The atonement and me. The atonement is me. Did you ever think of the atonement of Christ as being that personal?
I was listening to this podcast on the atonement of Christ a couple of nights ago. I'd read the words before in a book called Come, Let Us Adore Him, but something struck me that I hadn't quite thought of before. I thought on it, I pondered on it. I want to share what came to me, and I hope that I make sense. This taps into a science we don't have access to at this time.
During the atonement, Jesus stepped outside of time and felt for every human being who had ever been born on this planet and who ever would be born here (or who had their ancestry here). We don't have a science that can replicate that, as far as I know. I'm not talking about woo-woo science nor subjective experiences. I'm talking about something that can be provably replicated.
This is what I understood: Jesus stepped outside of time and essentially became one with each individual. He walked in our shoes. He lived our lives with us (whether we had been born or not). He is with us now because of that crack in time that allowed him to go into eternity and somehow merge with each of us along the timeline of the earth.
He lived our illnesses, our wounds. He lived our hurts and our hurting of others. He lived our denial that we have hurt others. He lived our anger and vengeance toward someone who had victimized us. He lived our cruel pranks (on both sides). He knows because he has lived it, right alongside us, inside us as it were.
It sounds like some sort of science that says we are all living everything at the same "time" but not the same time. (How's that for not making sense?)
As he tapped into every soul, he overcame the darkness that is in every soul. Because of this act (which we can't seem to fully comprehend) he is literally with each one of us each day of our lives. Only a heartbeat away, willing to take away our pain and sorrows because he has already done so, from our birth to our judgment. He did it and he overcame, and because he was each one of us and overcame, he can fill us with his love (which is the thing he used as the tool to overcome) so that we, also, can overcome. Anything. We can overcome anything if we are willing to do so.
But he won't force us to turn to him. He won't force us to recognize that he is always with us (always, because he stepped out of time and followed timeless a rule to do so). We can choose to ignore him, if we wish.
I am seriously thinking that the light of Christ that enlightens every human was put there when Christ paid the price for sin in the garden of Gethsemane, that it stretched backward from him and forward from him. That is why we are connected to him. That is why we can turn inward and access God.
Bottom line: The Lord is with each one of us all the time in a very real way (even if angels or "the Spirit" is grieved and leaves). He has felt our sorrows, illnesses, pains, and sins in a very real way because he became us - each one of us.
I find it an interesting bit of science, and I find that it brings me closer to Christ. It makes me trust him more. It makes me have more faith in him.
