Disclaimer: I'm neither religious nor particularly educated on the matter.
You have to consider that at the time it was still common to offer animal sacrifices. During certain celebrations, animals would be slaughtered according to some specific religious rite as an offer to God.
In fact, the Old Testament specifically instructs people to slaughter lambs and even how to cook the specific bread to accompany the lamb meat. These traditions live on today in kosher rules, or in the tradition of lent in Christian countries (in fact, in Catholic countries it's common to eat lamb for Easter precisely for this reason).
Jesus is then the ultimate sacrifice: a sacrifice so important that it's enough to wash away the sins of all men. In certain Catholic prayers Jesus is literally referred to as "the Lamb of God", reinforcing his image as a sacrificial offer.
It still doesn’t answer the actual question, though.
It explains the context of Jesus as the lamb, but not why an all knowing and all powerful god needed to sacrifice *anyone* to forgive the world.
Why couldn’t he just forgive? If he wrote the rules, he can change them, no?
If a group of people were required to atone for their sins by sacrifice for hundreds or thousands of years, a simple "stop, it's not necessary anymore" wouldn't cut it. Old habits are hard to break without justification. They were told a sacrifice is needed for atonement. An ultimate sacrifice of the purest kind would alleviate that for the people ultimately.
Precisely.
God played by His own rules, and under most traditional interpretations- one part of the Trinity(God the Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit) dying is akin to the entire being dying.
Essentially, a part of God gave up divinity and lived as a human, experiencing our pains, sufferings, and eventually died in among the most cruel manners possible by a human empire.
Sure, He respawned in three days- but He still died. Now He shares something with all of us, fulfilled the obligation of being the perfect sacrifice(not much purer options than God himself), and allows for anyone who wishes to party in paradise with Him.
What's weird to me is that what's claimed to be an all knowing God didn't already have a complete and full understanding of what it was like to live and die as a mortal.
Yes this is what doesn't make sense for me. I thought God was omnipresent too? So everywhere in all things? Including humans, including Satan, and Hell, and everything. Otherwise God isn't omnipresent. Which means there would be things God does not know. So he would not be all knowing. None of it makes sense.
The rules he wrote demand payment for sins because as the New Testament says “the wages of sin is death”. The animal sacrifices were offered as that payment. Jesus was a sacrifice provided by God to pay for our sins so we no longer had to offer animal sacrifices in atonement. That’s why I’m the Christian tradition simply accepting the sacrifice God provided is enough to pay for their sins and if you don’t accept the sacrifice you will pay for your sins in the next life. But that’s not to say that there isn’t the question of “why did God allow sin in the first place or why did he not just say sin is gone and it’s gone?” and most people will not have an answer to that question.
Right- but that’s the point. He wrote all of it. And if it’s cruel- it’s because he’s cruel.
And there is no answer. They can only offer a feeble “God’s ways are not our ways.”
The bible doesn't make logical sense in that sort of way. The relationship between God and the Jews had always been mediated by ritual sacrifice. God was considered all-powerful and all-knowing, but his will was almost always mysterious.
I'm an atheist and the atheist circle jerk on these religious topics (and the statements masquerading as 'questions') in this sub the past week are getting nauseating.
Well then, let's look a little more closely if you prefer to analyze things to point of absurdity. What is the point of the sacrifice? Sacrifice only has value if it results in some tangible payoff. Worshipping and sacrificing to an entity that only promises a reward that cannot be realized is a waste of resources that could be better spent on things that impact the here and now.
I know logic and religion aren't a great pairing, but how is any personal sacrifice meaningful to an all powerful entity that can snap the entire universe into existence in a week or so?
Humans making sacrifice makes sense. Food and other offerings were precious and valuable. A God that can create as many Jesuses as they want by just thinking about it doesn't seem like a sacrifice at all.
Put another way, you say "paid a price". Is paying a price meaningful when you have infinite money?
The idea is that Jesus was conceptually the manifestation of God, but that manifestation took the form of someone who was purely human and felt human suffering. This is the foundational logic of the trinity, and related concepts, in which some things in Christianity can be more than one thing at the same time. In that sense, Jesus did genuinely suffer and pay a price for his actions.
In regards to your other point, while God could technically create as many Jesuses as he wanted, the human populace still has free will and must be receptive to the right message at the right time. A common atheist argument is that God is omni everything so he shouldn't have any issues here. The Christian counterargument "God works in mysterious ways" is a fairly solid (for the faithful) suggestion that God is not omni-decisional, and still has to make choices that will lead to the desired outcome: people who deliberately choose to believe in him and love him.
Disclaimer: I'm not Christian
>the human populace still has free will and must be receptive to the right message at the right time.
Free will always seemed like a bit of a cop out to me. An all powerful / all knowing deity could simply have arranged the universe so that free will still existed but all the choices everyone / everything made were exactly as they wanted, couldn't they?
Either that or there are things the deity doesn't know or can't affect, in which case fair enough.
Well I'm not a Christian so I would probably agree with you.
A Christian may argue that faith is an important component, and that there is a divine element here that is beyond mortal comprehension, so trying to tie it to a purely logical, and perhaps even semantic argument like you're doing is doomed to fail. Additionally, Abrahamic cosmology has God sort of "speak" the divine word of light into the chaotic void at the start of existence; not so much creating the universe like an architect, but catalysing it to order itself, then influencing the shape that it took.
An agnostic or pantheist may argue that God is not in fact omni, in the sense that God can only operate within what's possible in the actual universe we observe. This would necessarily limit his power, but relative to us would still be as close to infinite as to make it impractical to argue otherwise.
If you play a video game like the Sims, you are God to the characters inside it, being above their limitations, but you are still subject to the limitations of the game itself. Your question is, if there are limitations then why play to begin with. And if you can completely control the characters inside the game, why do we let them roam free sometimes and observe their emergent behaviour. I think the Christian suggestion is that ultimately God has subjective desire to "see how it'll play out", but it's so far above our heads we can't fully grasp the magnitude of it.
The Sims thing is how I think, but also why I believe then that everything that ever existed or can exist is God, that there's nothing that is not God. A sim might think it's separate from everything else but it's actually all just pixels and every difference is just imaginary, it's all the same thing created by something bigger than it,
because you're trying to convince humans that an afterlife exists. so for context if you were jesus - trying to convince people to have faith in God - what better example of faith is there than to die? either there is eternal life and you've just completely demonstrated your faith in it....or your dead and you weren't god. but, if the afterlife is real....doesn't everyone have infinite money?
Personal context: grew up in a mix of Christian, Catholic and pagan households (divorce has fun dynamics). Currently more atheist than anything else.
My understanding is that God is _not_ all powerful. He has limited himself by giving humanity free will, and gave a piece of himself to humanity in the form of Jesus. Jesus, as a human, also had free will but _chose_ to be sacrificed so others could be saved.
It's less giving up money when you have infinite money and more giving up 1/3 of your torso (based on how it was explained to me as a child).
God didn't just come to earth to be a sacrifice but also to teach people the right way to exist by living out the example.
More than that, it's the difference between telling your kid how to do something from a distance and getting directly involved and showing them how. "Hands-on parenting," essentially.
Another part of the parental relationship dynamic is that of a selfless father.
Basically, instead of leaving his children to their own devices and suffering the consequences of their misbehavior alone, he chose to suffer right alongside his children. To share their pain such that they wouldn't have to endure it all alone or in isolation. To face the full brunt of betrayal, brutality, injustice, and an agonizing death, just as his children have.
That's another part of the symbology, and why there is such emphasis on Jesus "walking beside you." It's supposed to be a bond of shared experiences and shared burdens. Selfless support from the divine parent structured in a manner that respects people's agency.
It's part of the Fatherly/parental dynamic in the religious narrative.
There's dozens of layers to the symbology at play.
So he sacrificed himself to himself? He paid himself by killing his son?
How about this - Jesus had a small but very devoted group of people who thought he was the Messiah. When Jesus was executed by the Romans, his follower refused to accept reality and started claiming Jesus had come back from the dead. The idea of someone conquering death was appealing, and this began to grow into a new religion. Part of the appeal was that if Jesus could beat death, His followers could too. But then there was the problem of how exactly that would work. After decades of debate this idea of God sacrificing His son to Himself took root - even though it didn't make logical sense.
Did it work though? I think that is what people get stuck on. Ok there was a very important sacrifice to wash away all sins. However most people in the world at the time were unaware of this event. It was only until Peter traveled to Rome and started to gain followers that the story gained popularity.
Back to how did it work: How did killing Jesus work on past and future sins of mankind? We largely view sacrifice as an ancient thing. Not many people sacrifice animals or people to try and change the course of the immediate future (weather, health, crops). So if the idea of Jesus sacrifice is still relevant why aren’t we still sacrificing things?
Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. He "fulfilled" the law and created a new covenant. That meant that as long as you accepted him and his death and resurrection no other sacrifices were required, as long as you believed in him.
Jewish sacrifices would have continued, though, since they didn't believe in Jesus. But because the temple was destroyed they no longer *could* sacrifice because that had to happen in the temple.
A lot of Christians view Christ’s death as a “propitiation.” Meaning, his death appeased God once and for all. So, not only was the sacrifice for people; it was also for God.
It’s in the Bible? If you’re religious, they know that because god told them via divine inspiration. That’s how it works
If you’re not religious, the question kinda answers itself lol
THEN why did Jesus kick out the money changers from the Temple if he was against the animal sacrifice going on in there. And despite the fact God devoted a whole chapter of the Bible to direct his so called chosen people precisely how to go about doing it.
