​What Salvation is and what it is not.

The majority of Christianity (more specifically, a majority of Western Christianity) misunderstands Salvation from God(F,S,S) at a fundamental level. Salvation is a person, the LOGOS (Jesus), who is the fullness of God in human form.

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We have been taught that Salvation is something we gain, not a relational connection with the F,S,S. The imagery we have been given is that of a ticket to not go to hell (a concept not understood well, either). Salvation is perceived as being acquired by cancellation of a debt as if God doesn't have the infinite ability to pay off any kind of debt. The reality is that Salvation is a relational position that we have been granted as our created purpose, and that even our worst experiences of alienation from God and relational "debt" can't be eliminated. Salvation is not an end result. It is a healing and restoration only found in our identity with & in Jesus.

 

Jesus is the gift already given to all. A gift unrealized to those of us who are lost to it. We have refused to receive and experience it. To the lost it is an invitation not accepted and not experienced. Not a gift taken away. Any "taking away" iis only through our delusions of "separation from God."

God has provided Salvation to all, whether all believe it or not. No person can prevent this infinite gift of God from being given. As hinted above at the failure of the religious to understand what "Salvation" is, religion balks at understanding Salvation as a person because religion doesn't recognize Salvation to be Jesus. Relegion believes it is instead something Jesus does for you, and only when you ask for it in the "right" way. To the religious, "Salvation" is something you get, not who  God says you are. Religion understands "Salvation" to be something that happens to us, not a person who invites us to participate with&in their life. Salvation is better understood in terms of salvation being ongoing.  Jesus has saved us, is saving us and will save us!

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Salvation is a journey of seeing yourself and others as God(F,S,S) sees you. This is how Jesus heals us of our spiritual blindness.

​Salvation is NOT an appeasement that is somehow both required by God and provided by God through Jesus. 

That said, Salvation is through and by Jesus [the fullness of God(F,S,S) in human form] as revealed in the incarnation.

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Salvation is of the very fiber of the Relationship of the F,S,S‘s. It is not something from our contract-based transactional perspective, in which a large number of Christians are stuck. The human concept of "justice" is a significant obstacle that keeps people stuck in a toxic understanding of Salvation.

Our potential (created by God) to be ONE with the F,S,S is only experienced with&in Jesus as our WAY of becoming ONE with&in the Relationship of the F,S,S.

Analogy, I am designed to become a father, but I can’t do it by myself.

Jesus heals us and restores us of (from) our missing the mark (sin). Jesus is the mark. Fundamentally speaking, Jesus was not a sacrifice as we think of the concept of sacrifice through our modern understanding of the Old Testament sacrificial system, which was God‘s response to pagan sacrificial systems.

The sacrifice of Jesus is better understood as a “gift sacrifice“, not as a ritual victim to appease God, but as the ultimate gift of a human life fully surrendered to revealing that God‘s presence dwells within humanity rather than in a temple (building).

Salvation is becoming ONE with&in the Relationship of God(F,S,S) through and by Jesus, which is our healing and restoration. The incarnation is our invitation to experience our healing and restoration to whom the F,S,S created us to be.

 

Sacrifice within sacrificial systems
 

Understanding that our (modern Christian's) perspectives on "sacrifice" within sacrificial systems differ from those of the Old Testament and the Early Church. A starting point is to return to the book of Leviticus for a more Scriptural understanding of what sacrifice meant, rather than what we (modern humans) think it means in our modern context. 
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In Andrew Remington Rillera's Lamb of the Free, the "sacrifice" of Jesus on the cross is understood as a gift, not a penalty required by God, because the biblical sacrificial system was never about substitutionary punishment. Rillera argues that the logic of "penal substitution"—where God requires a death to satisfy "God's justice"—is a complete misunderstanding of the Levitical system. Instead, sacrifice in the Bible is primarily about gift-giving, communion, and purgation (cleansing).

 

Traditionally speaking, Native Americans see the animals they hunt and kill as a gift.

After reading the first chapter of the Lamb of the Free the immediate analogy (an anology not in the book) that the Holy Spirit presented to me was the significant reverence that has been depicted throughout the years in regard to most native american cultures towards the animals they hunted and killed. The animals they hunted were sacrid to them because they saw the animals as a gift from the Creator. They were not killing the animals because they needed to releave some desire to kill. They did not kill for the sake of killing. They received the "gift of life" that the animals provided. Every part of the animals had an appliation in their culture. Every animal's life was a gift. This imagery was a gift to me to help me understand the Levitical sacrifices, which were way closer to what native American's experienced when they killed animals, than what I thought I understood about Israel's sacrificial system. In fact, throughout the OT and "bleeding" into the NT God is inviting Israel out of the pagan sacrificial systems. God was fliping the nature and meaning of "sacrifice" for them. Not just in Jesus (the Logos) as the final word of invitation to understad "sacrifice" as a gift, but even back to Abraham in Genesis 15 and . NO more killing to appease angry god's. 

