Traditional religious interpretations have been that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice necessary to wash away the sins of mankind. That this blood was a condition to this washing away of sins.

While there is nothing wrong with the concept of sacrifice as indeed this was necessary for the preservation of the Message of Jesus, the fact that this sacrifice has now been turned around to represent something which is less than the original aim is what is so difficult to accept. Christ sacrificed Himself for the sake of the Teaching He brought so that we might continue to have this Teaching and through It and through adherence to It we might save ourselves. If He had fled physical suffering or had denied His origin or even disavowed His Teaching, He might well have saved Himself. But then He would have been a footnote in history and today there would have been no Christianity.

The preservation of His Teaching is what has been bought at an enormous sacrifice. An enormous price indeed was paid for this Teaching. He decided that it would be better for Him to die for what He brought and believed in than for Him to save Himself from physical torture. So He had to shed His Blood. But this Blood does not automatically wash anybody’s sins away just like that. It is the strict adherence to His Teaching which has been wrought at such an enormous price that will do it. There is no vicarious washing away of sins. We must make all the effort required in this respect.

There are many quotations in the Bible from Jesus Himself stressing the importance of righteousness. For example “Whatever a man sows that shall he reap”. There is nothing here that says that Jesus shall reap anyone’s sins. For believers, if we truly believe and truly adhere to His Teachings, of course our sins will be forgiven but only gradually as soon as our good volitions counterbalance the evil that was done previously.

He also mentioned that we must be “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). These are all the injunctions to make the effort as regards our personal salvation. In Revelations we are told of people who have made their robes clean with the Blood of the Lamb. This indicates that they have done it themselves. They have madetheir robes clean. The torn curtain of the Holy of Holies which occurred at the moment when Jesus died has been interpreted as an important symbol denoting henceforth that the separation between mankind and the Divine is now removed. That mankind through this are no longer separated from God.

The events in mankind’s history is enough to dispute this claim. The separation is all the greater. The curtain was torn because mankind had signified its rejection of the Law of God as explained through Jesus and to make matters worse had even dared to murder Him. The curtain was torn as a symbol of the greater gulf between mankind and God and to signify that Divinity would never set foot on this earth again.

Some say that it was predicted. Yes it was but this does not mean that it must happen. Some prophecies are given for the sake of preventing evil events from occurring. That particular prophecy was given as a warning to mankind that they would kill the Messiah if they continued in their self chosen paths. We were meant to have changed our ways. For example, if there had been a vision or an evil prophecy against an individual, that prophecy would have been given as the fate that would befall that individual sometime in the future if he does not change his ways. The prophecy was given according to how he stands spiritually at that particular time. If he changes inwardly, of course the prophecy would not be fulfilled and he would have changed his fate. As it applies to individuals so to mankind as a whole.

According to how mankind stood in their hostility to the Light, it was seen that if we did not change our ways, by the time of the Incarnation of Jesus it was highly probable that He would indeed be killed. If mankind had taken this to heart and been on the lookout then this would never have happened. There are no forgone conclusions as far as prophesies are concerned.

The fact that Jesus still came in spite of the risks involved showed not only the Love of God but also the desperate spiritual plight of mankind. Without this Message, it would have been impossible to save even the few who were still good amongst us. We had sunk so low spiritually that in centuries to come mankind we would have descended to such a level that it would have been absolutely impossible to save even those who were still good.

Hence the absolute necessity for the coming of Jesus. There were still a few human beings who were still yearning for God and these few would irretrievably have been destroyed since there would have been no other way of bringing enlightenment to them in time. For the sake of these few, because all the prophets had failed and also because the prophets would not have been sufficient for this, a Part of God Himself had to come as the Living Word which human beings could cling to for their salvation.

Only the undimmed Truth Itself as personified by Jesus could transmit so much power as to be able to penetrate the darkness of the souls of mankind. No other power would have been able to achieve it. Not from human prophets, no one. We should therefore not make light of what we have here and should not allow ourselves to accept explanations and interpretations which lull us to sleep and prevent us from realising the importance and the absolute necessity of adhering to Jesus’ Message. When He says that He is the only Way to Salvation, then indeed His Teaching, His Word which He embodied is the only Way. The preservation of that Word among mankind is what He died for.