Just Before the Crucifixion

186:5.1There is no di­rect re­la­tion be­tween the death of Je­sus and the Jew­ish Pass­over. True, the Mas­ter did lay down his life in the flesh on this day, the day of the prepa­ra­tion for the Jew­ish Pass­over, and at about the time of the sac­ri­fic­ing of the Pass­over lambs in the tem­ple. But this co­in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence does not in any man­ner in­di­cate that the death of the Son of Man on earth has any con­nec­tion with the Jew­ish sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem. Je­sus was a Jew, but as the Son of Man he was a mor­tal of the realms. The events al­ready nar­rated and lead­ing up to this hour of the Mas­ter’s im­pend­ing cru­ci­fix­ion are suf­fi­cient to in­di­cate that his death at about this time was a purely nat­u­ral and man-man­aged af­fair.

186:5.2It was man and not God who planned and ex­e­cuted the death of Je­sus on the cross. True, the Fa­ther re­fused to in­ter­fere with the march of hu­man events on Uran­tia, but the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise did not de­cree, de­mand, or re­quire the death of his Son as it was car­ried out on earth. It is a fact that in some man­ner, sooner or later, Je­sus would have had to di­vest him­self of his mor­tal body, his in­car­na­tion in the flesh, but he could have ex­e­cuted such a task in count­less ways with­out dy­ing on a cross be­tween two thieves. All of this was man’s do­ing, not God’s.

186:5.3At the time of the Mas­ter’s bap­tism he had al­ready com­pleted the tech­nique of the re­quired ex­pe­ri­ence on earth and in the flesh which was nec­es­sary for the com­ple­tion of his sev­enth and last uni­verse be­stowal. At this very time Je­sus’ duty on earth was done. All the life he lived there­after, and even the man­ner of his death, was a purely per­sonal min­istry on his part for the wel­fare and up­lift­ing of his mor­tal crea­tures on this world and on other worlds.

186:5.4The gospel of the good news that mor­tal man may, by faith, be­come spirit-con­scious that he is a son of God, is not de­pen­dent on the death of Je­sus. True, in­deed, all this gospel of the king­dom has been tremen­dously il­lu­mi­nated by the Mas­ter’s death, but even more so by his life.

186:5.5All that the Son of Man said or did on earth greatly em­bel­lished the doc­trines of son­ship with God and of the broth­er­hood of men, but these es­sen­tial re­la­tion­ships of God and men are in­her­ent in the uni­verse facts of God’s love for his crea­tures and the in­nate mercy of the di­vine Sons. These touch­ing and di­vinely beau­ti­ful re­la­tions be­tween man and his Maker, on this world and on all oth­ers through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses, have ex­isted from eter­nity; and they are not in any sense de­pen­dent on these pe­ri­odic be­stowal en­act­ments of the Cre­ator Sons of God, who thus as­sume the na­ture and like­ness of their cre­ated in­tel­li­gences as a part of the price which they must pay for the fi­nal ac­quire­ment of un­lim­ited sov­er­eignty over their re­spec­tive lo­cal uni­verses.

186:5.6The Fa­ther in heaven loved mor­tal man on earth just as much be­fore the life and death of Je­sus on Uran­tia as he did af­ter this tran­scen­dent ex­hi­bi­tion of the co­part­ner­ship of man and God. This mighty trans­ac­tion of the in­car­na­tion of the God of Neb­a­don as a man on Uran­tia could not aug­ment the at­tri­butes of the eter­nal, in­fi­nite, and uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but it did en­rich and en­lighten all other ad­min­is­tra­tors and crea­tures of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don. While the Fa­ther in heaven loves us no more be­cause of this be­stowal of Mi­chael, all other ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences do. And this is be­cause Je­sus not only made a rev­e­la­tion of God to man, but he also like­wise made a new rev­e­la­tion of man to the Gods and to the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

186:5.7Je­sus is not about to die as a sac­ri­fice for sin. He is not go­ing to atone for the in­born moral guilt of the hu­man race. Man­kind has no such racial guilt be­fore God. Guilt is purely a mat­ter of per­sonal sin and know­ing, de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the will of the Fa­ther and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of his Sons.

186:5.8Sin and re­bel­lion have noth­ing to do with the fun­da­men­tal be­stowal plan of the Par­a­dise Sons of God, al­beit it does ap­pear to us that the sal­vage plan is a pro­vi­sional fea­ture of the be­stowal plan.

186:5.9The sal­va­tion of God for the mor­tals of Uran­tia would have been just as ef­fec­tive and unerringly cer­tain if Je­sus had not been put to death by the cruel hands of ig­no­rant mor­tals. If the Mas­ter had been fa­vor­ably re­ceived by the mor­tals of earth and had de­parted from Uran­tia by the vol­un­tary re­lin­quish­ment of his life in the flesh, the fact of the love of God and the mercy of the Son—the fact of son­ship with God—would have in no wise been af­fected. You mor­tals are the sons of God, and only one thing is re­quired to make such a truth fac­tual in your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and that is your spirit-born faith.