 

God's Covenant with Abraham
 

The primary passage where God(F,S,S) cuts a covenant with Abraham (then Abram) is Genesis 15, especially verses 9-21. There, God instructs Abram to prepare animals, puts him into a deep sleep, and symbolically passes through the divided pieces as a smoking firepot and blazing torch, sealing the unilateral promise of land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. This act, often called "cutting a covenant," confirms God's commitment to Abram's offspring without requiring Abram to pass through, emphasizing divine faithfulness. This was symbolic sacrifice as a gift, not as appeasement. It is also a foreshadowing of Jesus. Remember that Abram was a "pagan." He spoke the language of sacrificial systems. God was meeting him where he was at in a way Abram would understand.

The imagery in "cutting a covenant" is that of an agreement where the animal is cut in half and both parties walk through the middle of the bloody sacrifice with the understanding that if either party were to break their agreement that the same would be done to the one who breaks the agreement. In God puting Abram to sleep, God is effectively saying I will take the responsibility and suffering for both of us. He would not allow Abram to participate in the consiquences if Abram did not keep his end of the agreement. This is what we see in the fullness of God(F,S,S) in human form (Jesus). This is some of the imagery of the gift that was given to all of humanity.

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Abraham's Near-Sacrifice of Isaac
 

This event, known as the Binding of Isaac or Akedah, is in Genesis 22:1-19. God tests Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah as a burnt offering; Abraham obeys, prepares the altar, but an angel stops him at the last moment, providing a ram instead. The episode highlights Abraham's faith, with God reaffirming the covenant blessings in verses 15-18.

 

Once again, God is using the sacrificial sytems familiar to Abraham to invite Abraham out of them. As we move throughout the Old Testament we see God changing the meaning of the sacrificial symbolizism and language. God is redefining what it means to the nations by giving Israel a sacrificial system that looks similar in some ways, but has opposite meanings.

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Jesus's Death as a Gift. Not a Requirement by God, but a Gift from God.
 

From this perspective, Jesus’s death was not a transaction to pay a debt or appease God the Father's "wrath." Instead, it was a "sacrifice" in the sense of a total self-offering. Jesus lived a life of such radical solidarity with the Father and with humanity and such complete obedience to the truth of God’s presence that he was willing to give his life as a gift to reveal that truth.

God did not "require" the blood of Jesus to be able to forgive; rather, Jesus offered his life to reveal that God is already present within us and that the old systems of animal sacrifice (which were only preparatory) are no longer needed and never desired by God(F,S,S). The gift is the revelation of God's immediate presence, which Jesus enacted by surrendering his life to the very end.
 

Understanding the Meaning of "Taking Up Our Cross" as Jesus did
 

This shift from sacrifice as "penalty" to "gift" fundamentally changes what it means to follow Jesus and "take up our cross":

• The sacrificial system way of thinking - Avoiding Punishment: If Jesus died "so we don't have to" (substitution), then the cross is something we are glad to avoid. 

• The Jesus way of thinking - Manifesting the Life (Power) of Love: If Jesus died as a gift to show us how to live (participation), then taking up our cross is the way we enter into the same life of God(F,S,S). We don't carry a cross as a burden for our sins; we carry our cross it to give our lives away in love, just as Jesus did.

• From Transaction to Transformation: Following Jesus is no longer about relying on a past legal transaction to get into heaven. It becomes a participatory phenomenon. As Rillera notes, "Jesus died for us, but this does not mean that Jesus died instead of us. It means that he died ahead of and with us." Taking up the cross means dying to the ego and the "sacrificial systems" of manipulation and control so that the life of God can be lived out through us.

• Union Over Escape: The cross is an invitation to radical solidarity with the suffering of the world. Instead of a "substitutionary framework" that can actually "corrode the logic of Christian discipleship" (by making us think the work is already done for us), the "gift" framework empowers us to become "living sacrifices." We follow Jesus by becoming the same kind of gift to others that he was to us.
   

In short, taking up our cross is not about seeking suffering or paying a debt; it is the act of leaving the sacrificial systems we have adopted in our own lives behind by recognizing that we are invited to follow the same path as Jesus. These sacrificial systems are unfortunately "alive" and present in our modern day Christian Churches. We embrace the revelation that we are the "temple" where the F,S,S dwells, and our "sacrifice" is the joyful embrace of the gift of God for our lives and for the benefit of the lives of the others who have yet to receive and embrace Jesus as the gift! Jesus as the gift from God, involves the revelation of who we are. This statement is not saying this life is void of pain and suffering in this world.

It is vital for us to remember that Jesus as the gift of God to us is Infinite! The sorrows, pain and suffering that we experience in this world are finite. So, the sorrows, pain and suffering are no less real, but they are limited. Our life with&in the relationship of God(F,S,S) is something way more. It is Infinite. When we begin to understand that the F,S,S's version of sacrifice is the opposite of man's, we understand that we are more than conquers.

“But in all these things we conquer beyond (we are more-than-victorious) through the one who loved us.” Romans 8:37 

Literal English translation of Koine Greek: ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τούτοις πᾶσιν ὑπερνικῶμεν διὰ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος ἡμᾶς.