Only a few days are left before Easter, and our hearts and minds turn to the Atonement, the bloody sacrifice God made for us of himself offered for mankind past, present and future.
While this is the doctrine that sets our religion apart. it is the most difficult thing in the world to comprehend.
Our 20th century prophet to the people, C. S. Lewis, claimed to have trouble understanding it. His depiction of the death and resurrection of Aslan sort of makes the top layer of the Atonement understandable, but in the end, Lewis can only explain it to us as "deeper magic."
"Greater love hath no man than to give up his life for his friends. Ye are my friends." Perhaps Christ's explanation is the closest thing to understandable to me.
Christ is a mortal representationof the immortal Lord of Life. His birth and death sancitify all our lives--that he is willing to become one of us makes our form holy--even I can understand that part.
Jesus's sinless sacrifice isn't just the death of a mortal man, but a bloody sacrifice of the most powerful force and mass in the universe. If you can fully comprehend this in all its meanings, quantum physics should be a snap for you.
I think one of the points of the Atonement IS that its entirety is unknowable to us at this time. When we are with Christ is heaven, we will understand all sorts of things we see darlky through a glass now.
In the meantime, all we know is that it is our job to love God and to love our neighbors. This is our commandment. Only through the atonement can we do it. Let us turn our lives toward accomplishing those things Christ asked of us until the veil is parted and we understand how, really, God has honored us with his sacrifice.
Happy Easter everyone!
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