Make a Sacrifice?

In some religions, sacrifice is a big thing. Jews used to believe in sacrificing animals to compensate for their sins. Then, Jesus came and seemed to represent an "ultimate and final sacrifice" for our sins. Even though these kind of sacrifices don't happen anymore, some still feel that we need to give up something dear to us in order to be spiritual. For example, there was a man during Jesus' time that followed the ten commandments closely, and asked Jesus what he should do next. Jesus told him to give everything away. There are people who have interpreted this and thought that they should give up everything up as well.... and then their lives fell apart.

The problem here is that the idea of sacrifice has seemed to be continued in Jesus' teachings. Now, Jesus wasn't there to make people's lives fall apart! He wanted to do the exact opposite! So, he must have meant something else. What he meant was that we should be in a state where we are no longer attached or needy of things in the outer world. So, if you had to give up everything you had, you be in a state of mind where you are unnaffected by this change. You could have it or not; you wouldn't mind it at all. This means you don't necessarily need to sacrifice anything. The only difference is that "all your treasures are in heaven."

Now, you might still be curious of why Jesus is told to be a sacrifice for our sins, even though he didn't teach sacrifice. Well, there are many things that Jesus has said that were taken literally. In this case, he said, "I am the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." So, people assumed that he is a sacrifice for our sins. His point was that he was trying to get rid of sacrifice by showing that it was unnecessary. He approached even the so-called sinful, and he didn't require them to sacrifice anything; he was not the sin "tax-collector." He would heal anyone, but didn't need to forgive anyone - he became forgiveness itself. So, he is "the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." People falsely connected the statement with his death on the cross and saw him as a sacrifice. But he never said he is or was going to be a sacrifice! He only knew about his death threw intuition, and was okay with it because it was a chance for him to resurrect.

There is another instant where we can see Jesus' message being interpreted falsely. He said, in the Gospel of Thomas, "When a man becomes a woman and woman becomes a man, and they are one and the same, then you will enter the kingdom." People must have misinterpreted it and left it out of the bible because they thought he meant that we should all get a sex change. Just know that Jesus doesn't always talk literally. He doesn't want us to sacrifice, and he doesn't encourage us to have a sex change.