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Showing posts from May 1, 2011

How Did Jesus Obey?

He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death... (Philippians 2:8) Why would obedience lead to death? What is obedience really? It must mean something different than the external, behavior-centered, appearance-maintaining kind of obedience that I grew up familiar with. Death in our thinking is very often viewed in the religious perspective as a punishment. Because we think so pervasively in legal terms we assume that death is the punishment for disobedience. But this verse doesn't bear that out since Jesus never sinned. And I reject the notion that Jesus performed legal fiction by His death to appease an angry Father. That simply is part of the great lies and accusations of the deceiver. Yes, Jesus took the consequences of our sins upon Himself in His death. But consequences of sin are not imposed but rather are natural results of violations of natural principles of reality. The only arbitrary thing about Jesus' death was that it was unnatural – in other word