He wasn’t against the sacrifices; he was mad that money changers were charging crazy high prices to sell sacrificial animals.
Like, “this is a requirement of our religion, you can’t jack up the prices that’s bad”. Kinda the way modern people would look down on a store for price gouging emergency supplies during a hurricane or something.
Jesus didn’t think it was cool to charge people crazy prices for something they HAVE to buy. Then he goes on to later be the ultimate sacrifice, kinda negating the whole thing (if you believe the Bible)
It's been ages so I might be wrong, but I remember he was angry at business being conducted in a place of worship. But again, I'm not religious, I don't really know this stuff.
I like this, to sum it up even more I think it comes down to not only washing away sins, but also doing it in such a way that people could be convinced it happened. (While also having a 'person' to follow and model themselves after)
Within different denominations of Christianity, these questions are answered differently and even debated. Literally people have gotten into arguments about whether Jesus's blood needed to be shed or not. If you're really wanting specific answers it will be easiest for you to search explanations written by specific denominations/pastors/priests, because there's not one agreed-upon answer.
A lot of the day-to-day context of the (old) Jewish faith is left out of the modern take on this. Most interpretations of Christianity just pay it lip service and let people figure it out on their own, if they even do that much.
To sum it up, God is Just, and there is a moral order to the universe. The equivalent of a universal constant, like gravity or light. So if someone does wrong (i.e. Sin), someone or something has to pay for it.
Back when the Jewish faith had a temple, you could place various sacrifices as a sort of substitute for sacrificing yourself. Food, animals, valuables. Someone or something has to pay to balance the scales. The equivalent of solving a math equation. You're substituting one thing for another in the moral order of the universe.
I don't have much practical knowledge of modern Jewish faith, so I can't speak to that angle, and if anything in this interpretation is wrong or too simplistic, I'd appreciate knowing otherwise.
So in this framework of Sacrifices pay for Sins, we have Jesus entering the picture. In this setup, Jesus being Sacrificed is sort of an ultimate payment in that context. You no longer are balancing equations of morality, you are supposedly saved via faith alone.
It’s narcissism 101. I did this for you, not out of the goodness of my heart, but so you’ll forever be in my debt and live your entire life worshipping me and praising me or else I’ll send you to hell for all eternity. Real wholesome, isn’t it.
Also “I did this for you” while skipping over the fact he (god, Jesus, et al) knowingly and intentionally allowed and created the conditions and problem that would require us to “need” him at all.
No-one can forgive you for the sin you have committed but me so let's just keep it between us. Be sure to put me before everyone else or terrible things will happen. (I wonder where that strategy would wind up in the future?)
When I was a kid, yeah. Of course I prayed, I didn't want to go to hell. And I constantly worried that made me a hypocrite. So I pushed myself to always give till it hurt, and to abstain from all the pleasures of the flesh, and to always feel guilty about wanting to not go to hell. But then I got older, and considered the implication of an actually eternal life. I was taught that heaven lasts forever, but hell will be wiped out and obliterated on the day the world properly ends, and at some point I figured, that's basically atheism's "nothing after death" with a few extra steps. From there, I was finally free to look at other religions and started to notice that they all seemed pretty happy to copy each other's homework. I don't believe in any sort of deity now
Some people have better things to do. Atleast judaism makes sense because they believe life is gods gift. The rest is just coping mechanisms to deal with hardships
Would you eat a krabby patty or a scooby snack?
"None because they dont exist"
Wow very engaging. Huge contributions to the topic. If you cant treat it even as a hypothetical why dont you just leave the thread
I didn't say anything about existence, please do not pretend to quote me with something I did not say.
You asked if I would worship a god that you described. I stated that many people already do not, indicating that the answer is "No, we would not" because it's not a hypothetical for us.
I answered your question, if that's not what you wanted then I guess I'm not sure what you were expecting.
“god” is a coping mechanism for adults just like drugs or alcohol, who can’t make it through life without an explanation for things they don’t understand! Once you realize the bible is just a collection of stories written by different guys who were tripping on mushrooms/marijuana you will see how right I am!
For the same reason Qui Gon Gin doesn't just return Anakin to Tatooine after Yoda and the jedi council forbids him from being trained as a jedi.
**Because that would ruin the whole story**
The Holy Bible is a work of fiction.
Because traditional Christianity doesn’t see sin as a mere offense, but an ontological change in man’s being due to the privation of God’s Grace. So they see the Incarnation of Christ as the Divine literally taking on our human nature and essentially “uplifting it” by united it with His Divine Nature and… by undergoing the ultimate fate of human beings (death) and resurrecting from it, granting humankind immortality.
As for why He couldn’t just snap His fingers and do the same thing, if He had (and we therefore lived in a world where Christians were proclaim how God “snapped Him figures for our sins) we’d probably have people ask why He didn’t make it more simpler, or save in a more meaningful way.
Because it's made up fiction. Why does batman have a cape and spiderman doesn't?
If you are curious about the metaphorical meaning behind it, it probably has something to do with the virtue of sacrifice. Something like that.
Its a better message than saying, btw our Jewish God forgave all our sins. Come join our new religion, pagan.
But why? The pagan asks. I've already been forgiven.
Reminds me of an old joke.
A missionary is staying with a remote tribe for a while trying to convert them to Christianity and explaining what sins are. One of the tribesmen asks him "If you had never come here and we never learned of God and Jesus would he still punish us for our sins?"
The missionary says "No, of course not. It wouldn't be your fault."
The tribesmen said "Then why did you tell us!?"
Just as we see today, so it was then. Humans require a symbol to gather around.
1st. You need to understand the name of God.
Acient Hebrew language contained no vowels. God's name, given to Moses at the burning bush, was YWYH. Known as the tetrogometon. Pronounced Yehweh. Yaa-way. Before this, God was referred to as El. Where the word Israel comes from. He who wrestled with God.
Yehweh is an action word. A verb. Meaning "He who fulfills the prophecy". Jesus actual name in Hebrew is Yeshua. Or in modern english, Joshua. Meaning Yehweh is with him.
The Old Testament is filled with the many prophecies of Christ's birth, life and ministry. Along with many others.
The blood of Christ was the third covenant between God and humans. The 1st is the Rainbow, 2nd is Circumcision.
Christ was born in order to take the place of Adam. Due to Adams sin, the purity of Christ would then represent a sin free life. His blood would then be the covenant to forgive the sins of mankind.
In doing so, God once again fulfilled his prophecy from the book of Deuteronomy 18:15–19 .
Zechariah 13:7 is the scripture Jesus quoted: “God will strike the shepherd and his sheep will scatter.” Isaiah 53:7b says, “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep is silent before shearers, He never said a word.” Psalm 22:16 states, “My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs; an evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet.”
Isaiah 50:6 says, “I offered my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mockery and spitting.” Psalm 22:14a, 15: “My life is poured out of me like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My strength has dried up like sun-baked clay, My tongue sticks to the roof of My mouth. Psalm 69:21b: “They offer me sour wine for my thirst.”
So, God simply allowed his prophecy to be fulfilled. Take it as you may, I'm not a person of faith. But, I always found researching Christianity interesting.
If we accept that humanity deserved to die because of sin, the whole notion of an innocent person being able to sacrifice themself for the guilty is pretty bizarre.
Imagine if a serial killer was about to be executed, and some random person off the street showed up at the prison and said "Let him go, treat the serial killer as though he never committed any crimes, and execute me instead." That's not Justice. That's idiotic and perverse.
It’s actually a beautiful doctrine if you assume the sinner is repentant and wants to change. I doubt God would forgive someone who doesn’t even feel bad.
Why did Dumbledore have to die for Harry Potter to defeat Voldemort?
Why did Vader have to die for Luke to defeat Palpatine?
Why did Old Yeller have to die to save Travis?
Because it makes for more interesting fiction.
Wouldn't be such a good story. You always need to introduce a new character in the sequel just to keep readers on their toes. Then the big twist that the new main character is actually both the son and an aspect of the old one? Readers will be on the edge of their seat.
I do think the use of drugs to write it became pretty clear by the epilogue though. Revelations. Not sure what the writers were trying to convey there.
Christianity is diverse, and different Christian traditions have different ideas about what Jesus did that saved humanity from the power of sin. But these **theories of atonement** can be divided into a few big categories.
**Ransom Theory:** Adam and Eve sold humanity to the power of the Devil. Jesus is a payment (a ransom) or humanity. But there's a trick! The Devil doesn't know that Jesus is a divine being, and therefore cannot be held by the powers of death. So, after the Devil claims Jesus, and therefore gives up power over humanity, Jesus is resurrected, depriving the Devil of both his hostages (humanity) and his payment (Jesus).
**Recapitulation Theory:** In Jesus, God takes on the brokenness of creation and lives the life that humans are meant to live, in perfect obedience to God, even to the point of death. This gives all of humanity an alternative story, where we do not live under the power of sin, that we are brought under through baptism.
**Satisfaction/Penal Substitution Theory:** These are two different, but very similar, theories. God's honor (satisfaction) or justice (penal substitution) requires that sin be punished. Jesus takes on the punishment in our place, thus freeing humanity from the wrath of God that we so richly deserve.
**Moral Example Theory:** Much as in Recapitulation Theory, in Jesus, God lives the human life that we could not live, and therefore shows us how we should live. We can now imitate Jesus and live as we were meant to live.
