Note: I first wrote and published this years ago. I occasionally revise and republish it.
Two thousand years ago, a carpenter lived a conventional life for 30 years in a tiny village in the Middle East. Then something got into him. He became, as they might say today, “radicalized” for the last three years of his short life.
Historians agree that Jesus did exist. There are reliable ancient records of him. But most of what we know are opaque and contradictory accounts written decades after his death in what we now call the Gospel of the New Testament.
In one sense, those Gospel accounts are profoundly simple. They say Jesus was the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible. As such, he performed miracles to save those needing saving. He came back from the dead. That’s the word.
But in a personal sense, the Gospels present a more complicated man than the one presented in Sunday School or even adult church services.
Read the Gospels yourself. In his three years of radicalism, Jesus railed against the religious establishment that charged tolls on the road to heaven, as religions often do. And he had no use for the occupying Roman pagans. But he regarded neither as the real enemy.
With compassion he cured the sinners and detritus who were shunned by his ancient society, including prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, the crippled and the blind. But he often suggested that their condition was not medical or circumstantial. Rather, it was spiritual – a lack of faith.
He judged people even as he admonished them not to judge others. He came to serve, not to be served, but he instructed those he served to serve his father. He forgave those he judged and took no payment, but demanded something harder than payment: “Sin no more.”
His patience was superhuman, except with his rag-tag band of friends who often exasperated him. He all but muttered, “Geez, I’m surrounded by idiots!”
But he trusted those friends to be the rock upon which he and they might found a world-changing faith. Most of them did not disappoint.
He had a wry sense of humor and was occasionally sarcastic. He taught kindness and forgiveness but had a temper. Enraged that merchants at the temple traded on God, he trashed the place.
He and his friends drank a lot of wine. When they ran out, he made more.
He was tempted and occasionally afraid. He was coy about who and what he was. A reader of the Gospels is left wondering whether he himself wasn’t sure till the end. He seldom called himself the son of God, but often called himself the son of man.
He preached that this world doesn’t matter as much as the kingdom to come. For that, some thought he might be insane.
But he was strong. He went to Jerusalem for his trial and death. There the people betrayed him, as he knew they would, mocked him and scourged him to the bone. He dragged through the streets the crossed timbers of his impending torture and execution as a rebel and blasphemer.
That was his plan all along. In his final hours, he endured agonizing pain inflicted by those he came to save. With his last breath he cried out, “Lord, why have you forsaken me?”
He was fully a man, and more. I’d give anything to have a beer with him.
Humanity’s view of Christ changed in the two millennia after the Gospels. This most masculine of men became feminized. The medieval church seeking to domesticate the masses portrayed him as a pacifist and a weakling — a soother and a smoother — perhaps because that’s what they wanted from their customers.
While plump priests and popes bedecked themselves in jeweled crowns and silk robes, Christ was portrayed as a doleful, skinny, humorless, hippie vegan with long hair parted in the middle, sometimes holding a lamb.
But men in the time of Christ did not have long woman’s hair and did not carry around lambs. Carpenters then and now are not skinny, but sturdy. They don’t cuddle cute pets, their muscular arms wield hammers. They’re not victims, they’re builders.
Christ came to build, and he succeeded like no one before or after.
Christ’s unpredictability and contradictions confuse me, and the church’s creepy stylization of him is even more perplexing. It’s well worth trying to understand him but I still don’t fully and probably never will, at least not in this world. I have a hunch he wants it that way.
But I do know this. He’s not my mom. He’s not there to dry my tears or tell me I’m special or ward off things that go bump in the night. The Lion of Judah fights a fiercer foe.
the Aspen beat 
Many times I have asked shepherds and Christians to tell me what the fearful cup held for Yeshua that would have him saying “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”; crying, sweating blood and praying “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will”. Twice more Yeshua prayed “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”
There is much weight given to his anticipation of scourging, death and sacrifice for the sins of man and bearing the wrath of G†d as in the days of old as the cup; the lamb of G†d sacrificed to atone for the sins of mankind by taking all of the sin upon himself; the pain of dying to be suffered on the cross…a pain experienced by tens of thousands and shared by two thieves the same day. Sorry, pain and death held no mystery for Yeshua.
Such is the view from the unstable sand at sea level upon which most Christians stand. Yeshua would bear the burden of sin…but not in the way most Christians believe in that one does not sit next to God when covered with sin. HaShem sacrificed pristine human being “like a son” Yeshua, and though symbolic as were the Exodus paschal lambs Yeshua meant the world, literally, to HaShem.
I am not the only one who knows death and scourging held no mystery for Yeshua and yet being the son of man Yeshua would have to experience death as a man experiences death along with the pain that goes with that death; crying would be understandable but Yeshua was no ordinary man. When viewed through the lenses of convergence just how extraordinary and heroic he actually was in terms humans can understand comes to the fore.
Reason alone in the context of a plan and scripture provides the truth; G†d is just and in his infinite wisdom knew that Yeshua would have to live life as a man and experience all aspects of life as a man including joy, disappointment, temptation and pain to be the empathetic advocate and just judge G†d demands;* divine justice is operative*. Yeshua is a unique individual designed for the task of judging;* “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son”.*
In order to be the empathetic advocate and just judge G†d fully intended, Yeshua must be made aware of every sin a man has lowered himself to since time began on an individual basis while retaining his human character; he was crying and agonizing right to the last minute about the truly agonizing weight of having to judge, the cup, and when in judgment Yeshua would have to expose himself to every sin committed in exacting detail while retaining his human character to moderate the weights on the scale; it is only in that way Yeshua is bearing human sin.
It is a cup the odor of which would destroy an average human being.
The usual explanation for the agony on the cross is that it was “payment” for the sins of mankind. I’ve always thought that explanation is problematic. Why would a just God demand — or accept — payment from his son for sins committed by others?
Your brief essay presents an angle I’d never thought of. Thank you for your comment. G
It’s what I always believed.
You are quite welcome. May I suggest going to adlervonpfingsten.net to read Pamphlet No.2 Mankind’s Final Test of Reason which provides answers from the higher vantage where God exists.
The physical agony on the cross alone wasn’t even close to being enough. Many men have suffer that physical agony. In addition to the physical agony, Christ suffered spiritual agony, in the garden (which agony caused sweet of blood) and on the cross, culminating when the Father completely withdrew His Spirit leaving Christ totally and utterly alone.
With that suffering Christ (a God, without sin) brought repentance and forgiveness to the world. So now, without violation of the law of justice, (a punishment for every transgression), mercy can now be extended to the penitent.
Love was His motive for taking on suffering and death.
So now, Justice is served in whole, Mercy can be extended, and Love is full manifest.
That’s the explanation I’m not so sure of, Bill.
Sin demands punishment, but it seems to me that to inflict that punishment on somebody other than the one who commited the sin, is a second sin. If you steal, it’s not justice for me to serve your time. If you murder, it’s not right that I’m the one to get executed.