospect made Eve see the fruit as beautiful and edible.

The woman saw that the tree was good to eat of, that it was a delight to the eyes and tempting, because it made one wise.
Genesis 3:6

This promise of the serpent was indeed fulfilled, as God himself confirmed at the end:

And God the YHWH said, Behold, the man is now become like unto us, knowing what is good and what is evil.
Genesis 3:22

In addition, the negative side, which God had warned of beforehand but which the serpent denied, was fulfilled: Man became mortal.

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat as thou wilt: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Genesis 2:17

The two aspects of the Fall

If one understands sin as disobedience to the divine commandment, then this double-sidedness must always be taken into account. That is, sin, the sinner or the sinful behaviour of man is not exclusively something bad, but at the same time it gives us a quality that only gods possess, namely the ability to recognise opposites:

Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they perceived that they were naked …
Genesis 3:7

I have said well, „You are gods and all the children of the Most High…“
Psalm 82:6

Good and evil, death and life, naked and clothed, hidden and revealed, light and dark, sick and healthy, young and old, etc. Through the faculty of knowledge, man became aware of the world of opposites that he had not perceived before but, without the ability to know, the redemptive message of Jesus could not reach us. Jesus leaves no doubt that the ability to know is the basis for man’s salvation:

But this is life eternal, that they may know you, who alone are true God, and whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.
John 17,3

Woe to you, teachers of the law! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who wanted to enter.
Matthew 23:13

If sin is the reason why we can know at all, then sin has a very fundamental and elementary meaning. In fact, if we look at sin in the sense of Jesus, it becomes a necessity without which we could experience neither salvation nor redemption.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Luke 5:32

It is not the healthy, the strong who need a doctor, but the sick.
Matthew 9:12

Amen, I say to you: The publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of God sooner than you.
Matthew 21:31

The consequences of sin

Before I go further into this thought, let me return to the question posed at the beginning: What is meant by sin in the first place? Once apart from what it has done to us and is still doing to us today, namely our mortality and our capacity for knowledge.

The term sin describes an independence and separation from God, whereby the term „God“, in the biblical sense, is to be equated with life and spirit.

The myth of the Fall describes these two phenomena. On the one hand, the act „independent“ of God in the symbol of the illicit eating of the tree of knowledge. And on the other hand, the consequence of this independence, namely the „separateness“ from God, which finds expression in death and dying.

If we equate the term „God“ with „life“, it becomes clear that the consequence of sin is the opposite of God, which must then necessarily be „death“.

If we now follow the teaching of Jesus in terms of content, the opposite of God is not permanently possible. Sin and death are temporal phenomena, which in turn are overcome by God, who is to be understood as a timeless greatness. They are overcome by God uniting in himself all separation, all that is contrary and contradictory, whereby it is abolished and all strife is pacified.

According to Jesus’s teaching, our sense of separation and separateness in this world is based on an error – the error that what we usually mean by „life“ is limited and transitory. Likewise, that what we call „life“ is exhausted in its external and temporally limited appearance. In contrast to this are the statements of Jesus, as well as those of many philosophers, that life is necessarily „more“ than the external, limited and material:

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Matthew 6:25

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Aristotle

But unto you, my friends, I say, Fear not them which kill the body, but can do nothing else unto you.
Luke 12:4

In this respect, the term “sin” is not so much to be understood as a specific action or deed in itself.

Sin is that action which stems from the error that life itself is limited, imponderable and impermanent.

This error leads us to distrust life. It also leads us to reject all undesirable events, even though they are an unalterable part of our human existence and we cannot ultimately escape them. This applies to everything that is difficult and unjust, as well as to illness, dying, suffering and death. We consider such events not worth living and therefore call them our misfortune. And since we exclude our misfortune from our lives, we will try to prevent it at all costs, even if this is to the detriment of our fellow human beings. The essence of sin, then, is not so much an evil act in itself, as the mistaken conviction in which we seek to justify evil action.

Sin is the justification of evil – but a justification based on error.

Sin and the wrath of God

In the context of the concept of sin, the Bible also speaks of the wrath of God, which is understood as the consequence of sin. That is, that we die is the consequence of being deceived and acting out of deception and error. The apostle Paul sums up this thought as follows:

… death is the wages of sin …
Romans 6:23

In other words, dying and death are consequences of a wrong conception of what we understand by life. The Bible calls this consequence the „wrath of God“. The term „wrath of God“ should not be understood in a human sense. God is not angry in the same way as a human being is angry or capricious. What is to be understood by an angry God, I would like to briefly explain here in key points:

If we equate the concept of God with the qualities and principles by which the Bible describes him, God represents truth, love, life, spirit, light, justice, eternity, mercy, compassion, etc., and if we follow the statements of Jesus, then God is not angry. If we follow the statements of Jesus, God’s wrath is based on the fact that any deviation from God’s essence causes his „wrath“. God’s wrath is therefore nothing other than the consequence of an erroneous thought or action that contradicts the timeless-eternal, i.e. the divine principles:

If God is truth, there can be no untruth in Him. If God is life, there can be no death in Him. If God is love, there can be no hatred in Him. If God is Spirit, there can be no spiritlessness in Him. If God is light of knowledge, there can be neither darkness nor ignorance in Him. If God is righteousness, there can be no unrighteousness in Him. If God is eternity and timelessness, there can be neither temporal limitation nor any limitation in him. If God is mercy, there can be no mercilessness in Him. If God is compassionate, there can be no callousness in him towards the misery of man. It follows from this:

Insofar as the opposite of God adheres to us, insofar are we under His wrath.

God’s Wrath – The Consequence of Contradiction against God

Thus, in the sense of Jesus’s message, where we think or act contrary to the nature of God, we are under the wrath of God. Not because God wanted to punish us as a man punishes a man, but because God’s wrath is the consequence of a contradiction against a universal principle:

If we hold fast to deception and lies, we will be exposed as soon as we are confronted with the truth. The exposure of error and the embarrassment of our exposure is the wrath of God.

