We could also say that humans are driven by similar urges, but our lives are very much broader than simply responding to our instincts. One characteristic which is well developed in our species is our sense of justice.
Clearly this sense of justice is worked out in different ways within different cultures and different religions. Thus there are some cultures which amputate the hand of a thief or stone an adulteress to death or use capital punishment, and others to whom these practices are abhorrent. But the basic sense of some things being right and some things being wrong is shared by all of us, albeit more strongly developed in some people than in others. And bearing in mind that we might not all agree as to what is right and what is wrong.
Although we believe in a God of justice, God's particular brand of justice isn't always easy to comprehend. In the days of the Old Testament, the strongest line of thought about God's justice was that human beings were punished for sins and that that punishment could be clearly seen in their lives in terms of poverty or misfortune or illness. If a man who was considered to be good fell victim to illness or other misfortune, then it was thought to be the result of the sin of one of his forbears. The sins of the fathers were visited upon the children.
Conversely, those who were rich and powerful and blessed with good health were thought to have earned their good fortune by keeping God's laws. Their good fortune was considered to be a reward from God either for their goodness or for the goodness of their forbears.
It's quite difficult for us today to understand how any of this could possibly be considered justice since to punish someone with ill health or misfortune because of the sins of their ancestors seems manifestly unjust. But it does get over the difficulty of the suffering of good people. Their suffering was still caused by sin, it just happened to be someone else's sin.
But even in the primitive days of the Old Testament, this view wasn't shared by everybody. There was a minority opinion, written down in the book of Job, which denied that human suffering was God's punishment for sin. This view was later shared by Jesus who went out of his way to heal the sick and support the poor, but even today, two thousand years later, there's still a residual feeling that those whom God loves won't suffer. A common cry when faced with human calamity is, "Why has this happened to me? What have I done to deserve this?"
Since the majority Jewish view was that those who suffer are being punished for their sins, the suffering of Jesus on the cross must have been almost impossible for Jews to comprehend. Not only had Jesus died under God's curse since he died on a tree, but he also suffered horribly both prior to his death and during his death. He was stripped of all dignity and flogged to a pulp before being nailed to the cross. How then, could good, law-abiding Jews possibly even begin to consider that he might be the Messiah?
The writer of the book of Hebrews uses the analogy of the High Priest. He reminds his readers that the High Priest was chosen by God in order to atone for "all the sins of the Israelites" (Leviticus 16:34), and he points out that the High Priest was able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself was subject to weakness. Indeed, because of this he had to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. So the human-ness of the High Priest was an important ingredient in his work of atonement.
The writer goes on to reveal that Jesus was a High Priest par excellence. He was appointed by God who regarded Jesus as his own beloved Son and, says the writer, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. The writer continues his argument by saying that even though Jesus was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. These sufferings weren't a punishment from God, but completed Jesus' perfection. Jesus submitted to his sufferings without denying God or losing his love for human beings or compromising his own integrity. Having been made perfect, Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, because he had been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, the greatest High Priest of all time.
High Priests were able to atone for sins. On the cross, Jesus was both the High Priest and the sacrifice - the sacrificial lamb. In this way, the sins of all human beings were atoned before God for all time. Lambs and other animals used in sacrifice were the best possible animals, but couldn't be quite perfect. Therefore sacrifices had to be repeated an intervals. But Jesus was perfect in every sense and so the only possible perfect sacrifice, taking away sins forever.
Jesus' sufferings on the cross were not the result of some perverted sense of God's justice. They were an entry into the realm of the divine, a doorway for all human beings to be able to stand in the presence of God. Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. To make use of his sacrifice for us all we have to do is to believe in him and to follow him by trusting God and clinging to our own integrity and love under even the worst of circumstances. And if we do that during our times of crucifixion on this earth, then we too will experience resurrection.
