It’s the way: not pay. The best leader you can have is the one that will take his edicts and demonstrate them for you in the leader’s life. Hear me out so you can understand what I mean—the cross is not a payment for sins but a demonstration of God’s way of life. It is the direction of all governmental solutions in the kingdom of God. When Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” he was describing the citizens of his kingdom. Don’t let people say this demonstrates some masochistic life; they are ridiculously missing the point. The question comes: what ends will you personally reach to make your life and the life of others successful?
Yet, with this explanation of the cross of Jesus, we talk about something more than a mere leader. Think about the Supreme Being we worship? How much would his example reflect his edicts? Love your neighbor as yourself. The example would go clear to the end to the depths of its possibilities, death! How much further can you go than that! Although humans give their lives for the cause of good, no sacrifice comes even close to Jesus on the cross.
When it comes to paying some evil banker for our salvation, that evil banker will end up being The Father, demanding such a payment. What kind of sovereign God would spew out that demand? What kind of love would you get from this, to set up such a requirement merely to artificially impress us—to supposedly pay for something we did? No, the truth goes in a different direction. Our leader, the king, leads the way. He says pick up your cross and follow me. He blazes the trail and takes the major beating, and we follow him imitating him to maintain what it takes for life to be of heaven. It is the measure of a true leader, the one worthy of leading the universe unto salvation minute by minute, forever.
Nobody can stand in for you to take your punishment; that’s a stupid idea, entirely made up. This stand-in idea is a deception to create an economic system of rightful and sinful transactions, a fallacious system—which draws a beautiful love on a nonexistent foundation. How incredible and shocking is the civil war hero that stands in for a man with a family to take the man’s bullet in a firing squad. In reality, the accommodation releases the man to his family, but it will never free the man from his guilt. This accommodation, enabling such transaction, is arbitrary and ineffective to replace the power of simple forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the key to salvation for all the hosts of the universe. Jesus showed it freely given when on the cross he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” This demonstration occurred while Jesus, the son of God, showed the way contradicting Satan’s way—that contrary direction—claiming to make us like God. Jesus’ way is the way Satan detests, the way that will spare no sacrifice to maintain the perfect atmosphere of the kingdom of heaven forever and ever.
