Sambodhi 1989 Vol 16

Author(s): Ramesh S Betai, Yajneshwar S Shastri
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 76

"The mystery of life is creative sacrifice. It is the central idea of the Cross..he who truly loves us will have to suffer for us, even to the point of death," Says Dr. Radhakrishnan. The life of Jesus is the best example of it. We see the victory over evil in the garden of Gethseinane, and also in the cell where Socrates drank the hemlok. Dr. Radhakrishnan is right when be states that Jesus who suffered and died is tlie living God. He directly appeals to us by telling "The Cross becomes significant only when we make it our own, when we undergo crucifixion."
Crucifixion was not a Jewish but a Roman form of punislıment. It was accounted so infamous and ignominious that it might not be applied to Roman citizens, but only to the sum of mankind, to the meanest criminals and slaves. By dying that death, Jesuis met the extreme demands of the law.
Salvation :
Faith in God (Christ), purity of heart and God's forgiveness and grace are component parts of the road to salvation in Christianity.
Dr. Radhakrishnan says – "Jesus did not give any definito account of the future life. His references to it in the parables of the Sheep and the Goats, Dives and Lazarus, are coloured by the beliefs of the age in heaven and hell, as geographical areas, ..Jesus evidently did not believe in a long interval between death and judgement, for the rich glutton and Lazarus had their punishment and reward almost immediately after death. Jesus was not misleading the repentant thief when he said "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise (St. Luke xxiii. 1, 43). The official view that the dead will rise with their physical bodies for judgment after death is not supported by these statements of Jesus." It is very difficult to accept Dr. Radhakrishnan when he says that Jesus did not give any definite account of the future life61.
The Bible teaches that the soul of the believer when separated from the body, enters the presence of Christ. Paul write to the Philippians that he has a "desire to depart and to be with Christ." (Phillipians. 1.23). And Jesus gave the penitent malefactor the joyous assurance "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (St. Luke 23.43). And to be with Christ is also to be in heaven. In the light of II Coronthiaus 12.3,4. "Paradise" can only be a designation for heaven. Moreover Paul says that "if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven". (IInd Coronthians. 5.1). Westminster Catechism, one of the great commentators