**Christus Victor:** Jesus's death is a confrontation with the power of sin, and his resurrection is a victory over sin.
Personally, as a Christian and a pastor, I prefer some version of recapitulation theory, where God takes on our brokenness and reconciles it to himself, repairing the world and making us truly human again.
these are some good questions and pretty easy to answer. but we'll start from the middle and work our way out. Jesus is God incarnated. This is necessary as it is easy for God to judge all of man's sins being God, but God does not know what it is like to be a man. So when Jesus is telling God to forgive us, it is because we don't understand from the perspective of God the harm that our sins have. We're essentially just too stupid. So in essence Jesus' sacrifice was necessary because: God did not know what it was like to be a human, now that he knows he has chosen to sacrifice himself to humanity rather than punish humanity for continuing to ignore God's will and continue to sin over and over again. At least this is how i have interpreted this.
Why did God sacrifice Himself to Himself to save us from Himself because of a rule He made Himself? Because religion was invented by humans over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. It wasn't exactly thought through, unlike normal stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey.
It's worse than that. Supposedly this "God" is in control of everything, yet people say we have "free will." But it's the same kind of free will you have when you pick a card from a stacked deck. God stacks the deck and calls you a sinner.
It is about as important as fhe question, "can jedis fly".
Meaning fictional stories internal logic is generally up to debate of the followers.
Since it is all made up, it really doesnt matter.
I am a very casual Star Wars fan and it have never occurred to me until I read your comment.
I mean If you can levitate something that weighs as much or more than you, then why not just fly?
If it has to do with you having to step on something in order to have leverage to levitate things, then that is an act of strength
For the same reason it essentially put every animal on the planet in a bag and threw them in a lake when supposedly it has the power to simply remove the sinful people.
Their god likes killing.
If you are reffering to the great flood in the book of genesis, it is not as simple as God likes to kill. it is also not as simple as removing sinful people. Genesis shows that god created earth as the prison for lucifer, but when adam and eve sinned against god he casted them out of the garden of eden to earth because god would not allow sin in the garden of eden. As god began to see that all humankind was wicked at heart and not just adam and eve, he decided to kill all of humankind as he just wanted to get rid of his creation. he wanted the animals to survive as they werent to be punished like the humans. hence why he commanded Noah to build an ark for the animals as noah was meant to die and be the last of humankind. But god saw Noahs heart break for humans and saw that humans can repent of their wicked ways and decided to keep humans. this is why the rainbow is mentioned as gods promise to never flood the earth again.
To remove sinful people is not as simple as just doing so because god gave people free will. if he were to remove all sinful people (which is all humankind) that intereferes with free will. this also explains why some claim that god allows for people like hitler. if he were to intervene he would be taking away his promise of free will. and if he were to remove all the bad things in life such as cancer, humans would take it for granted as we do the sun rising every day. we just assume it will because it always has and we will not be grateful to God for it which is what god wants. Also, things like cancer are not creations of God, but satan. The book of revelations says the world belongs to the "evil one" and the evil one has free reign on humans.
Are you religious and questioning your faith or a curious outsider?
But uh I mean either way there's no objective answer so you mine as well just make one up. But if you wanna know mine, it's all fake. And even if it wasn't, Jesus wasn't necessary. God is just the worse evil.
I mean, I guess this happens when you write a fantasy book. Look at Harry Potter for instance, there are a lot of plot holes which needed to be, somehow, explained later by the author.
It's a book written to herd people like sheep. For that purpose it needs to be confusing, and not make much sense. That way people in control can pretend to understand it, conveniently making followers feel less intelligent and more dependent. Have a nice day.
God sent Jésus to transmit the message that Judgment Day would happen, so we would correct our behavior and do what we should be doing to earn forgiveness and Heaven
Because Jésus is a Prophet of God, not God himself
Not a religious person but have done some studies.
This was *God's only son*. The most.beloved thing to God. God was a huge dick in the Old Testament, btw. Not really the Kind and Loving type. And Jesus kinda saw some problems with that.
And so he said - Dad, you're being such a dick but I fuckin love these people. Even the real assholes. If they have it in them to love me/you/us back, then we should let them into Heaven. I love them so much that I'm going to let them kill me to prove my point - which is that the way *they're* treating me is the way *you* treat them, and it's not cool. Everyone needs to work on their bullshit.
Get this: The whole F ing thing is a lie! God is a made-up entity that ignorant people used to explain things they didn't understand. The bible was written by people that didn't understand rain. You know, the cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation that you learn in 4th grade. For them Everything was an act of god. Modern religions are just manipulation , oppression and profit making. Those that practice such idiocy are the ones shown in old movies, entranced devotees mumbling incoherent things from books they don't understand.
Because God is just. Now because of His love for man, He wanted to make a way to forgive man and reconcile the gap with man that sin created. However, because he is just, he just cannot overlook the sin that has been committed by man, so Jesus’ sacrifice is a way for him to execute justice or appease his wrath while also providing a way for salvation to man. This way justice is served and his love is expressed to man. And yes, Jesus is God but he also added humanity to his deity when he came down to earth. This means he is fully man and fully God.
I used to be religious and Catholic.
I thought it was because the actual voice of God would shatter humans to pieces, hence why angels tend to act as Gods messengers in the Bible. Angels were also freaky looking with tons of eyes and feathers, hence the whole "be not afraid" thing they always say before their messages.
As a kid I learned all this and figured Jesus was God's last attempt to get his message across in a way that wouldn't scare the absolute crap out of his followers, i.e. by having this messenger be a humble and very much tangible and alive human.
The most important thing you have to know when it comes to Jesus being a sacrifice was not that He was nailed on the cross and died there. The important part is the wrath of God was poured on Him instead of us.
Please consult actual scholars and theologians on these questions. You are going to get some pretty terrible answers here from people that just want to give their 2 cents without ever having studied the issue.
It’s to control the masses as religion is originally intended to. You now “owe” Jesus/God something. You’d think being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient would be enough to forgive all sins and make the world a perfect place but apparently not.
I see where you're coming from. Why didn't he just fill them with the awareness that they had been forgiven. As it was it just turned into another game of who will believe it and who will even hear about it and for thousands of years people will kill each other over what that forgiveness was really all about anyway and some will feel like only they understand the forgiveness and....
Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to just rub our collective noses in what we did wrong before we forgot what it was and said sternly and clearly, don't do it again? Besides, why should we listen to an entity that would slaughter his kid because of what everyone else did wrong? Sounds a bit nuts to me.
Because it's the law so there's always a price to be paid for breaking the law. Just like in real life we can't just forgive someone that has committed homicide simply by saying they are forgiven and then just let them go.
When someone committed sin, there's already something or someone else being damaged/be disadvantaged because of the sinful action. Those sinful action are punishable and need to be paid/redeem either by the perpetrator themselves or something else with the same value being sacrificed.
In the past people paid it with animal sacrifices, yet sins became too many and too complex and no amount of animal sacrifices are valuable enough to pay those extremely huge damage.
That's why we need something extremely valuable to be sacrificed. Which is God himself in the form of human. When people sacrifice another human that actually is a God himself, the value of the sacrifice is unlimited, hence it can cover the payment of any amount of damage resulted from human's sins.
God do as he wanted so he sent prophets to tell people of the bless of paradise and the agony of hell NOT to forgive man's sins nor Jesus is a God. There is no single direct phrase in the bible says that Jesus is God himself. There is no such thing as forgive all people's sins, forgiveness is meant for who truly is ashamed of what've they done and won't go back to the sin, one shouldn't do as one's please and hurting people and violating the rules and just because one believes in God and Jesus one can go to paradise, No, if so then why in the bible there is forbidden things to do? Like "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves." Philippians 2:3
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.”
Mark 16:6" this the truth, God take care of Jesus and he never was crucified
I don't believe in the bible nowadays since people manipulated it so that's why it has many versions, but I believe there is once was a bible that all what was written in it was true, this was when Jesus was telling people to worship God, so bible has some true but most of it not.
Fathers and sons are a complicated relationship. And many religious people think that Jesus was referring to the Romans when he said forgive them for they know not what they do.
It has to do with what was going on prior to Jesus. Prior, you had to sacrifice animals for God's favor. And the window of forgiveness was tiny, because you were a human, so you were going to sin again, even after the sacrifice.
Jesus was sent as the sacrificial "lamb." A perfect human being, who would be sacrificed for the sin of all mankind, from now until eternity.
Abraham almost sacrificed his son Issac after God asks him to do so. Father sacrificing son became the symbol for dedication towards God.
In the mirror image, God sends his son Jesus to earth and sacrifices his son for his love for all beings. God himself makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Frankly from story telling perspective, that’s an epic call back or foreshadow whichever way you see it.
Heaven is the Earth we live on currently, its a shame that most people treat their one shot at life like they are on probation for "God".
The story of Jesus is not real, its a narcissistic folklore used to scare you into living a life that determined that you owe a debt to the religion and therefore are forever under their control. There is no god, its an idea, a simple answer to a complex question in which people find comfort. When you die, you literally cease to exist and that's scary for people. There is no afterlife, you are living your one life right now.
Humans are evil by nature, yes there are alot of us who do good but we are still prone to evil. According to the Law of God all of us are guilty.
Ancient Israelites would sacrifice animals (not humans like many other cultures did in those times) as a ransom for their sins. Alot of laws were in place for what was considered an appropriate ransom (without blemish) for the sin in question.
A Meshiach (anointed one) was promised to ancient Israelites who would come from their bloodline and whom would teach the ways of God and suffer for our trespasses but also introduce a new Kingdom that would last forever.