If we value the perishable more than the imperishable, we also devalue our own ideal existence. Anger and sadness in the face of the transience of our existence is the wrath of God.

If we spread unkindness and despair among our fellow human beings, our own despair in the face of experienced unkindness is God’s wrath.

If we live and act mindlessly, i.e. arbitrarily, without reason and at will, we will be confronted with mindlessness where we ourselves fall victim to arbitrariness, chance and senselessness – this is God’s wrath.

If we prevent knowledge by giving ourselves or others recipes of faith instead of insight, we will not be able to grasp the all-embracing knowledge of Jesus. Disbelief in the face of the unbelievable and bewilderment in the face of the incomprehensible is the wrath of God.

If we act unjustly towards our fellow human beings, we must remain inconsolable in the face of an injustice that happens to ourselves. The feeling of forlornness and desolation is the wrath of God.

If we regard ideal and timeless values as worthless and meaningless, we will surrender and lose everything valuable to us with the loss of external values. The despair of that which we considered valuable turns out to be worthless and meaningless, is the wrath of God.

If we see life as limited, we will find ourselves living a limited life. Our pain over the limits that existence places on us is God’s wrath.

If we act mercilessly, pitilessly and without mercy towards the errors, faults and weaknesses of our fellow human beings, we ourselves will break in the face of an unmerciful and merciless reality. This is the wrath of God.

Sin, suffering and death

If I say here that all misfortune that befalls us in this world is a consequence of our sin, people will counter that this cannot be true, since man is not always the direct cause of his misfortune. Often he is demonstrably not to blame for his misfortune. For example, in cases of force majeure or when fateful events befall him. To what extent is man’s guilt involved when he becomes a victim of force majeure or human arbitrariness?

The answer Jesus Christ gives to this question is: Sinful thinking and acting is based on man’s error about the nature of God and this error is the cause of our misery. Jesus Christ came to redeem us from this error. He redeemed us from our error in his message and through his passion on the cross. How is this possible? I said above:

Sin is the justification of evil – but a justification based on error. Now I say:

Salvation is based on the forgiveness of our guilt. Forgiveness happens in that our guilt and misery have meaning and the sinner thereby experiences justification.

And very specifically, the justification of the sinner is based on the fact that Jesus Christ gave deep meaning to all human misery (sin, guilt, injustice, suffering and death) on the cross.

Regardless of whether it is a direct human fault or an act of God, since God is at work in all events without exception.

For in taking upon himself his passion according to God’s will, Jesus carried meaning into the meaningless, spirit into the spiritless, God into the ungodly, right into wrong, life into death. Or as the apostle Paul put it:

For God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might find in him the righteousness that is before God. 2
Corinthians 5:21

Jesus knew that no one and nothing can resist the will of God and that our salvation can only be based on consenting to the will of God, even if it should mean suffering and death. For where we become one with the will of God, we also become one with God, whom all things serve. And when we have become one with God, everything serves us just as it has always served God.

But we know that to those who love God all things serve for the best…
Romans 8:28

Our timeless existence is based on this becoming one.

The mystery of redemption through the cross of Christ is based on the fact that God „makes“ all events that contradict the nature of God (misery, injustice, suffering and death) to be God, without exception.

They become God where a human being is willing to take upon himself even such events according to the will of God that hinder or harm him. This human being came to us in Jesus Christ. He showed us this way of becoming one with God as the only possibility and he himself walked it in his passion so that we too can now walk it.

Simon Peter said to Jesus: Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him, „Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me later.
John 13: 34

And where I am going you know, and the way you also know.
John 14: 4

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Luke 9: 23

In his passion, Jesus showed that God works all things for „one“ reason only, namely to bring forth himself (life and spirit). And by accepting his message of the cross and taking on our misery as Jesus took on and accepted it, we have overcome error. That momentous error that God cannot be found in sin (injustice, suffering and death) and cannot work in it. But God can now be found through Jesus Christ wherever we longingly seek him. This is also a fundamental and central basic statement of his teaching:

And I say also unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Luke 11: 9

Through the Crucified we come to the realisation that God works in all events without exception, as long as we trustingly seek Him in them. Through this faith we are redeemed and through this trust in God we also become able to forgive fundamentally. In the Passion of Jesus we recognise that even unjust, sorrowful, regrettable and evil events are no longer to our detriment, but that God is present in all events without exception. The sentence of the apostle Paul applies here:

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor things high, nor things low, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39

The good aspect of sin

Above I have explained that the reason and cause for our ability to know is sin, further that without sin, the salvation of God in Jesus Christ could not reach us at all.

We experience the negative side of sin where our thoughts and actions are based on error and deception. Error and deception are the false foundation of life on which nothing lasting can be built, from which nothing good grows, as Jesus expresses in the parables of building on sand (Matthew 7:24) and of the rotten tree (Matthew 7:17). Thus error and deception are also the true cause of our human bondage, as Jesus points out:

Insofar as you hold to my teaching, you are truly my disciples and will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.‘ Then they said to him, „We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been anyone’s servant; why then do you say, ‚You shall be set free‘? Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you: Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
John 8:32-34

The positive aspect of sin is that God (Spirit) is able to give meaning and significance to sin.

As long as sin, suffering and death – as long as there is no meaning to evil in the world, it must remain meaningless and evil, making it futile and in vain.

This is in no way to relativise or gloss over injustice, suffering and death. Our human misery undoubtedly consists in the fact that injustice, suffering and death happen to us. But the greater misery, from which we must break and die without consolation, is based on the error that what man suffers in this world is ultimately pointless and happens in vain – that man therefore suffers entirely in vain.

Therefore, I have told you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.
John 8:24

Jesus Christ came so that all suffering and dying might have meaning, so that it might cease to be in vain. Just as in nature no suffering and death happens without meaning and significance. This meaning is God. For just as Christ recognised the will of God in all the evil and unrighteousness done to him, so we too are called to seek the will of God in all the evil we encounter and cling to. For the will of God can only happen and work on us where we recognise it as such and consent to it. If, however, the will of God is done contrary to our will, because it imposes injustice, suffering and death upon us, then we are separated from God and cannot live, for God is life par excellence. But if the will of God is done in us and with us, we will also be comforted when we are exposed to injustice, suffering and death.

