Christ and Reincarnation

There is a lot of conversation around me right now about belief in reincarnation.  I have wanted to write about this topic for some time anyway, so I guess today is the day!

 I embrace a Biblical worldview, a belief system that embraces the veracity of the Bible as God’s revelation of Himself to mankind.  From within that system, I find a mandate to not allow others’ differing beliefs to cause me to look down upon them, disdain them or criticize them.  I pray that what I write here will not have those overtones, because that truly is not in my heart.  And I ask that our dialogue with one another here respect that mandate, as well.

Okay, what about reincarnation and the Bible.  First of all, let me say that I highly respect Dr. Ravi Zacharias who has written about the differences in the belief in reincarnation and the belief in salvation through Christ’s sacrifice.   It is called New Birth or Rebirth and I would be remiss not to recommend it here if you are interested in going deeper into a study of this.  

Here is my simple perspective and some scriptural references to anchor my thoughts.  As a Christian, I believe that my future life after death will be spent in the presence of God as an immortal being.  This is what Jesus taught this throughout the gospels, with John’s account of Jesus’ teachings being especially bold in John 14:1-4, John 17:2-3, John 21:31. 

When I accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the atonement for my sin (that expression of grace I mentioned in “It is Finished”), I became justified, purified, sanctified and redeemed!  There is no need for me to come back as a human again and relive my life in order to get it right, or distance myself from any bad karma resulting from this life experience, slowly getting closer and closer to Christ consciousness.   

This is, in fact, the Gospel of Jesus–the good news that we have ability to be one with God through the sacrifice of Jesus now, in this life, through a new birth (spiritually) as a child of God.  This is what Christ taught and what the Bible teaches.  The very fact that Jesus proclaimed this message is why he was killed by the religious leaders of Jerusalem.  To them he was teaching heresy and making himself equals with God.

I would just like to end with Jesus’ own words:  “I am the resurrection and the life.  Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.  Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.  Do you believe this, [Elisabeth]?  It is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life.  I will raise them up at the last day.  I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life.  Yes, I am the bread of life!”  (John 11:25-26; 6:40, 47)

It Is Finished

Jesus’ famous words just before he “released his spirit” were:  It is finished.  Many people have explained over the centuries that have followed this momentous event what “it” is that was finished.  Recently my Life Journal reading was focused in Jeremiah and I came to a passage in chapter 23 that reads:  “The anger of the Lord will not diminish until it has finished all it has planned.”  (Jeremiah 23:20a) 

This started me thinking about Jesus’s words on the cross and also several other passages of scripture that I feel relate to his intention when He said, “It is finished.” 

God is love and the commands of God are based on this underlying ethic, LOVE.  When mankind rejected that way of love, death entered the scene.  This was man’s choice, not God’s.  Over and over the Bible repeats the call of God: “choose life, choose love, choose me” and yet mankind chose death, hostility and other gods, rejecting the commands of God which expressed love–love for God and love for fellow man.  The Bible is full of illustrations, to be examples for us (Hebrews 9:9) of what happens when we do not walk in love.  God’s expressions of anger and wrath have driven the examples home.  But what has God done with His anger now?

The prophet Isaiah made an amazing prophecy in chapter 53 which we understand today to be about the Lord Jesus Christ.   In this chapter, Isaiah said (as he was led by the Spirit), “It was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief…When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied; because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.”  (Isaiah 53:10a, 11)

Romans 5:8-11 explains how God, in His great love for us, sent Jesus as the ransom for our lives, so that we may be “certainly saved from God’s condemnation.”  We are now rejoicing “in our wonderful new relationship with God, because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends with God.”  (Romans 5:11)  Jesus took all of God’s wrath and anger upon Himself to open the way back up for me and you to be in a love relationship with God the Father in an expression of grace that the world had never known.

You see, Jesus did not come to start a new religion; he came to fulfill the symbolism in the established religion to show us what all those symbols MEAN, how they pointed to Him all along thousands of years ago before we had ever heard His name, so that we can continue worshiping the same God in a fuller understanding and depth of knowledge, based on a relationship of love and grace–the relationship God desired from the first day man was created.

With all this in mind, when we read the amazing words of all the different authors of the books of the Bible, we CAN see clearly as Jeremiah said we would be able to:  “In the days to come, you will understand all of this very clearly.”  (Jeremiah 23:20b) 

Psalm 107:43  “Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.” 

Psalm 56: 13  “For you have rescued me from death; you have kept my feet from slipping.  So now I can walk in your presence, O God, in your life-giving light.”