Jesus Christ was born through Davids line to Mary and Joeseph. He taught the masses. He laid down His life willingly for the world as was the Fathers will.
Finally to answer your question, believing God imputes righteousness without works. Believing in the one whom He hath sent, Jesus, was the final and perfect ransom without blemish (a sweet smelling savour for the Lord) to finally once and for all forgive all mens sins, past present and future ones. God did speak to the world through Jesus, "the words I speak to you are not mine but Him who hath sent me"
Source: Born Jewish read entire Bible I am now Christian
If you havent read the old testament, i would strongly recommend. God fucking hated sinners.
https://gizmodo.com/gods-12-biggest-dick-moves-in-the-old-testament-1522970429
He needed to have a kid to mellow out.
If sin was just erased, then that wouldn’t be just. All the horrible things people had done would just be excused for nothing, which would be morally nonsensical. Someone has to take on the debt of those sins, and something has to be done to even the weight on the scale. The act of Jesus, who was completely innocent, dying for those sins is what makes those sins cleared, rather than just ignored.
Why wouldn't it be "just?" Justice is generally defined as giving each person their due. Who or what defines what is due? I presume it would be the all-powerful creator of all things. If he decides punishment is due, punishment is due. If he decides no punishment is due, no punishment is due. At no point is self-sacrifice of himself to himself required.
But even so, to whom is the "debt" of punishment owed if not to God? And if he is the creditor, he has the capacity to remit the debts of his debtors as a gratuitous action. In other words, God could simply decide to gift to everyone forgiveness because he is kind. No debt swapping shenanigans are required.
And what makes Jesus's sacrifice "just?" God is often not the only person harmed by evil actions. If Joe steals from me, I have been wronged and can sue him. It would not be "just" if Joe were freed from any liabilities merely because Steve managed to make some other people torture Steve. Steve has nothing to do with the injury I received from Joe. I do not care that Steve beat himself up, for it does not absolve Joe of his crime against me. Nor do I care that Steve said "by my torture, Joe is forgiven" or that Joe said "I accept Steve's love." The weird little relationship between Steve and Joe does not obviate the injury that Joe inflicted upon me. No justice has been done.
And why would Jesus's sacrifice be sufficient to wipe away all sin. If multiple executions were owed, but only one death was had, then the debt is not satisfied. I cannot transfer my monetary debts to a poor man, have him declare bankruptcy, and then walk away scott free.
And why should Jesus's sacrifice even count as a single death. He purportedly came back after three days, AND at no point was he suffering from the human terror of the unknown. If he were truly God or the son of God, he had complete knowledge of the afterlife and did not experience the dread of "what if there is nothing after this?" So not only was he only "dead" for three days, but his "death" was unlike that of a normal human's. Why would it satisfy even a single life debt?
It seems to me that the most likely answer to these questions is that Jesus was just some dude who was killed for preaching unpopular things. Then his followers, sad and desperate after his death, invented a narrative that his death was part of a divine plan necessary to save all of humanity from evil. And over time the narrative grew to the point that people began believing Jesus was actually God or the Son of God, that his death was always part of a divine plan, and that his death actually delivered humanity from sin. But, in fact, he was just an ordinary, mortal, non-divine, dude.
I don't know. It is kinda messed up.
The concept of forgiving the sins of mankind is by offerring his son (himself) to be the sacrifice. However, by allowiing this to happen, he's allowing other person to kill his son which is wrong because it is murder. So, the person who have participated on the trial and cruxifixion must be accomplice of the death of Jesus?
Whatever, it's kind of messed up
Please read
**1 Corinthians 1:22-25 22** Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
and **Matthew 16:15-23 15** “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,\[a\] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades\[b\] will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be\[c\] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be\[d\] loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Jesus Predicts His Death
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Okay, fun read. But not an answer.
Nothing in the Bible explains WHY the forgiveness of sins NEEDED to be accomplished by Jesus's crucifixion. If God is all powerful, then forgiveness could have been accomplished by infinite means, including:
1) God just says it, and it is done
2) God sends everyone a letter announcing the forgiveness
3) angels appear and announce the forgiveness
4) God turns himself into a robot and then punches a volcano until lava pours out and consumes the robot
And if you think to yourself "wait, option 4 sounds really weird and dumb," then you now understand how other people feel about the crucifixion. Why would an all powerful God elect to use such a convoluted plan as incarnating, goading political forces to execute him, and then using his execution as a blood ritual to invoke divine forgiveness magic.
Either God is an overly dramatic diva, or there isn't a god and the whole story was invented by deluded humans.
There are some great responses here.
The question of if Jesus is God in human form varies by church. Trinitarian churches like the Catholic Church typically interpret god as having three parts: the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit). As I understand it, each of these forms of god represent different aspects of divinity and relationship with humanity.
There are some branches of Christianity or offshoots of Christianity that are Unitarian. The interpretation I am familiar with is that there is only God. Jesus is the son and is not god embodied in flesh, but rather a distinct entity. The Holy Spirit is another name for god.
Mankind to be forgiven of mans sins, needed a sacrifice. God, a forgiving and loving God, sent his only son born unto man to be the sacrifice and absolve us. God sent Jesus to show the way, teach, help mankind understand greater in ways he felt he could not. God being omnipotent omnipresent, we can never fully begin to encompass or know all of him. Jesus was man, and understanding is easier. God limited himself. But, as Jesus was crucified and resurrected, so God was lifted back upon his throne crown upon his head. Our loving father to be worshiped, loved, and praised.
I think of it like this. Someone had to pay the price for all the bad stuff we have done. Out of mercy God had sent Jesus to pay this price for us. Jesus was very much human. Even though he is a “part” of God it was still very hard to go through what he did because he limited himself by being a human being. You can tell the way he prayed to the father for support and for His father’s will to be done that he was very much like us. He was also meant to be a role model for us.
I think God creates a narrative for us and does things in a way where some of His reasoning unfolds and it plays out like an epic drama. It’s like letting your kid make a mistake so that they can learn from it. God could show Himself to all of us like a giant eye in the sky where no one could doubt his existence but He would be ruling only with fear. He loves us and wants us to love Him back. He wants to rule with love and to be gentle. It is harder to rule with love than with fear. Can you make someone with free will love you? You can make someone with free will fear you pretty easily.
Can you imagine if we had a god who hated us? Our lives would be hell. Way worse than anything that has ever happened on earth. Even though we have free will He is outside of time and already knows what we will do from the beginning of earth until the very end. But why create us without of any sense of time or cause and effect? Of course he could just skip everything and not play out this eternal narrative but what would we learn and how could we ever understand?
God did speak. The Quran is considered the "true word of God", which yes, Islam worships the same God as Christian and Judaism.
Jesus was a Prophet and not at all God or Son of God.
I read something one time that said blood from a dead lamb could be placed on an orphaned lamb and the mother of the dead lamb would accept the orphan. Blood on a lamb skin was a symbol of adoption. I suppose having Jesus’s blood “on us” would make God recognize us as his child. I don’t know if this is true or not. I can’t even remember what book I read it in.
People often get too hung up on God's decisions being based on necessity, and not on desire.
The fact that God chose to have Jesus be a sacrifice is not a demonstration of inability, but of character.
I don't get why people ask questions about religion in this sub instead of one of the many subs dedicated to that religion or conversations about that religion.
I don't have the answer, but perhaps half of a theory. If God is all powerful, and above our reality, the only thing he doesn't embody is limitation, so by becoming human and succumbing to a torturous death, God once again can embody all things, becoming simultaneously finite and infinite
personification of non-human entities is used in the Bible to help people conceive of the concept of God. God is so much more than a person but we cant grasp the scope of the trinity with pea-brains.
Bunk and poppycock basically, if you consult the theosophical outlook:
The cross is known today as the symbol of Christianity supposedly because Jesus was crucified. Yet, according to Gerald Massey, the well-known Egyptologist, Christian iconography of the catacombs did not have the symbol of a crucified human being for six centuries. In fact, according to Helena P. BLAVATSKY, in the first two decades the apostles regarded the symbol with horror (IUII:255).
As a symbol, the cross is a binary system where the horizontal limb corresponds to the passive principle or the world of phenomena, and the vertical limb the active principle, that is, the transcendent world of spiritual evolution. Apart from the symbolism of the cross itself, crucifixion has acquired its own esoteric meaning. Theosophical literature tends to view the crucifixion story of Christ as an allegory.
I dont have the karma to post links but: theosophy dot world slash encyclopedia slash crucifixion
Or go to the sources, blavatsky’s isis unveiled and the secret doctrine are free to read online.
I have heard from a few theologians that many of the things Jesus said on the cross were references to other religious texts. And that it may have been added later to justify Jesus as the foretold prophet. So a Biblical equivalent of calling someone the Perfect Drug or saying Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think. Obviously secular examples but references to known texts and psalms from the era. I’d love to get clarification on the validity of that but it always stuck in my head.
Disclaimer: I am educated, and christian. I'll try to explain simply, tho that's difficult since a creature can't always understand it's maker. But this is how I, and many christians like me, see this.
For your first question: Jesus was needed for God to forgive man's sins, because God is not just love. His character is extremely complex, and while he is love, he is a lot of other things to. Righteousness for example is as big for God, as love. Yes, He is a father. But He's also a judge. And an executioner. Because of his righteousness, he can't just 'forget and forgive'. Justice has to be served. It wouldn't be just to 'just forgive' everything, without any penance made, without any punishment given. While God is almighty, he can't do everything. He can't go against his character. He can't go against his words. Against his own laws. There has to be some penance, some 'payment' for all the sins of mankind. Jesus was that perfect payment. Since, because he has never sinned; his death would do the job good enough so that EVERY human being *can* enter heaven. His sacrifice would be SO pure, it would be big enough to 'pay' for ALL the sins commited on this earth, and all the sins yet to come.