But I tell you the truth, it is good for you that I go. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I go away, I will send him unto you.
John 16:7

This is the divine principle that God’s will is undivided: where it happens, all denial, all resistance and all opposition also ends. In our consent to God’s will we become one with God and God becomes one with us. God does not quench the spirit!

The righteousness of the sinner

A righteous sinner is that person who is aware of his human weaknesses. The righteous sinner knows that it is not possible to get rid of human weaknesses by one’s own strength. The righteous sinner lives in the understanding that man is fallible, weak and mortal, and therefore recognises everything weak and sinful as a necessary part of his human reality that must be taken upon himself. But why is this so? The answer to this question is:

The righteous sinner’s own weaknesses become an occasion to forgive others their weaknesses, whereby his own sin serves him for good – precisely in this it is overcome.

Just as Jesus willingly took upon himself his bodily weakness and the evil that was done to him in order to do good, we too should take upon ourselves our own weakness in his spirit in order to do good. It is precisely in this that the weak shows its strength, that it is able to take upon itself the cross of sin in order to bring forth the good.

Thus also the false is recognised only in truth, the lack in infirmity, the negation in affirmation. So then the good shines in the evil, the true in the false, the having in the infirmity [ … ] the light shines in the darkness; for virtue shines and appears in adversities and contrasts, power is perfected in weakness. Only out of adversity comes perfection. As Saint Paul says: „virtue is perfected in weakness“.
Meister Eckhart

Through Jesus Christ all things have fundamentally changed. That which previously prevented us from coming to God, namely sin, now serves us to find the way to God.

Contributions to Christian philosophy

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Died for us

The question of why Jesus had to die on the cross remains unanswered for many Christians to this day. There ...

Sin, the sinner and the fall

The Old Testament myth of the Fall describes the consequences for man of eating from the tree of the knowledge ...

What was the purpose of Jesus’ mission?

The purpose of Jesus’s mission was, and still is, to convey a new, universal attitude towards the suffering and burdensome ...

The Theodicy Question

Why does God allow suffering in the world? This article gives answers to the so-called theodicy question in direct relation ...

From there he will come to judge …

If forgiveness is the fulcrum of the message of Jesus, then what is the point of The Last Judgement and ...

From there he will come to judge …

If forgiveness is the fulcrum of the message of Jesus, then what is the point of The Last Judgement and in what way will we be judged? The first answer to this is: because all division with God is limited. But the limited is not the eternal and timeless. The sphere of the spirit (God) is the timeless and unlimited and outside it nothing permanent exists. The limited ends one day, but the eternal and timeless is everlasting. Insofar as we think and act in a limited way, we ourselves will have to find an end.

German V ersion

The Last Judgement – what is it?

Jesus spoke of the Last Judgement; there is no doubt about that. But what is to be understood by it is interpreted by many rather according to human ideas and thus misses the spirit of Jesus’s message. In order to emphasise the threatening and inexorable character of the Last Judgement, one often uses the descriptions from the Book of Revelation. Few people are aware that the imagery of the Book of Revelation is a mystical show of visions whose symbols require interpretation – just like Jesus’s parables, which is why many take them literally. What Jesus wanted to make clear to us with his references to the Last Judgement can only be understood from the context of his teaching and the circumstances of his passion. This means that all the inspiration and interpretation that the apostles have left us in their writings, can only be given a coherent interpretation on the basis of the words and actions of Jesus. Any presentation that does not take into account the statements of Jesus’s message, misses the spirit of the Gospel.

God – the indivisible unity

The gospel, or the good news as it is translated, says that God „wills“ to forgive all guilt. Why is this so? Because God is forgiveness itself, and this means that „in“ God such things as guilt and punishment do not exist. If guilt and punishment existed in God, God would be divided, namely into a good and a bad, into a guilty and an innocent, part. But God is one in and with himself, that is, God is undivided and without contradiction. And whoever wants to reach God must themselves become and be one. For God is truth itself and this is indivisible, as the biblical texts also make clear:

Listen, Israel, YHWH our God is one God. Deuteronomy 6 And Jesus underlines this statement in a contrary metaphor: Every kingdom that is divided against itself will be laid waste; and every city or house that is divided against itself will not stand.
Matthew 12:26

And in this very sense Jesus makes it clear that God Himself does not judge: For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son.
John 5:22

This is the consequence of what has been said above, namely that God can only judge at all in relation to the Son. Why is this so?
God Himself is non-dual, but in the Son he has entered the world of duality and division in order to reunite it with God.
Therefore, we must „look“ to the Son to understand the nature of the Last Judgement. And in this sense, Jesus declares that he only does what he „sees“ the Father doing:

Amen, Amen, I say to you: The Son can do nothing By Himself, but only what he sees the Father do; for whatever the Father does, the Son also does in like manner.
John 5:19

But what do we see the Son doing, from which we can conclude what the Father is doing? The answer is simple: We see in Jesus Christ that Son who calls us to forgive unconditionally in order to live up to the nature of a united God: Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.

Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Matthew 7, 1

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Matthew 6:12

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15

Now I pray not for them only, but also for them who shall believe in me through their word; that they all may be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And I have given them the glory which you gave me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
John 17:20-22

But Jesus not only demands this willingness from us, He Himself consistently fulfils this demand by dying on the cross to forgive His enemies. This is what the Son sees the Father „doing“ and therefore the Son can also only act in this way, namely forgive unconditionally. It is through this attitude of mind that we (where we embrace it), come to God. This is our way to God. There is no other way, as Jesus makes clear:

I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6

For in the certainty that all things must serve the one who trusts in this unity, the Son was able to practise all-embracing forgiveness and proclaim from the cross:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!
Luke 23:34

Forgiveness through insight into the nature of God

Jesus Christ came to proclaim and to make clear through his passion that in the sphere of the Spirit (in God) there can be no cause for condemnation or punishment. Therefore, we are to understand our own lives as Jesus understood His life. But how did Jesus understand and comprehend His own life? Jesus was given to find the will of God in the senselessness and spiritlessness of the injustice committed against Him: slander, accusation, condemnation, torture and execution, whereby these events had to find meaning.

