Locating the Atonement of Jesus Christ at the BEGINNING of Our Lives
I think the atonement of Jesus Christ is one of the most misunderstood doctrines of the Christian church. What the Bible actually teaches is hard to wrestle through, from what is said . . . to what is meant. I am not sure that what I say is going to be much easier, but let's give it a go.
First of all, we see the atonement at the wrong end of Jesus' life, sort of. It is true that the atonement is at the end of Jesus' life, but the end of his life was at his birth. Jesus Christ's birth is typically referred to as his incarnation, and it is correct that his incarnation begins here. But his birth--his "incarnation"--is his entrance into DEATH, not life. Life is what he LEFT to become born here.
Jesus Christ is the link of the Father, the ineffable Most High God, to us. Jesus, our salvation, is the subtle, inner man within each of us, who is thinking that he is you and I. God "breathed" his spirit--his consciousness--into man, and that was Jesus Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, passing from consciousness of being God to consciousness of NOTHING. Everything about being God was forgotten: this is biblical "death."
Death happens at birth. This "life" is crucifixion, death and burial. It lasts the perfect and complete amount of time until everything is remembered and resurrection occurs: "three days"--however many "lives" that takes to overcome the ignorance that results from the forgetting.
Every man, woman and child is united to Christ at his death because at his death he BECAME every one of us. Every ignorant one. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that (because of which death) all have sinned" (Romans 5: 12). "Because of which (death) all have sinned" is in the Greek, but Christian theologians cannot translate it because it blows all of their theology to smithereens. They have it that we die because we sin. Paul said we sin because we DIED. We forgot the nature of God, who we are, and vary from that nature, the Law, because we took upon ourselves the ignorance of forgetting.
We--Jesus Christ--took upon ourselves the nature of ignorance in order to learn freedom. Rather than stay locked into the endless cycle of imagining the Father's imagining, we needed to learn to so imagine on our own. Just as the Father BECAME, so must we become. We are not going to do it in one lifetime, that is for sure, but our overall destiny is to become, each of us, the Manifestation of the Father.
So, when and where did we sin--i.e., vary from the nature of God? When we (Jesus Christ) "died" of that consciousness to become us. Who sinned against whom? It is actually Jesus Christ who (as us) SEEMS to vary from Jesus Christ the Manifestation of the Father, except all of this IS the process of the Father. When did Jesus Christ die to save us? When we were born. When were we forgiven for our sins? When Jesus Christ died for our lives--to become us. HE OWNS US, BECAUSE HE IS US.
Yes, we sin against God--ourselves and Jesus Christ, the Father--by living our lives under our own lordship. Self-lordship is rebellion as witchcraft. The individuality that we became in our ignorance is ours, but the Life that animates us is God's. We have been using his Life as though it were our own, and we need to surrender and submit to his lordship. What we are learning in this world is how to be the nature of the Ineffable---how to imagine AS Him.
The nature of the Ineffable can only be known through His imagining, Jesus Christ. "No one comes unto the Father but by me." It is odd, to be sure: there are two consciousnesses of God in us, though they are only one: the consciousness of Jesus Christ as us in our ignorance, and Jesus Christ, the Holy Consciousness of the Father. (If we delved deeper, I believe we would find more consciousnesses--the living creatures in Ezekiel had four faces.)
I hope you can reconcile these two together. Bring them face-to-face, like Moses faced the Angel of God in the burning bush, and Adam faced the Wisdom and Power of God in the Tree of Life: YOU face God. It is humbling, but dying to this "life" and being born again with a God-touched conscience is a great new start.
First of all, we see the atonement at the wrong end of Jesus' life, sort of. It is true that the atonement is at the end of Jesus' life, but the end of his life was at his birth. Jesus Christ's birth is typically referred to as his incarnation, and it is correct that his incarnation begins here. But his birth--his "incarnation"--is his entrance into DEATH, not life. Life is what he LEFT to become born here.
Jesus Christ is the link of the Father, the ineffable Most High God, to us. Jesus, our salvation, is the subtle, inner man within each of us, who is thinking that he is you and I. God "breathed" his spirit--his consciousness--into man, and that was Jesus Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, passing from consciousness of being God to consciousness of NOTHING. Everything about being God was forgotten: this is biblical "death."
Death happens at birth. This "life" is crucifixion, death and burial. It lasts the perfect and complete amount of time until everything is remembered and resurrection occurs: "three days"--however many "lives" that takes to overcome the ignorance that results from the forgetting.
Every man, woman and child is united to Christ at his death because at his death he BECAME every one of us. Every ignorant one. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that (because of which death) all have sinned" (Romans 5: 12). "Because of which (death) all have sinned" is in the Greek, but Christian theologians cannot translate it because it blows all of their theology to smithereens. They have it that we die because we sin. Paul said we sin because we DIED. We forgot the nature of God, who we are, and vary from that nature, the Law, because we took upon ourselves the ignorance of forgetting.
We--Jesus Christ--took upon ourselves the nature of ignorance in order to learn freedom. Rather than stay locked into the endless cycle of imagining the Father's imagining, we needed to learn to so imagine on our own. Just as the Father BECAME, so must we become. We are not going to do it in one lifetime, that is for sure, but our overall destiny is to become, each of us, the Manifestation of the Father.
So, when and where did we sin--i.e., vary from the nature of God? When we (Jesus Christ) "died" of that consciousness to become us. Who sinned against whom? It is actually Jesus Christ who (as us) SEEMS to vary from Jesus Christ the Manifestation of the Father, except all of this IS the process of the Father. When did Jesus Christ die to save us? When we were born. When were we forgiven for our sins? When Jesus Christ died for our lives--to become us. HE OWNS US, BECAUSE HE IS US.
Yes, we sin against God--ourselves and Jesus Christ, the Father--by living our lives under our own lordship. Self-lordship is rebellion as witchcraft. The individuality that we became in our ignorance is ours, but the Life that animates us is God's. We have been using his Life as though it were our own, and we need to surrender and submit to his lordship. What we are learning in this world is how to be the nature of the Ineffable---how to imagine AS Him.
The nature of the Ineffable can only be known through His imagining, Jesus Christ. "No one comes unto the Father but by me." It is odd, to be sure: there are two consciousnesses of God in us, though they are only one: the consciousness of Jesus Christ as us in our ignorance, and Jesus Christ, the Holy Consciousness of the Father. (If we delved deeper, I believe we would find more consciousnesses--the living creatures in Ezekiel had four faces.)
I hope you can reconcile these two together. Bring them face-to-face, like Moses faced the Angel of God in the burning bush, and Adam faced the Wisdom and Power of God in the Tree of Life: YOU face God. It is humbling, but dying to this "life" and being born again with a God-touched conscience is a great new start.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:32 AM
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