The Time of the Tomb

188:4.1Al­though Je­sus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mor­tal man nor to pro­vide some sort of ef­fec­tive ap­proach to an oth­er­wise of­fended and un­for­giv­ing God; even though the Son of Man did not of­fer him­self as a sac­ri­fice to ap­pease the wrath of God and to open the way for sin­ful man to ob­tain sal­va­tion; not­with­stand­ing that these ideas of atone­ment and pro­pi­ti­a­tion are er­ro­neous, nonethe­less, there are sig­nif­i­cances at­tached to this death of Je­sus on the cross which should not be over­looked. It is a fact that Uran­tia has be­come known among other neigh­bor­ing in­hab­ited plan­ets as the “World of the Cross.”

188:4.2Je­sus de­sired to live a full mor­tal life in the flesh on Uran­tia. Death is, or­di­nar­ily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mor­tal drama. In your well-meant ef­forts to es­cape the su­per­sti­tious er­rors of the false in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the mean­ing of the death on the cross, you should be care­ful not to make the great mis­take of fail­ing to per­ceive the true sig­nif­i­cance and the gen­uine im­port of the Mas­ter’s death.

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

188:4.4Be­fore Je­sus lived on earth, you might pos­si­bly have been jus­ti­fied in be­liev­ing in such a God, but not since the Mas­ter lived and died among your fel­low mor­tals. Moses taught the dig­nity and jus­tice of a Cre­ator God; but Je­sus por­trayed the love and mercy of a heav­enly Fa­ther.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

188:4.6Je­sus lived and died for a whole uni­verse, not just for the races of this one world. While the mor­tals of the realms had sal­va­tion even be­fore Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, it is nev­er­the­less a fact that his be­stowal on this world greatly il­lu­mi­nated the way of sal­va­tion; his death did much to make for­ever plain the cer­tainty of mor­tal sur­vival af­ter death in the flesh.

188:4.7Though it is hardly proper to speak of Je­sus as a sac­ri­fi­cer, a ran­somer, or a re­deemer, it is wholly cor­rect to re­fer to him as a sav­ior. He for­ever made the way of sal­va­tion (sur­vival) more clear and cer­tain; he did bet­ter and more surely show the way of sal­va­tion for all the mor­tals of all the worlds of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

188:4.8When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and lov­ing Fa­ther, the only con­cept which Je­sus ever taught, you must forth­with, in all con­sis­tency, ut­terly aban­don all those prim­i­tive no­tions about God as an of­fended monarch, a stern and all-pow­er­ful ruler whose chief de­light is to de­tect his sub­jects in wrong­do­ing and to see that they are ad­e­quately pun­ished, un­less some be­ing al­most equal to him­self should vol­un­teer to suf­fer for them, to die as a sub­sti­tute and in their stead. The whole idea of ran­som and atone­ment is in­com­pat­i­ble with the con­cept of God as it was taught and ex­em­pli­fied by Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. The in­fi­nite love of God is not sec­ondary to any­thing in the di­vine na­ture.

188:4.9All this con­cept of atone­ment and sac­ri­fi­cial sal­va­tion is rooted and grounded in self­ish­ness. Je­sus taught that ser­vice to one’s fel­lows is the high­est con­cept of the broth­er­hood of spirit be­liev­ers. Sal­va­tion should be taken for granted by those who be­lieve in the fa­ther­hood of God. The be­liever’s chief con­cern should not be the self­ish de­sire for per­sonal sal­va­tion but rather the un­selfish urge to love and, there­fore, serve one’s fel­lows even as Je­sus loved and served mor­tal men.

188:4.10Nei­ther do gen­uine be­liev­ers trou­ble them­selves so much about the fu­ture pun­ish­ment of sin. The real be­liever is only con­cerned about pres­ent sep­a­ra­tion from God. True, wise fa­thers may chas­ten their sons, but they do all this in love and for cor­rec­tive pur­poses. They do not pun­ish in anger, nei­ther do they chas­tise in ret­ri­bu­tion.

188:4.11Even if God were the stern and le­gal monarch of a uni­verse in which jus­tice ruled su­preme, he cer­tainly would not be sat­is­fied with the child­ish scheme of sub­sti­tut­ing an in­no­cent suf­ferer for a guilty of­fender.

188:4.12The great thing about the death of Je­sus, as it is re­lated to the en­rich­ment of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and the en­large­ment of the way of sal­va­tion, is not the fact of his death but rather the su­perb man­ner and the match­less spirit in which he met death.

188:4.13This en­tire idea of the ran­som of the atone­ment places sal­va­tion upon a plane of un­re­al­ity; such a con­cept is purely philo­sophic. Hu­man sal­va­tion is real; it is based on two re­al­i­ties which may be grasped by the crea­ture’s faith and thereby be­come in­cor­po­rated into in­di­vid­ual hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: the fact of the fa­ther­hood of God and its cor­re­lated truth, the broth­er­hood of man. It is true, af­ter all, that you are to be “for­given your debts, even as you for­give your debtors.”