As long as we attribute injustice, suffering and death to an evil fate or to our enemies, we will suffer harm.

We will be harmed insofar as we will have to break down inwardly because of a reality with which we are divided. But what we take upon ourselves according to God’s will must become good, because only good, only life, flows from God.

Jesus Christ came so that the reason and cause of our suffering might change.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.
Matthew 16:25

This is the substantive and spiritual consequence that follows from the passion of Jesus. Jesus saw himself in a position to recognise the will of God in injustice, suffering and death, whereby he overcame these areas of humanity so that they could become good, an example and comfort to us.

He walked a little farther and knelt with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
Mark 14:36

In the world ye are afraid: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
John 16:33

Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore, do not be afraid … Luke 12:7
Luke 12:7

And you will be hated by everyone for My name’s sake. And yet not one hairon your head shall perish.
Luke 21:17

We see that the understanding of life that Jesus proclaimed in his message is an all-encompassing and perfect understanding of life – an understanding of life in which all things, without exception, find meaning as soon as we place our trust in the power of the Spirit who makes all things work for our good, if only we trust completely in Him.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God…
Romans 8:28

The Last Day – the unified reality

The Last Judgement and the Last Day are one, but from two different perspectives. The Last Day is the manifestation of that timeless reality which Jesus proclaimed in His message and whose essence He made clear to us in His Passion. But what kind of reality is it? It is the reality of the Righteous One who creates justice without accusation, without punishment, without retribution, but by accepting all events from the hand of God, whereby alone they can become good. In this certainty Jesus receives everything without exception according to the will of God and in this way fills it with spirit and meaning.

This applies particularly to all mindless and senseless areas of our humanity because God cannot be limited, hurt, hindered or impaired by anything, everything must serve Him.

Whoever recognises his life anew in this way in God, from now on everything must serve Him as it served Jesus. In order to show us this fundamental truth, Jesus Christ came and in His Passion took upon himself the abyss of humanity. He came to overcome the unrighteous, the evil, dark and base events, through the Spirit (through God), whereby they could now serve, just as He declared to His disciples on the eve of His imprisonment:

If you loved Me, you would rejoice that I said, „I go to the Father“; for the Father is greater than I am.
John 14, 27

But because I have spoken these things, your heart is filled with sorrow. But I tell you the truth, it is good for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
John 16:7

The Last Judgement – the Divided Reality

Now one will ask: If forgiveness is the pivot of the Gospel, then why The Last Judgement and in what way will we be judged? The first answer to this is: because all division with God is limited. But the limited is not the eternal and timeless. The sphere of the spirit (God) is the timeless and unlimited and outside it, nothing permanent exists. The limited ends one day, but the eternal and timeless is everlasting.

Insofar as we think and act in a limited way, we ourselves will have to find an end. This is the judgement that one day all limitation will end – inevitably.

Our human thinking in categories of punishment and retribution is a limited one because it springs from a divided understanding of reality. In order to gain the eternal, the timeless, the limited and time-bound, we must mentally overcome it, because in overcoming the limited, all division and divisiveness also ends – all guilt and accusation also ends.

The Last Judgement is nothing other than a revelation of our division with God, in whom all things have always been one. One day all divisiveness must end, precisely because it is limited. Just as the power of a lie ends when the truth comes to light, so too all that is limited and temporal ends when it comes into contact with or is confronted with the reality of the timeless and boundless. The boundless and timeless, however, is not exclusively something future, for what is timeless has always been true, for it is without a beginning and without an end. That is, it applies both within time and beyond. Therefore Jesus taught:

The time is coming, indeed it is already here, for the dead to hear the voice of the Son of God. Whoever listens to it will live. John 5:25

For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17, 22

In this respect, the essence of the Last Judgement is not based on a whim, a discretion or weighing of a judgement by a judge, as some people like to imagine, but it is based on the inescapable consistency of the Spirit, who gives to every creature everything that it asks and calls for: whoever values, practises and asks for mercy and mercy receives mercy. Whoever sets and seeks for condemnation and retribution receives judgement.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Matthew 5:7

Not that God Himself would condemn – no, in God there is no condemnation. But as far as that error prevails in us which makes us believe that through division, that is, through revenge, retribution and punishment, the world or man can be improved, then we are not in God. But if we are not one with that power which works all things without exception, the burdensome and sorrowful things cannot serve us for good either, as the Apostle Paul explains in the Letter to the Romans:

But we know that to those who love God all things work for good …
Romans 8:28

The Last Day – Man’s Destiny

I would like to give another answer to the above question as follows: We do not feel the human longing and desire for unlimited life by chance. For intuitively we know about the ideal and timeless core of our existence. The proof is our sadness about the finiteness of human life and the longing for „more“. We all carry within us an inkling that the whole is „more“ than the sum of its parts, as Aristotle said. And by following this longing, we go towards our true destiny. This primordial longing for life must now be interpreted in the spirit of Jesus, for he came so that we might understand and recognise our life in a new, larger and timeless framework, whereby it is filled with spirit. The Last Day, like the Last Judgement, is nothing other than the fulfilment of our longing for life and spirit – but in an unlimited, undivided and unconditional sense. Since all limitation, division and separation of life through injustice, error, disease, weakness, suffering and death is temporal, it will have to end with time. Insofar as we understand our lives in a purely temporal sense, we are mortal and therefore we must be disappointed on the Last Day when all limited things end. The disappointment in what we thought was life is something entirely different from what we will feel as judgement.

We can and will only be what we love with all our hearts. No more and no less.