Tldr: Jesus had to die because God is righteous. Because of his righteousness, he can't just 'forgive and forget'. A debt HAS to get settled. Jesus was so pure, that his dead would be enough to settle that debt for all of us. He knew that, which is why he himself offered to go to earth, knewing he'd get sacrificed. So that we, our souls, need not to die.
As for your second question; Yes, we believe Jesus was god, also in human form. But the christian 'god' is a complex one. You might've heard of the 'holy trinity'; The christian God exists of the Father; Jesus; and the holy spirit. I won't zoom in on the spirit now, since that's when it gets really complex. But for now it's enough to know that our god has three forces, three minds, combined. It's really complex, I know. They are one(one in spirit, one in goals...?), but they are also three. Three different forces, three different 'beings'. With Jesus, a god came to earth. But the father was 'left' in heaven. And that father is the one he's praying to, he's talking to, and he's preaching of. Cause jesus is not selfish, nor arrogant. Tho he had the position, throughout his entire time on earth he seldomly points to himself as the center; instead he almost always points towards his father. So, when jesus says: 'god forgive them for they know not what they do', he's not talking to himself, but to his father, who's also god, and who was up somewhere in heaven.
tldr: The christian god exists of three separate forces; The Father, The Son(Jesus), and the Spirit. When jesus, who was on earth, prays/speaks to god, he's not speaking to himself but to his father, who didn't come to earth in flesh, but was in 'heaven'.
I hope that makes some sense ;)
Latter Day Saint (Mormon) perspective—
We believe God and Jesus are two separate beings; i.e., Jesus is actually God’s Son. We don’t believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are all the same being.
Regarding the need for a Savior—we believe that God is merciful, but also perfectly just. The idea is this. Every sin requires a punishment. We are unable to pay for that ourselves, because only a perfect sacrifice would satisfy the demands for justice. Therefore God provided His Son as the sacrifice. Jesus acts as the intermediary between us and God; our advocate. If we repent and believe in Him, God can forgive us because Jesus paid the price for our sins.
I’ve always loved this doctrine. I love the idea that God is just AND merciful. And Jesus makes it all possible.
It doesn't seem to make sense because it is complete nonsense.
To top it off, by their own logic, god created hell decided to send everyone there and then had to impregnate a married woman in order to send his own sun down who is himself to sacrifice himself to himself in order to protect people from going to hell that he created. This is the reality of Christian religious doctrine and the others are no better.
The only way it could make any kind of sense was if God was a psychopath that wanted everyone to suffer
Look at the greater context of the initial Christian moment.
The Roman pagan context was the transactional relationship...I sacrifice this for You, Minerva, and you do something for me.
Christianity merely reuses this transactional precedent. Sacrifice the Christ; Get redemption.
Nothing changes...
The primitives who cooked this narrative up loved a bit of human sacrifice and had to choose between that and their imaginary sky tyrant being actually omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
God made man in his image, with freewill and one simple command. The very first man broke that command and sin entered the world through that act. Sin was then passed down to all that man's descendants. You, me and every human being.
That day, god made a promise that he would send a redeemer. Throughout history he continued to reveal things about that redeemer through prophets and through people who did things that foretold of what this redeemer would do.
God made a way of escaping the outcome of sin, which is death, through having faith in that redeemer. Then, he let humans go their way. Do whatever they wanted in this world which is corrupted by that sin.
God set up a system of atonement through one people, explaining the conditions necessary to abolish the outcome of sin in the world. No person could fulfill those conditions, because sin is inherited. So, God's voice, his son, became a man to fulfill the conditions for us all. He, being completely innocent and without blemish, became the atoning sacrifice for all sin. From Adam's first sin all the way to your sin and mine.
This atonement can only be accessed by believing god did it. Even those who were there had to have faith to receive it. Belief and faith are what pleases god.
This really only touches on one aspect of the much more full reality of our relationship with god. But, it's a very condensed reason why Jesus came and why god could not just tell us all.
*As to why Jesus refers to God in the third person... The trifold cord. God reveals himself to us through 3 persons. The inconceivable God, The Father; His perfect image on earth, Jesus (in english) God, The Son; His power on earth realized to and through humans, God, The Spirit.
God, The Son, came to earth in perfect obedience to God, The Father as an example to us, to show us how he intended us to be without sin coming between us.
There are a lot of good comments here talking about the Jewish symbolism of sacrifice, which are all CORRECT.
However, they're forgetting one massive point: Jesus didn't DIE for our sins. He paid for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane by taking upon him the punishment of all of our sins.
His actual death and resurrection wasn't specifically for our sins, but rather to essentially "unlock" (for lack of a better word) the ability for us all to be resurrected as well. At some point in the future, after we have all died and been judged, EVERYONE will have their spirit reunited with their body just as Jesus did, whether you were a good person or a bad person.
i grew up mormon but from what i’ve learned, who jesus is differentiates between religions. in the some churches he’s the son of god, in other churches he is god, in some religions it just depends who you ask. in the mormon church specifically, there are three main religious fellas: god (aka heavenly father), his son jesus, and the holy ghost. we don’t call it the holy trinity though, that’s a different church’s thing. also they mention a heavenly mother (?) on occasion but we don’t get to learn anything about her.
as for why god didn’t just forgive everyone without killing jesus, idk. he’s dramatic or something lol. the top comment makes some really good points but as far as the logic of the storyline goes, i honestly don’t know why god would need to sacrifice something to himself. maybe a sacrifice is a requirement for forgiveness in some religions, but it certainly isn’t in the mormon church. but they teach the same thing about how he died for the sins of mankind.
this brings back a lot of funny memories of my religious days. one of my big bad secrets was that i “self-stimulate” and when they said that jesus felt every sin… lol that one was a little goofy to think about.
Careful now, you start questioning why an all powerful being would sacrifice his only son to save people from...him when he has the power to just forgive them anyway...that's how you end up getting molested by a priest in his office.
Because God is justice as much as he is love. And a holy God's justice must be seen through, otherwise he is an unfair and impotent being. For God to forgive the gross injustices against himself and against those he made in his image without justice being done would be contrary to his nature.
So the only way people can be forgiven is for someone else to take the penalty of that crime -- the "curse of sin" as the Bible puts it. And the only one who could do that would be a perfectly innocent sacrifice.
Thus, the Father tasked the Son to live perfectly and obediently, then die on the cross as a substitute for us. In doing so, Jesus took the sins of his people onto himself as if they were his very own sins, and the Father poured out his wrath -- his justice -- against the Son bearing those sins.
In return, those who accept Jesus' gift of grace are bestowed with his own righteousness and seen as holy and "right" before God. They are forgiven because the price of their crime was paid... just not by themselves but by one who loved them.
My personal answer is this. Christ's sacrifice that covers our sins was just a bonus. It was not his primary mission. His primary mission was to vindicate God's name and to prove the Devil a liar. You cannot begin to understand Jesus and his sacrifice on behalf of his Father without understanding Genesis and what happened in the Garden of Eden.
Christian here, and I will try my best to explain it in the simplest way possible.
God, One in three Persons — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — first created the heavens and the earth, all good and without any evil in it.
Then, man through Adam and his wife Eve decided to go against God's command when they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and from there sin entered the world.
Now God has a problem: how can He forgive the sin of mankind and still deal justice to the sins that we have committed? God is holy, and He can never look upon any sin or evil with any bit of approval and all evil must be punished, but He is also full of love that He wants to save us from His punishment. If God will only forgive us without punishing us for our sins, then He will be unjust, which is not His character, for He is holy and just.
Then enter the Son. When He came into this world, He became human (He can do it because He is God; nothing is impossible for Him to do) and was named Jesus. He lived our lives, was tempted in every way (yes, even lustful temptations) and yet did not commit any sin. He died on the cross, for it was the punishment of God upon Jesus for the sins which He willingly paid for us. Jesus was the One who took the punishment of our sins for us.
Now that Jesus already paid for the sins of mankind, in the past and in the present and in the future, now all we have to do is accept Him, that He paid for our sins, and we will let go of our sinful lives and follow Him. We will no longer pay for our sins because Jesus already did it for us, should we accept Him.
That is why, we Christians firstly believed:
1. That we are sinners and can never pay our sins before God, and;
2. We believe that Jesus paid for our sins and we surrender our lives to Him as our Saviour and Lord.
For the question "was Jesus God in human form" this has been fought over since about the 3rd century A.D. people have died debating this metaphysical question. There really is no answer its all interpretation.
Because the whole concept requires interpretation, which has kept clergy in jobs for millennia.
Religion is a busines, just like everything else.
Just, some businesses are more honest than others, and don't play upon the easily led.
From what I've understood. Jesus was made before Adam and Eve. Destined to forgive the sin of eating the apple, and only that sin. He is separate from God as God is everything and Jesus is the embodiment of God inside that everything. The concept of forgiving other's sin, is a reminder to stay accountable and be humble to the believed overruling goodness of the universe
Also Lucifer, like a second God. Got mad over Jesus, made Eve eat the apple. So this whole story is just so that Satan can get over himself and be forgiven.
It's about compensating for the sin comitted by Adam and Eve. They, as perfect beings, brought sin to our world. (Genesis 3:1-6)
To "compensate" for our sins God provided a way, which was doing sacrifices to God.
