Was It “Suicide”?

MON., MAR. 8, 1999, 11:10 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

This is the Lenten season, that leading up to My crucifixion, as Jesus… and then dramatic “return” to life and vitality, obviously unbothered by the wounds that the execution process left. I have commented, in earlier Teachings, about the Both/And nature of this event, so central to the theology of you Christians. I was executed, AND I willingly gave up My life in order that grace might abound.

After 20 years you are no longer teaching the course called Death Education, but you were “immersed” in it for most of those years. Thus you know that, in your culture, suicide… taking your own life, for any reason… is considered a crime… and, more importantly for you Christians, a sin. Yet you perceive that what I did, as Jesus, during what you now call Holy Week, was at least a form of suicide, technically. What do I, Holy Spirit, have to say about such an observation?

In every human and in every culture, in general, there is some hierarchy of values. In your culture maintaining human life is a high value, sometimes too high, as you have heard Me say. But this should not be the highest value, if there is any sense of honor, spirit, and life continuing after death.

As Jesus, I had full knowledge that My life had “been” before My incarnation in Bethlehem and My physical life in Nazareth and in Jerusalem. As I took human form I had to “forget” some of what I knew, as God and as Holy Spirit, but, as John’s Gospel more than suggests, I never completely lost the knowledge of My destiny – beyond teaching, preaching, healing, and relating to people in quite special ways.

Sacrifice was an integral part of the religion of My people, the Jews. The “best” sacrifice was a lamb, an innocent, young animal, whose flesh would then be eaten in quite a sacramental way. The taking of a young life, the young of a very useful animal, was almost the ultimate religious experience. There was an inherent sacred quality to the flesh and the blood of the animal who was sacrificed, with little resistance.

You are also aware that in your culture there is rather great honor given to military personnel who take on assignments that can result in death or who voluntarily attempt some brave act, to save the lives of others, with personal death a consequence. It is Scriptural: “greater love hath no man than to give up his life for a friend.” And it can be even greater if the one or ones saved are not even known to you. Many great stories and movies have this theme, including “Saving Private Ryan,” the one you saw recently. Behind this, of course, is the assumption that the war is “worthwhile”, maintaining “something” good or preventing “something” bad.

In My case, as Jesus, I knew I had to be the “sacrificial lamb.” If a lamb’s death and “consumption” was pleasing to Me, as Yahweh, then wouldn’t a human sacrifice, particularly by God’s special Son, be even more worthy. Yet I could not just walk into the sea and drown… or run Myself through with a sword… or leap off the highest pinnacle of the Temple, one of My temptations early in My Ministry. I had to publicly be executed, so that I died, but “innocent as a lamb.”

I loved My life, but I knew about sacrifice, and that My death could be a means to pleasant, undeserved, everlasting life for many who lived after I did. It had to be “orchestrated,” and it had to have appearances, at least, of a legal, just execution. Yet, fundamentally, it had to be seen as a sacrifice, giving up My life willingly for the supreme good of others… the ultimate expression of “giving up something good for something better”.