Since in God there is no opposite and ~~insofar~~ no unwillingness, we will only be able to receive what we love, value and want here with all our heart, on that day. Insofar as our hope, love and appreciation is directed towards something that will one day end, this „object“ will have to come to an end. Judgment Day is the dawning of a timeless and unlimited understanding of life within us. A life to which we, through its message, are to find already here in this world. For only this understanding will prove to be a valid and sustainable one on the Last Day – then, when everything time-bound ends. If we understand our life in the spirit of Jesus, our life gains this state of timelessness. This state will one day, when the temporal ends, lift us above all temporal things and carry us, just as the ark did in the days of Noah. Amen, Amen, I say to you:

He that heareth my word, and believeth in him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed from death unto life.
John 5:24

The Day of Judgement and the Last Judgement in the Parables of Jesus

In many parables Jesus deals with the nature of the Last Judgement. Each parable illuminates in its own special way the principle of division and separation that we carry within us and how it will prevent us from entering into a new, united life on the Last Day. For new, imperishable life can only be received by those who carry and embody the undivided principle of life within themselves. Of course, the four parables described below convey much more content. Here I only highlight the final sequences in each case, in which Jesus addresses the involuntary and painful separation, disappointment and divisiveness and the feeling of being set back. Each individual scenario conveys a sense of the dawning of the Kingdom of God and can thus also be seen as a description of the „circumstances“ on the Last Day or the Last Judgement.

The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32)
Divine and human understanding of privilege

At the end of the parable of the prodigal son, the father arranges a feast for the returned younger son who has dishonestly carried through his paternal inheritance. The elder son is stunned and falls out with the father over his magnanimous gesture. His displeasure is so great that he refuses to attend the feast. The parable shows how a life of supposed blamelessness and privilege makes us miss the mark. It is not the father (God) who excludes the elder brother, but the elder son refuses himself to be one with the father (God) and the brother (son).

The parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 5:1-13)
Valuing the indispensable – at the right time and at the wrong time

This parable is about acquiring the foundation of light, which here stands as an allegory for living out of the Spirit. The metaphor here is lamp oil, which is to be acquired and gained in the day, i.e. during this life (at the right time). In the final sequence of the parable, all ten virgins fall asleep, which is a symbol of death. Upon their reawakening, namely the resurrection, the possibility of immediate entrance to the wedding feast opens up for one group. The second group without lamp oil finds a divided reality. The door to the feast opens for all, but not all can participate. Here, the condition for participation in the feast does not lie in the invitation, but in a missing prerequisite of the second group, namely that everyone bring their light to the celebration. Light is the prerequisite here for the nightly celebration to take place. The lack of lamp oil is painfully felt by the second group, which is why they set out in the middle of the night (at the wrong time) to acquire oil. But they are not allowed entry on their return, as the bridegroom declares the company complete.

The parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
Valuing and devaluing through unexpected appreciation

In this parable, the first hired labourers who started work early in the morning feel unequal treatment compared to those labourers who were hired gradually during the day and joined later. The vineyard owner keeps his promise to pay a reasonable daily wage. But among the workers who have worked the full day, it causes annoyance when, when they are paid, those who have joined much later also receive the full day’s wages. Again, the cause of the former’s annoyance is not malicious degradation by the vineyard owner – on the contrary, the payout is generous overall but the expectation of the firsts that they must be entitled to more, suddenly makes their payment seem inferior, thereby devaluing their pay itself. Here, too, it is the privileged thinking of the first that makes them feel inferior in the end.

The parable of the ranking of the guests (Luke 14:7-14)
Degradation through pride – honour through humility

After observing the guests and hosts at a wedding feast to which Jesus himself was invited, he draws parallels with the nature of the Kingdom of God. In this parable, he addresses the situation where guests place themselves close to the host, but then have to be told that this place is reserved for another guest, so that they have to take a more distant place at the table in full view of the public. Jesus here describes the scenario of being set back and humiliated in full view of the public. Again, it is the high opinion one has of oneself that is revealed on that day, which then makes one feel embarrassingly set back. The „setting back“ must not be misinterpreted as an act of punishment. Rather, it follows from the necessity of the host’s organisation. Jesus therefore calls for humility and sincere self-assessment, so that the Last Day is not perceived as a day of setting back, but as a day of moving up, towards the centre of the festive event – towards God.

Elmar Wieland Vogel on 2. 7. 2023 Available at: https://christophilos.de

The Theodicy Question

Why does God allow suffering in the world? This article gives answers to the so-called theodicy question in direct relation to the statements of Jesus‘ message. Whoever follows the explanations with an open mind will open up a new perspective on the difficult, the suffering and the unjust.

Why God allows suffering in the world Deutsche Version

Many people find it difficult to believe in the existence of a good God, since the world is apparently anything but good. If indeed a God created the world, and if this God is good, omniscient or even omnipotent, why does so much evil and injustice happen in the world? Why doesn’t an all-powerful God intervene and put his creation in order? Is God not omnipotent after all, or is he even a sadist in the end who wants to see people suffer and die? These or similar are the arguments against a belief in God, or at least in a good God. The debate about why God allows suffering in the world is also called the theodicy question. The term theodicy comes from the Greek theodikía, from the ancient Greek theós which means God, and díkē, which means justice. It is therefore about the question of the extent to which God can be regarded as just at all in view of the injustice in the world. Or in other words, it is about the attempt to justify God’s actions.

The following article provides answers to the question of why God does not prevent suffering in the world, in direct reference to the statements of Jesus‘ message. Whoever follows the explanations with an open mind will open up a new perspective on the difficult, the suffering and the unjust. And whoever adopts this view will be able to rethink his life and understand it differently than before. In fact, a satisfactory answer to the question of why God allows suffering in the world is only possible on the basis of the teachings and the passion of Jesus. No other teaching gives this answer as conclusively and convincingly as Jesus does. If we find the deep meaning of the teachings and the passion of Jesus, we also find a fundamental answer to this question. The answer, however, is then no longer according to a principle of faith or dogma, but through a very personal insight into the correctness of Jesus‘ teaching. It takes place insofar as their statements are recognised as conclusive, correct and credible.

