Saved from Death, not saved from sin

“Jesus came not to make bad men good, but rather to make dead men live.

This phrase is often said by many Christian teachers (Fr Stephen Freeman, Ravi Zacharias, Rev Robert A Connor, Leonard Ravenhill, etc.).  According to Zacharias, this is a fundamental difference between the Way and other moralizing religions: it is about conquering DEATH (as St. Paul writes in 2 Corinithians: “where is your sting, Death?”).

The Orthodox takes this underpinning a bit further, or rather, carry out the theological implications to their ends.  Our disease is not sin; that is merely a symptom (perhaps the chief symptom).  Our enemy is Death. 

In meditating on this premise, I have been brought to consider the Jewish feasts which Jesus and His followers celebrated year-by-year for all their lives.  As Christians who have been adopted into – grafted into – the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we do not usually keep those Feast Days in any religious way.  And we tend to read about them as facts of history.  Some of us may read of them as symbolic types which have their true fulfillment in Messiah.  Okay.  Good enough.  And I am not writing to complain about “Judaizers who want Goyim to become Jewish” or “anti-Nomians who reject any rules”.  Rather, this is a narrow consideration of the meaning and significance of Passover.

The story of Passover is God’s deliverance from the Angel of Death who afflicted the firstborn of all Egypt (and anyone who did not shed the lamb’s blood and decorate their doors with it).  Passover did not forgive their sins or atone for their sins.  Passover’s sacrifice delivered from Death.

Jesus died on the Cross at Passover as our Sacrifice Lamb.  His shed blood is our escape from Death, just as the blood on the first Passover was Israel’s escape (Israel and anyone who came under their tent).  The angel of Death passes over us because of what Jesus did, as the one perfect sacrificial Lamb of God.

Jesus came to make dead men live.