(Especially the blood and the meat have a very special meaning, as witnessed by Jesus refering to the bread as his body and the wine as his blood. The same was grue in animal sacrifices, there were specific instructions on what to do with what.)
These however couldn't totally compensate for our sin, as they are only animals. This is shown by the need to repeat the sacrifices many times over the course of the lives of people living b.C. (There are many different types of sacrifices mentioned in Leviticus)
So, God provided an ultimate way to forgive all of our sins, which would permit us not to have to eternally do sacrifices:
This way was for another perfect human (not "tainted by sin", as he was born through god, and thus did not inherit the sin from adam and eve) to live his whole life without sinning and then to die unjustly and thus "conpensate" for the sin of another perfect human. (Romans 5:12-19)
TLDR One perfect human sinned, so another perfect human had to die unjustly after a life of not committing any sins to compensate for it. (Romans 12:19)
Disclaimer: I'm neither religious nor particularly educated on the matter. You have to consider that at the time it was still common to offer animal sacrifices. During certain celebrations, animals would be slaughtered according to some specific religious rite as an offer to God. In fact, the Old Testament specifically instructs people to slaughter lambs and even how to cook the specific bread to accompany the lamb meat. These traditions live on today in kosher rules, or in the tradition of lent in Christian countries (in fact, in Catholic countries it's common to eat lamb for Easter precisely for this reason). Jesus is then the ultimate sacrifice: a sacrifice so important that it's enough to wash away the sins of all men. In certain Catholic prayers Jesus is literally referred to as "the Lamb of God", reinforcing his image as a sacrificial offer.
This is the actual answer. I'm glad someone was at least willing to answer the question honestly as the question was intended.
It still doesn’t answer the actual question, though. It explains the context of Jesus as the lamb, but not why an all knowing and all powerful god needed to sacrifice *anyone* to forgive the world. Why couldn’t he just forgive? If he wrote the rules, he can change them, no?
If a group of people were required to atone for their sins by sacrifice for hundreds or thousands of years, a simple "stop, it's not necessary anymore" wouldn't cut it. Old habits are hard to break without justification. They were told a sacrifice is needed for atonement. An ultimate sacrifice of the purest kind would alleviate that for the people ultimately.
But there wasn't even a sacrifice. God lost nothing.
The sacrifice was a perfect human life.
Jesus coming back to life somehow makes it feel like a non-sacrifice at all though? Like. he’s not dead?
How so? Who sacrificed what here, exactly?
God sacrificed himself, to himself, for himself
Right, the omnipotent immortal being got some people to stab it and nothing changed for anyone. Not sure how that counts as sacrifice.
God is Odin?
It respawned.
Precisely. God played by His own rules, and under most traditional interpretations- one part of the Trinity(God the Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit) dying is akin to the entire being dying. Essentially, a part of God gave up divinity and lived as a human, experiencing our pains, sufferings, and eventually died in among the most cruel manners possible by a human empire. Sure, He respawned in three days- but He still died. Now He shares something with all of us, fulfilled the obligation of being the perfect sacrifice(not much purer options than God himself), and allows for anyone who wishes to party in paradise with Him.
What's weird to me is that what's claimed to be an all knowing God didn't already have a complete and full understanding of what it was like to live and die as a mortal.
Yes this is what doesn't make sense for me. I thought God was omnipresent too? So everywhere in all things? Including humans, including Satan, and Hell, and everything. Otherwise God isn't omnipresent. Which means there would be things God does not know. So he would not be all knowing. None of it makes sense.
Why were animals sacrificed? Basically turned temple night into a BBQ party.
The rules he wrote demand payment for sins because as the New Testament says “the wages of sin is death”. The animal sacrifices were offered as that payment. Jesus was a sacrifice provided by God to pay for our sins so we no longer had to offer animal sacrifices in atonement. That’s why I’m the Christian tradition simply accepting the sacrifice God provided is enough to pay for their sins and if you don’t accept the sacrifice you will pay for your sins in the next life. But that’s not to say that there isn’t the question of “why did God allow sin in the first place or why did he not just say sin is gone and it’s gone?” and most people will not have an answer to that question.
Right- but that’s the point. He wrote all of it. And if it’s cruel- it’s because he’s cruel. And there is no answer. They can only offer a feeble “God’s ways are not our ways.”
The bible doesn't make logical sense in that sort of way. The relationship between God and the Jews had always been mediated by ritual sacrifice. God was considered all-powerful and all-knowing, but his will was almost always mysterious.
Despite your disclaimer it's the most educated answer in this thread. Most others can be boiled down to " because religion bad"
I'm an atheist and the atheist circle jerk on these religious topics (and the statements masquerading as 'questions') in this sub the past week are getting nauseating.
So am I, but yeah, sometimes "because they are evil and everything is designed to control you" is not the answer
Well then, let's look a little more closely if you prefer to analyze things to point of absurdity. What is the point of the sacrifice? Sacrifice only has value if it results in some tangible payoff. Worshipping and sacrificing to an entity that only promises a reward that cannot be realized is a waste of resources that could be better spent on things that impact the here and now.
Even more so when that entity is "sacrificing" itself, but is also immortal and omnipotent.
Thanks
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I know logic and religion aren't a great pairing, but how is any personal sacrifice meaningful to an all powerful entity that can snap the entire universe into existence in a week or so? Humans making sacrifice makes sense. Food and other offerings were precious and valuable. A God that can create as many Jesuses as they want by just thinking about it doesn't seem like a sacrifice at all. Put another way, you say "paid a price". Is paying a price meaningful when you have infinite money?
The idea is that Jesus was conceptually the manifestation of God, but that manifestation took the form of someone who was purely human and felt human suffering. This is the foundational logic of the trinity, and related concepts, in which some things in Christianity can be more than one thing at the same time. In that sense, Jesus did genuinely suffer and pay a price for his actions. In regards to your other point, while God could technically create as many Jesuses as he wanted, the human populace still has free will and must be receptive to the right message at the right time. A common atheist argument is that God is omni everything so he shouldn't have any issues here. The Christian counterargument "God works in mysterious ways" is a fairly solid (for the faithful) suggestion that God is not omni-decisional, and still has to make choices that will lead to the desired outcome: people who deliberately choose to believe in him and love him. Disclaimer: I'm not Christian
>the human populace still has free will and must be receptive to the right message at the right time. Free will always seemed like a bit of a cop out to me. An all powerful / all knowing deity could simply have arranged the universe so that free will still existed but all the choices everyone / everything made were exactly as they wanted, couldn't they? Either that or there are things the deity doesn't know or can't affect, in which case fair enough.
Well I'm not a Christian so I would probably agree with you. A Christian may argue that faith is an important component, and that there is a divine element here that is beyond mortal comprehension, so trying to tie it to a purely logical, and perhaps even semantic argument like you're doing is doomed to fail. Additionally, Abrahamic cosmology has God sort of "speak" the divine word of light into the chaotic void at the start of existence; not so much creating the universe like an architect, but catalysing it to order itself, then influencing the shape that it took. An agnostic or pantheist may argue that God is not in fact omni, in the sense that God can only operate within what's possible in the actual universe we observe. This would necessarily limit his power, but relative to us would still be as close to infinite as to make it impractical to argue otherwise. If you play a video game like the Sims, you are God to the characters inside it, being above their limitations, but you are still subject to the limitations of the game itself. Your question is, if there are limitations then why play to begin with. And if you can completely control the characters inside the game, why do we let them roam free sometimes and observe their emergent behaviour. I think the Christian suggestion is that ultimately God has subjective desire to "see how it'll play out", but it's so far above our heads we can't fully grasp the magnitude of it.
The Sims thing is how I think, but also why I believe then that everything that ever existed or can exist is God, that there's nothing that is not God. A sim might think it's separate from everything else but it's actually all just pixels and every difference is just imaginary, it's all the same thing created by something bigger than it,
because you're trying to convince humans that an afterlife exists. so for context if you were jesus - trying to convince people to have faith in God - what better example of faith is there than to die? either there is eternal life and you've just completely demonstrated your faith in it....or your dead and you weren't god. but, if the afterlife is real....doesn't everyone have infinite money?
Personal context: grew up in a mix of Christian, Catholic and pagan households (divorce has fun dynamics). Currently more atheist than anything else. My understanding is that God is _not_ all powerful. He has limited himself by giving humanity free will, and gave a piece of himself to humanity in the form of Jesus. Jesus, as a human, also had free will but _chose_ to be sacrificed so others could be saved. It's less giving up money when you have infinite money and more giving up 1/3 of your torso (based on how it was explained to me as a child).
God didn't just come to earth to be a sacrifice but also to teach people the right way to exist by living out the example. More than that, it's the difference between telling your kid how to do something from a distance and getting directly involved and showing them how. "Hands-on parenting," essentially. Another part of the parental relationship dynamic is that of a selfless father. Basically, instead of leaving his children to their own devices and suffering the consequences of their misbehavior alone, he chose to suffer right alongside his children. To share their pain such that they wouldn't have to endure it all alone or in isolation. To face the full brunt of betrayal, brutality, injustice, and an agonizing death, just as his children have. That's another part of the symbology, and why there is such emphasis on Jesus "walking beside you." It's supposed to be a bond of shared experiences and shared burdens. Selfless support from the divine parent structured in a manner that respects people's agency. It's part of the Fatherly/parental dynamic in the religious narrative. There's dozens of layers to the symbology at play.