A message of salvation

In fact, Jesus of Nazareth is the first and the only teacher who directly touches on the problem of theodicy both in his message and in his actions. Jesus can be considered a redeemer insofar as he touches on this problem not only verbally but also physically and solves it in his passion in an unheard of and shattering way. Whether the healing of the sick, his preaching of the kingdom of God or the willing acceptance of his passion – everything is an expression of a mission that has only one goal; namely, to overcome the suffering of the world through the Spirit. At the same time, the redemption that he delivers to people is nothing distant, otherworldly or in the future, but happens directly today, here and now, as he says:

Jesus said, „Should not God do right by his chosen ones who call on him day and night, and should he delay in helping them? I tell you, he will do them justice immediately.
Luke 18:7-8

Amen, amen, I say to you: He who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and it is now that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.
John 5:24-25

Salvation is based on the fact that Jesus, in his teaching, imparts an attitude of mind by which, where we accept it, we are reconciled with our lives. In this, reconciliation with our lives is reconciliation with God himself. Programmatic here is his call:

Change your mind, for the kingdom of God is now very close.
Matthew 3:2

This means: Change your mind! Be prepared to fundamentally change your attitude towards life. Let yourselves be touched by the message of the Kingdom of God.

A universal, all-encompassing image of God

First of all, it is important to understand that Jesus conveys a universal image of God in his teaching. Only on the basis of an image of God that encompasses all events is a satisfactory answer to the question of theodicy possible at all. Jesus‘ image of God is free of negative, human capriciousness in so far as this could be interpreted into the God of the Old Testament, who is also described there as a hating and jealous God. In the message of Jesus, God proves to be a faithful and loving Father. In his Son, he makes us children of God and puts all his passion into regaining the lost trust of man. Trust means to gain the certainty that God works all things without exception and thus all events serve us for the best:

But we know that all things work for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to the purpose.
Romans 8:28

Jesus‘ image of God is all-encompassing in that it sees our encounters with friend and foe, joy and sorrow, weakness and strength, living and dying, justice and injustice, etc. as synonymous. That is, Jesus no longer rejects the humanly deficient, but gives it essential meaning in his message.

This is the new, the extraordinary and universal core of his message, that even the unlovable must experience our love if we are to be perfect, as he says:

You have heard that it is said, „You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.“ But I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; pray for them who spitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil, and on the good; and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love only those who love you, what reward will you receive? Do not tax collectors do the same? And if you are only kind to your brothers, what extraordinary thing are you doing? Do not tax collectors do the same? Therefore, be ye perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5:43-48

Note the final sentence in which Jesus describes the nature of God as perfect. Perfect is that which is „complete“, that is, something that encompasses all things without distinction and excludes nothing.

God is perfect because he is also able to include in himself the opposite, namely the enemy, the evil, the suffering, the unjust, without endangering or losing his existence. God experiences a promotion of himself in all things, because apart from God there is nothing.

Only an all-encompassing and universal God is able to love all things, since he cannot be hindered, injured or destroyed by anyone or anything, but experiences promotion in all things.

If we think about it realistically, we have to admit that our human existence in this world would not be possible at all without the opposite: without death there is no life, without sleep there is no wakefulness, without darkness there is no light, and so on. The whole truth is indivisible: if there were only light, we would not perceive light as such. In terms of our human life, this means: our own life can only become perfect in the sense of Jesus if we include all things without exception in our life: illness, weakness, enmity, injustice, failure, dying, suffering and death.

Overcoming evil, in the sense of Jesus, means mentally overcoming the contradiction of duality that the suffering and burdensome represent for us.

All these negative phenomena are essential components of our human reality and for this reason we are to love them and longingly seek their meaning for us. This search for meaning and significance of the meaningless and insignificant is the only relevant search at all, because what we are looking for (God/Spirit/Sense) wants to be found by us just as longingly – because Spirit is looking for us just as we are looking for Spirit (Spirit/Sense).

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For whosoever asketh receiveth; and whosoever seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7,7

Loving here does not mean that we should promote and find these things good in themselves, but it means that we should take them on trustingly and willingly when we encounter them or are at their mercy. For it is only through our trusting and willing acceptance that what has hitherto been hated and unloved can acquire meaning and significance and thus a profound transformation.

Then he said to them all: Whoever wishes to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.
Luke 9:23-24

An Individual Image of God – The Objective in the Subjective

Even though it can be said that the Christian image of God is an all-encompassing and universal one, Jesus nevertheless answers the question of theodicy in a purely subjective and individual way. That is, he does not answer the question of the suffering of the world in a political or collective sense, for its answer depends on individual „faith“ – it depends on the personal insight and consent of each individual to his message.

Jesus gave us his very personal answer to the suffering of the world in his passion, and he gives this answer to each individual who believes it to be true, who believes it and who is willing to accept it. His answer is:

Injustice, suffering and death can only experience a change of meaning for us where we take them upon ourselves and bear them in the certainty that there is a hidden meaning and significance inherent in all events.

Jesus consented to his passion because he had the spiritual ability to recognise the will of God even in the actions of his enemies:

And he walked a short way, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. Matthew 26:39
Matthew 26:39

In a sense, Jesus, by this consent to his passion, „makes“ God the cause of injustice, suffering and death. God, on the other hand, who is perfect in principle and must therefore be the cause of all things, suddenly becomes, through the trusting consent of the Son, the author of something that He is not in essence. For God is being Himself and He is the cause of life itself, and this principle is undivided, that is, it is without alternative or counterpart.

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.
Matthew 12:25

Hear, O Israel: The YHWH our God, the LORD ist One.
Deuteronomy 6,4

God is life itself and no contradiction exists in Him, to the extent that it is impossible for the cause of injustice, suffering and death to lie in God at the same time. Therefore, these areas must undergo a change in meaning when they encounter God. They have undergone this very change in meaning because Jesus trustingly received them from the hand of God, thus bringing them into contact with God and filling them with spirit, meaning and significance.

Herein lies the deep meaning of the statement: Jesus suffered and died for us. Jesus knew that the suffering that a person takes upon himself in trust in God must lose its meaninglessness, indeed that only in this way can it find a new and higher meaning.

