Christology

After a short blog break I wanted to get back to Liberation Theology, and specifically Christology. The cornerstone of Sergio’s lecture was based on Christology. The traditional Christology of the mainstream church is Jesus coming to earth as our savior/liberator of sin, out of love for us or to quench the wrath of God depending on your view. This is the Christology I grew up learning and before this lecture I knew of no other. Liberation Theology points to Jesus coming to earth to allign Himself with the poor. That He came to share in the suffering, oppression, and injustice of the poor in order to liberate them. And that now as Christians we are called to liberate the poor as Jesus began. He taught that Jesus did not come as a sacrifice for our sins because God did not need a sacrifice to forgive us.
I am all for liberating the poor, the oppressed, and fighting injustice! But my problem with this Christology lies in the basic gospel of Jesus. Jesus taught that we are sinners and that the punishment of sin is death. And so even if we completelty rid the world of poverty, oppression, and injustice, we are all still sinners and we still deserve death without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Poverty is a sin, but it is not the only sin. Prophecies throughout the bible point to a final sacrifice of the perfect lamb of God for all our sins once and for all. How can you read the bible and miss this? Yes, Jesus came for the poor, He spent His time with the poor and the oppressed, and the outcasts, but He came for the foremost purpose of dying so that we might live! I cannot, because of the urgings of the Spirit of God, ever get away from the gospel of grace which is death, forgiveness, and life.