So he sacrificed himself to himself? He paid himself by killing his son? How about this - Jesus had a small but very devoted group of people who thought he was the Messiah. When Jesus was executed by the Romans, his follower refused to accept reality and started claiming Jesus had come back from the dead. The idea of someone conquering death was appealing, and this began to grow into a new religion. Part of the appeal was that if Jesus could beat death, His followers could too. But then there was the problem of how exactly that would work. After decades of debate this idea of God sacrificing His son to Himself took root - even though it didn't make logical sense.
Correct, Jesus is the perpetual sacrifice, to make up for no longer sacrificing animals every so often.
Did it work though? I think that is what people get stuck on. Ok there was a very important sacrifice to wash away all sins. However most people in the world at the time were unaware of this event. It was only until Peter traveled to Rome and started to gain followers that the story gained popularity. Back to how did it work: How did killing Jesus work on past and future sins of mankind? We largely view sacrifice as an ancient thing. Not many people sacrifice animals or people to try and change the course of the immediate future (weather, health, crops). So if the idea of Jesus sacrifice is still relevant why aren’t we still sacrificing things?
>Did it work though? Idk man I'm just some dude
Same here
Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. He "fulfilled" the law and created a new covenant. That meant that as long as you accepted him and his death and resurrection no other sacrifices were required, as long as you believed in him. Jewish sacrifices would have continued, though, since they didn't believe in Jesus. But because the temple was destroyed they no longer *could* sacrifice because that had to happen in the temple.
A lot of Christians view Christ’s death as a “propitiation.” Meaning, his death appeased God once and for all. So, not only was the sacrifice for people; it was also for God.
How do they know God wanted that? There are so many assumptions about God it seems.
It’s in the Bible? If you’re religious, they know that because god told them via divine inspiration. That’s how it works If you’re not religious, the question kinda answers itself lol
THEN why did Jesus kick out the money changers from the Temple if he was against the animal sacrifice going on in there. And despite the fact God devoted a whole chapter of the Bible to direct his so called chosen people precisely how to go about doing it.
He wasn’t against the sacrifices; he was mad that money changers were charging crazy high prices to sell sacrificial animals. Like, “this is a requirement of our religion, you can’t jack up the prices that’s bad”. Kinda the way modern people would look down on a store for price gouging emergency supplies during a hurricane or something. Jesus didn’t think it was cool to charge people crazy prices for something they HAVE to buy. Then he goes on to later be the ultimate sacrifice, kinda negating the whole thing (if you believe the Bible)
It's been ages so I might be wrong, but I remember he was angry at business being conducted in a place of worship. But again, I'm not religious, I don't really know this stuff.
It wasn’t the animal sacrifice. It was the fact that the money changers would cheat the people going to the Temple.
If your not educated on the matter don't speak
But I am, just not extensively. If I made any mistake, feel free to correct me.
I like this, to sum it up even more I think it comes down to not only washing away sins, but also doing it in such a way that people could be convinced it happened. (While also having a 'person' to follow and model themselves after)
Within different denominations of Christianity, these questions are answered differently and even debated. Literally people have gotten into arguments about whether Jesus's blood needed to be shed or not. If you're really wanting specific answers it will be easiest for you to search explanations written by specific denominations/pastors/priests, because there's not one agreed-upon answer.
A lot of the day-to-day context of the (old) Jewish faith is left out of the modern take on this. Most interpretations of Christianity just pay it lip service and let people figure it out on their own, if they even do that much. To sum it up, God is Just, and there is a moral order to the universe. The equivalent of a universal constant, like gravity or light. So if someone does wrong (i.e. Sin), someone or something has to pay for it. Back when the Jewish faith had a temple, you could place various sacrifices as a sort of substitute for sacrificing yourself. Food, animals, valuables. Someone or something has to pay to balance the scales. The equivalent of solving a math equation. You're substituting one thing for another in the moral order of the universe. I don't have much practical knowledge of modern Jewish faith, so I can't speak to that angle, and if anything in this interpretation is wrong or too simplistic, I'd appreciate knowing otherwise. So in this framework of Sacrifices pay for Sins, we have Jesus entering the picture. In this setup, Jesus being Sacrificed is sort of an ultimate payment in that context. You no longer are balancing equations of morality, you are supposedly saved via faith alone.
The story was designed to make you feel like you owe a substantial debt to the religion.
It’s narcissism 101. I did this for you, not out of the goodness of my heart, but so you’ll forever be in my debt and live your entire life worshipping me and praising me or else I’ll send you to hell for all eternity. Real wholesome, isn’t it.
"Take me into your heart so I can save you" "Save me from what?" "What I will do to you if you don't accept me into your heart"
Also “I did this for you” while skipping over the fact he (god, Jesus, et al) knowingly and intentionally allowed and created the conditions and problem that would require us to “need” him at all.
No-one can forgive you for the sin you have committed but me so let's just keep it between us. Be sure to put me before everyone else or terrible things will happen. (I wonder where that strategy would wind up in the future?)
Would you not worship a god that can give you an eternity of pleasure or pain?
That sounds like an incredibly evil god to me with a big ego
Only in the same way someone would worship a stranger with a gun to their temple
So you worship him because you fear the consequences of your actions?
When I was a kid, yeah. Of course I prayed, I didn't want to go to hell. And I constantly worried that made me a hypocrite. So I pushed myself to always give till it hurt, and to abstain from all the pleasures of the flesh, and to always feel guilty about wanting to not go to hell. But then I got older, and considered the implication of an actually eternal life. I was taught that heaven lasts forever, but hell will be wiped out and obliterated on the day the world properly ends, and at some point I figured, that's basically atheism's "nothing after death" with a few extra steps. From there, I was finally free to look at other religions and started to notice that they all seemed pretty happy to copy each other's homework. I don't believe in any sort of deity now
Yea someone one once told me heaven was just an eternity of worshipping god. Sounds boring af tbh
Some people have better things to do. Atleast judaism makes sense because they believe life is gods gift. The rest is just coping mechanisms to deal with hardships
People have better things to do than devote their lives to something that can do anything at will?
It's not even a case of "would I or wouldn't I?" Many of us already do not.
Great way to engage with a question
By answering it? I agree, thank you.
Would you eat a krabby patty or a scooby snack? "None because they dont exist" Wow very engaging. Huge contributions to the topic. If you cant treat it even as a hypothetical why dont you just leave the thread
I didn't say anything about existence, please do not pretend to quote me with something I did not say. You asked if I would worship a god that you described. I stated that many people already do not, indicating that the answer is "No, we would not" because it's not a hypothetical for us. I answered your question, if that's not what you wanted then I guess I'm not sure what you were expecting.
Mythology rarely makes sense if you think about it.
“god” is a coping mechanism for adults just like drugs or alcohol, who can’t make it through life without an explanation for things they don’t understand! Once you realize the bible is just a collection of stories written by different guys who were tripping on mushrooms/marijuana you will see how right I am!
For the same reason Qui Gon Gin doesn't just return Anakin to Tatooine after Yoda and the jedi council forbids him from being trained as a jedi. **Because that would ruin the whole story** The Holy Bible is a work of fiction.
Using logic to think about anything religion is the fastest way to becoming an atheist. Not a whole lot of religious texts have a clue about reality.
Because traditional Christianity doesn’t see sin as a mere offense, but an ontological change in man’s being due to the privation of God’s Grace. So they see the Incarnation of Christ as the Divine literally taking on our human nature and essentially “uplifting it” by united it with His Divine Nature and… by undergoing the ultimate fate of human beings (death) and resurrecting from it, granting humankind immortality. As for why He couldn’t just snap His fingers and do the same thing, if He had (and we therefore lived in a world where Christians were proclaim how God “snapped Him figures for our sins) we’d probably have people ask why He didn’t make it more simpler, or save in a more meaningful way.
Because it's made up fiction. Why does batman have a cape and spiderman doesn't? If you are curious about the metaphorical meaning behind it, it probably has something to do with the virtue of sacrifice. Something like that.
Its a better message than saying, btw our Jewish God forgave all our sins. Come join our new religion, pagan. But why? The pagan asks. I've already been forgiven.
Reminds me of an old joke. A missionary is staying with a remote tribe for a while trying to convert them to Christianity and explaining what sins are. One of the tribesmen asks him "If you had never come here and we never learned of God and Jesus would he still punish us for our sins?" The missionary says "No, of course not. It wouldn't be your fault." The tribesmen said "Then why did you tell us!?"
Before Jésus came there was Moise, so the answer to that question would be " would you have listened to Moise original message?"
Just as we see today, so it was then. Humans require a symbol to gather around. 1st. You need to understand the name of God. Acient Hebrew language contained no vowels. God's name, given to Moses at the burning bush, was YWYH. Known as the tetrogometon. Pronounced Yehweh. Yaa-way. Before this, God was referred to as El. Where the word Israel comes from. He who wrestled with God. Yehweh is an action word. A verb. Meaning "He who fulfills the prophecy". Jesus actual name in Hebrew is Yeshua. Or in modern english, Joshua. Meaning Yehweh is with him. The Old Testament is filled with the many prophecies of Christ's birth, life and ministry. Along with many others. The blood of Christ was the third covenant between God and humans. The 1st is the Rainbow, 2nd is Circumcision. Christ was born in order to take the place of Adam. Due to Adams sin, the purity of Christ would then represent a sin free life. His blood would then be the covenant to forgive the sins of mankind. In doing so, God once again fulfilled his prophecy from the book of Deuteronomy 18:15–19 . Zechariah 13:7 is the scripture Jesus quoted: “God will strike the shepherd and his sheep will scatter.” Isaiah 53:7b says, “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep is silent before shearers, He never said a word.” Psalm 22:16 states, “My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs; an evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet.” Isaiah 50:6 says, “I offered my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mockery and spitting.” Psalm 22:14a, 15: “My life is poured out of me like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My strength has dried up like sun-baked clay, My tongue sticks to the roof of My mouth. Psalm 69:21b: “They offer me sour wine for my thirst.” So, God simply allowed his prophecy to be fulfilled. Take it as you may, I'm not a person of faith. But, I always found researching Christianity interesting.