God, the hidden meaning in meaninglessness

„God is spirit“ is Jesus‘ definition. (Jn 4:24) But what does that mean? It means that only the Spirit is able to give meaning and significance to all things, but especially to the apparently spiritless and senseless. In terms of answering the question of theodicy, this means that the spiritless, which we take upon ourselves trusting in the Spirit (in God), is imbued with spirit and meaning, making it directly God. This is the divine principle of the fulfilment of meaning. Conversely, events that we reject as unacceptable out of mistrust in God (in life) must remain meaningless, because we exclude the power of the Spirit, which fills with meaning everything that can be filled with meaning. Powerful, then, we are where we see ourselves able to recognise God in all things without exception that cling to or encounter us. Powerless, on the other hand, we are where we categorically exclude his power and presence. Jesus made this spiritual principle clear to his disciples before his imprisonment:

Therefore my Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it against my will, but I leave it voluntarily. I have power to let it go, and I have power to take it again. This law I have received from my Father.
John 10, 17-18

The Passion of Jesus – Vacuum of the Spirit

To illustrate how the Spirit works in the context of answering the question of theodicy, I provide the following parable:

A vacuum is the negative pressure of air/gas within a space/vessel. A vacuum can only be as large as the stability of the vessel in which the vacuum is created, allows. If the negative pressure is too great, the vessel will be damaged and pressure equalisation will be necessary. Significantly, there are equivalents of the terms spirit and air in both the Hebrew and Greek languages. Thus the term „ruach“ = air, spirit, wind, breath, fragrance in Hebrew and the term „pneuma“ = spirit, breath, air, breath in ancient Greek. The original texts of today’s Bible have been handed down to us in these two languages.

Taking up the example of the air vacuum, one can transfer the idea of theodicy to the spiritual and say: Jesus created a vacuum of the spirit (God) in his teaching and in his passion, which the spirit filled when the vessel broke. Or in other words, the absence of spirit and meaning in a senseless situation „compels“ the spirit, provided one knows about the law of the spiritual vacuum, namely that the pressure equalisation must take place at the latest when the vessel breaks. The new atmospheric pressure is then the new normal – „outside“ the old vessel in a „larger“ space. The „larger“ space can be seen here as a symbol for the transcendent and the new, which points beyond the small and the old. But it is also a symbol of a new normality, a new creation:

In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would not have said to you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be.
John 14, 2-3

In his passion, Jesus deliberately places himself in the state of a spiritual vacuum, namely in a state of God’s absence – a state of spiritlessness, so that it can be filled with spirit.

Because for the one who recognises God’s will and presence in all events, a state of God’s absence can no longer exist.

Death is a state of absence of God. But God permeates and fills all things that allow themselves to be filled by Him. God is all in one and therefore God „must“ fill such a state of God-lessness and Spirit-lessness, and that through and with Himself, otherwise He would not be God. Jesus knew about this law, therefore he concludes with the words:

This law have I received of my Father.
John 10:17-18

Overcoming external evil

God is by no means powerless in the face of evil, but in Jesus Christ he deliberately seeks to touch and confront evil in order to overcome it and that is to make it good – to make it God. Only that which has been overcome by the Spirit has become truly „good“. And all that is „touched“ by God, that itself becomes God.

Jesus Christ is the direct touch of God with the suffering of the world.

Evil, on the other hand, is that which does not want to be touched by God, and in this respect it must remain spiritless and senseless for us. However, the events are not spiritless and senseless in themselves, but they are so with regard to our inner defence and our unwillingness. Thus Jesus does not conclusively evaluate the evil that happens to Himself as evil, but He understands it as something that experiences meaning through His trusting attitude, whereby it is overcome. For what is overcome by the Spirit has unexpectedly become something good. It is precisely this causality that Jesus declares in view of his imminent passion:

But now I go unto him that sent me; and no man of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have spoken these things, your heart is filled with sorrow. But I tell you the truth, it is good for you that I go. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I go away, I will send him unto you.
John 16:5-7

Note the basic statement of Jesus, „It is good for you that I go …“ But how can there be any good in the betrayal, injustice, torture, execution and death of a human being? How could Jesus find any good in the horrific event that was about to happen to him? He gives the answer himself: „For unless I go, the Comforter will not come to you …“ What does this mean? Through Jesus‘ sacrifice, a new spiritual consciousness will emerge, which will thereupon be available to all people seeking spiritual consolation in situations of human distress. In a sense, God is compelled to a new creation through the willing passion of Jesus. It is Jesus‘ trust in God’s omnipotence and it is the steadfast love in which Jesus gives himself that „compels“ God in turn to a new creation. Thus, through the passion of Jesus, a new human being has been created. And this new man is Christ, the overcomer. Christ gives this, his new identity, to all who longingly seek it, and whoever accepts it takes on the form of the Son of God – becomes a child (son) of God himself.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new!
Corinthians 5:17

In Jesus Christ, God directly shows how He would overcome evil if He were human. Since God is not human, he had to become human so that we humans could experience this principle of overcoming evil. In Jesus Christ, God becomes man and confronts evil himself, taking it upon himself to fill it with spirit and meaning:

It is good for you that I go …
John 16:7

The hidden meaning in the hitherto senseless gives meaning and significance to all senseless events. Everything spiritless and senseless that is thus fulfilled by God (Spirit) must now become good. And just as Jesus knew the meaning and significance of his own suffering and death, we too are to trust in the meaning of our own suffering. For through his willing surrender on the cross, it should become clear that this meaning will now come wherever we trustfully seek it. That is why Jesus took injustice, suffering and death upon himself, so that we too can now trust that meaning wants to dwell in all events where we long for it and let it in. In truth, meaning has always dwelt in all events, because without God (spirit and meaning) nothing can be and the spirit permeates everything and fills it with life. All existence, all life depends on meaning. But as long as we do not want to believe this, we have no share in a life beyond the spiritlessness and nonsense in the world.

Everything, that wants to come to life must experience an all-embracing, underlying meaning.

All that was formerly lower, which has received spirit and meaning, has also come to life. This is the universal principle of creation, that God creates something out of nothing. The senseless, the spiritless, the lowly, the filthy, the shameful, the reprehensible and the condemned – this has always been the „stuff“ from which God creates new life.

Then YHWH the Lord made man from the earth of the field and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And so man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7

Overcoming the inner evil

Whoever internalises the message of Jesus will begin to look at the world in a new light. That which we have so far conclusively called evil or bad ceases to be evil and bad in the sense of Jesus.

Let us just think of our own arduous, embarrassing or even dangerous situations and experiences through which we have fundamentally matured or through which we have recognised or learned something important, something that in retrospect we no longer want to miss. Our human evaluations and determinations of good and evil are therefore by no means as ultimate and unambiguously true as we often think. Mostly they are time-dependent and appear to us already changed and sometimes even contrary with a time lag. As explained above, Jesus calls us to take a new, changed attitude towards the enemy, evil and bad, by accepting and taking it upon ourselves according to God’s will. But this does not only apply to the evil that we encounter from outside, but especially also to the evil that threatens us from within, that is, the evil that is inherent in ourselves.

The question of theodicy, why God allows evil in the world, must therefore be extended to the inner being of man. For the origin of the evil that people do to each other again and again does not lie somewhere outside, but rather lies within ourselves. This inner evil is also called the original sin of man. This original sin includes all human weaknesses, such as error, injustice, hatred, envy, resentment, vindictiveness, baseness, mercilessness, etc.

According to Jesus‘ teachings, our own human weaknesses and shortcomings should also be able to find deep meaning and significance.

But what meaning could there be in our human weakness and fallibility? Jesus‘ answer is simple:

Man should practise forgiveness and mercy, he should deal graciously with the faults of his fellow men, precisely because he himself is in need of forgiveness, mercy and grace:

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Matthew 5:7

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. But why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, and perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Stop, I will pull the mote out of your eye, and yet, is there a beam in your eye? You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye; then see how you take the mote out of your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7, 1-5

When our impulse to exercise grace, forgiveness and mercy stems from the realisation of our own fallibility, our human imperfection suddenly takes on meaning and deep significance.

In order for us to be able to forgive other people’s guilt, we ourselves must realise and acknowledge that we are guilty. That is, we must become willing to practise self-knowledge. And herein lies the deep meaning of our human fallibility. What has found meaning has found spirit and what has found spirit has found God. What has found God has ceased to be ungodly. And what has ceased to be ungodly has ceased to be our harm, and that means it has ceased to be sin. Jesus‘ teaching of the fundamental forgiveness of our guilt by God is based on this causality. Our guilt is fundamentally forgiven insofar as we ourselves become willing to forgive those who are guilty of us, precisely because we know of our own fallibility.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Mat 6, 12

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Mat 6, 14-15

Resurrection to new life

In the parable of the grain of wheat, Jesus clarifies the meaning and significance of his own passion. Here he symbolises that all human dying in this world must have meaning and significance, just as dying in nature has always had meaning and significance.

Amen, amen, I say to you: Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24

Only insofar as our dying also experiences a necessity can our life experience a fundamental promotion. And this promotion consists in serving a new, transcendent understanding of life. Jesus answers the question of why God allows suffering in the world by ascribing a fundamental meaning to all dying in this world. The meaning of death and dying stands and falls with the knowledge of the transcendent – of that which points beyond the temporal and the superficial:

… but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24

Just as the processes in nature teach us, so, according to the teachings of Jesus, every sacrifice and every willing surrender should serve to bring about new, greater life. Whether we ourselves participate in such new life depends on the trust that makes us capable of willingly giving and leaving old life in the spirit of Jesus. For we have to leave our temporal life anyway. But as long as we do not want to accept the reality of our mortality, as long as we negate and ignore it, and as long as we want to hold on to what we cannot hold on to, our dying cannot experience any meaning, because we oppose the truth of our mortality. Jesus taught „how“ our dying can experience that meaning so that it attains immortality. All letting go, renouncing and dying, must be done for the sake of insight into an incontrovertible truth. That is to say, right there, where our outer dying is given a transcendent meaning, our dying is no longer done in vain. In His suffering and death, Jesus had recognised a necessity for Himself, namely that through His death a new spiritual consciousness would be created that would benefit all people who seek it. His individual sacrifice, His suffering and death bore „fruit“ for many – for all those who in turn can now give and leave their lives in His spirit, whereby they too experience renewal through the spirit: This is the principle of resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of an understanding of life that has already here and now transcended the time-bound and the superficial:

Those who say, „The Lord died first and then rose again“ are in error. For He first rose and then died. If anyone does not first obtain the resurrection, he will die.
Gospel of Philip Proverbs 21

It is a timeless, an eternal understanding of life, which cannot be diminished or hindered by anything in the world, but which now receives promotion through all events, even through injustice, suffering and death, as Jesus taught:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Do you believe this?
John 11:25, 26

This is by no means an exhaustive answer to the question of theodicy, but this contribution could perhaps give an impression of the fullness of Jesus‘ message. Additionally, I do not wish to tire the reader. Therefore, I look forward to your critical questions and comments, which I will gladly reply to here. And so I conclude with the words of Jesus:

In the world you are afraid; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
John 16, 33

Christus der Überwinder — Die Auferstehung – Isenheimer Altar/Colmar

The Resurrection – The Isenheim Altar / Colmar 1512-1516 – Artist: Matthias Grünewald

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The biblical sources

Jesus‘ image of God

The will of God – the cause of all things

God constantly produces new life

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For the forgiveness of sins

Childship to God

As a ransom for many

Summary:

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What is meant by the truth that Jesus Himself embodied?

What is sin?

The story of the Fall

The two aspects of the Fall

The consequences of sin

Sin and the wrath of God

God’s Wrath – The Consequence of Contradiction against God

Sin, suffering and death

The good aspect of sin

The righteousness of the sinner

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