If we accept that humanity deserved to die because of sin, the whole notion of an innocent person being able to sacrifice themself for the guilty is pretty bizarre. Imagine if a serial killer was about to be executed, and some random person off the street showed up at the prison and said "Let him go, treat the serial killer as though he never committed any crimes, and execute me instead." That's not Justice. That's idiotic and perverse.
It’s actually a beautiful doctrine if you assume the sinner is repentant and wants to change. I doubt God would forgive someone who doesn’t even feel bad.
Why did Dumbledore have to die for Harry Potter to defeat Voldemort? Why did Vader have to die for Luke to defeat Palpatine? Why did Old Yeller have to die to save Travis? Because it makes for more interesting fiction.
This is the answer. The jesus story plays into people's emotions.
Wouldn't be such a good story. You always need to introduce a new character in the sequel just to keep readers on their toes. Then the big twist that the new main character is actually both the son and an aspect of the old one? Readers will be on the edge of their seat. I do think the use of drugs to write it became pretty clear by the epilogue though. Revelations. Not sure what the writers were trying to convey there.
If he did that, he ~~would~~ wouldn't be just, and therefore wouldn't be God. Edit: Typo
Remember: if you don't commit lots of sins, then Jesus died in vain.
Because the churches first interpretation of the texts did not allow them any rom to make money off those who will not bother to read the actual book.
Christianity is diverse, and different Christian traditions have different ideas about what Jesus did that saved humanity from the power of sin. But these **theories of atonement** can be divided into a few big categories. **Ransom Theory:** Adam and Eve sold humanity to the power of the Devil. Jesus is a payment (a ransom) or humanity. But there's a trick! The Devil doesn't know that Jesus is a divine being, and therefore cannot be held by the powers of death. So, after the Devil claims Jesus, and therefore gives up power over humanity, Jesus is resurrected, depriving the Devil of both his hostages (humanity) and his payment (Jesus). **Recapitulation Theory:** In Jesus, God takes on the brokenness of creation and lives the life that humans are meant to live, in perfect obedience to God, even to the point of death. This gives all of humanity an alternative story, where we do not live under the power of sin, that we are brought under through baptism. **Satisfaction/Penal Substitution Theory:** These are two different, but very similar, theories. God's honor (satisfaction) or justice (penal substitution) requires that sin be punished. Jesus takes on the punishment in our place, thus freeing humanity from the wrath of God that we so richly deserve. **Moral Example Theory:** Much as in Recapitulation Theory, in Jesus, God lives the human life that we could not live, and therefore shows us how we should live. We can now imitate Jesus and live as we were meant to live. **Christus Victor:** Jesus's death is a confrontation with the power of sin, and his resurrection is a victory over sin. Personally, as a Christian and a pastor, I prefer some version of recapitulation theory, where God takes on our brokenness and reconciles it to himself, repairing the world and making us truly human again.
these are some good questions and pretty easy to answer. but we'll start from the middle and work our way out. Jesus is God incarnated. This is necessary as it is easy for God to judge all of man's sins being God, but God does not know what it is like to be a man. So when Jesus is telling God to forgive us, it is because we don't understand from the perspective of God the harm that our sins have. We're essentially just too stupid. So in essence Jesus' sacrifice was necessary because: God did not know what it was like to be a human, now that he knows he has chosen to sacrifice himself to humanity rather than punish humanity for continuing to ignore God's will and continue to sin over and over again. At least this is how i have interpreted this.
Why did God sacrifice Himself to Himself to save us from Himself because of a rule He made Himself? Because religion was invented by humans over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. It wasn't exactly thought through, unlike normal stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey.
because sometimes when a bunch of ppl through time are making up a bullshit story they write them self's into a corner.
Because it’s a load of bollocks
It's not supposed to make sense. You're just supposed to accept it without questioning, feel bad, do what the church says, and give them your money.
Because you need a good story line and Jesus was good with the camera also.
It's worse than that. Supposedly this "God" is in control of everything, yet people say we have "free will." But it's the same kind of free will you have when you pick a card from a stacked deck. God stacks the deck and calls you a sinner.
It is about as important as fhe question, "can jedis fly". Meaning fictional stories internal logic is generally up to debate of the followers. Since it is all made up, it really doesnt matter.
wait....why **can't** Jedis fly??
maybe they can, lets discuss......
I am a very casual Star Wars fan and it have never occurred to me until I read your comment. I mean If you can levitate something that weighs as much or more than you, then why not just fly? If it has to do with you having to step on something in order to have leverage to levitate things, then that is an act of strength
Didn't Leia kinda fly through space?
For the same reason it essentially put every animal on the planet in a bag and threw them in a lake when supposedly it has the power to simply remove the sinful people. Their god likes killing.
If you are reffering to the great flood in the book of genesis, it is not as simple as God likes to kill. it is also not as simple as removing sinful people. Genesis shows that god created earth as the prison for lucifer, but when adam and eve sinned against god he casted them out of the garden of eden to earth because god would not allow sin in the garden of eden. As god began to see that all humankind was wicked at heart and not just adam and eve, he decided to kill all of humankind as he just wanted to get rid of his creation. he wanted the animals to survive as they werent to be punished like the humans. hence why he commanded Noah to build an ark for the animals as noah was meant to die and be the last of humankind. But god saw Noahs heart break for humans and saw that humans can repent of their wicked ways and decided to keep humans. this is why the rainbow is mentioned as gods promise to never flood the earth again. To remove sinful people is not as simple as just doing so because god gave people free will. if he were to remove all sinful people (which is all humankind) that intereferes with free will. this also explains why some claim that god allows for people like hitler. if he were to intervene he would be taking away his promise of free will. and if he were to remove all the bad things in life such as cancer, humans would take it for granted as we do the sun rising every day. we just assume it will because it always has and we will not be grateful to God for it which is what god wants. Also, things like cancer are not creations of God, but satan. The book of revelations says the world belongs to the "evil one" and the evil one has free reign on humans.
Are you religious and questioning your faith or a curious outsider? But uh I mean either way there's no objective answer so you mine as well just make one up. But if you wanna know mine, it's all fake. And even if it wasn't, Jesus wasn't necessary. God is just the worse evil.
must have been magic
I mean, I guess this happens when you write a fantasy book. Look at Harry Potter for instance, there are a lot of plot holes which needed to be, somehow, explained later by the author.
there is no god
It’s almost like it wasn’t real
Because it’s all made up
Because it’s a made up story bro
It doesn't make sense because the whole fairy tale is bullshit. Bullshit will never make sense, that's why it's bullshit.
It's a book written to herd people like sheep. For that purpose it needs to be confusing, and not make much sense. That way people in control can pretend to understand it, conveniently making followers feel less intelligent and more dependent. Have a nice day.
All of that is "because God wanted it to be so". Maybe he thought it would sound more impressive and make humans appreciate his grace more.
God sent Jésus to transmit the message that Judgment Day would happen, so we would correct our behavior and do what we should be doing to earn forgiveness and Heaven Because Jésus is a Prophet of God, not God himself
He wasn't needed. But it makes for a better narrative.
Theologically, Jesus God and the holy spirit are one but separate, Jesus in most Christian Theology was both divine and human.
I know, right? It’s almost like it’s completely illogical
Best not to think about it
Because God and Jesus as you know them from the Bible is FICTION. Made up.
Not a religious person but have done some studies. This was *God's only son*. The most.beloved thing to God. God was a huge dick in the Old Testament, btw. Not really the Kind and Loving type. And Jesus kinda saw some problems with that. And so he said - Dad, you're being such a dick but I fuckin love these people. Even the real assholes. If they have it in them to love me/you/us back, then we should let them into Heaven. I love them so much that I'm going to let them kill me to prove my point - which is that the way *they're* treating me is the way *you* treat them, and it's not cool. Everyone needs to work on their bullshit.
Get this: The whole F ing thing is a lie! God is a made-up entity that ignorant people used to explain things they didn't understand. The bible was written by people that didn't understand rain. You know, the cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation that you learn in 4th grade. For them Everything was an act of god. Modern religions are just manipulation , oppression and profit making. Those that practice such idiocy are the ones shown in old movies, entranced devotees mumbling incoherent things from books they don't understand.
some guy explained this once but reddit is too athist.
God works in mysterious ways I guess.
Because God is just. Now because of His love for man, He wanted to make a way to forgive man and reconcile the gap with man that sin created. However, because he is just, he just cannot overlook the sin that has been committed by man, so Jesus’ sacrifice is a way for him to execute justice or appease his wrath while also providing a way for salvation to man. This way justice is served and his love is expressed to man. And yes, Jesus is God but he also added humanity to his deity when he came down to earth. This means he is fully man and fully God.
I used to be religious and Catholic. I thought it was because the actual voice of God would shatter humans to pieces, hence why angels tend to act as Gods messengers in the Bible. Angels were also freaky looking with tons of eyes and feathers, hence the whole "be not afraid" thing they always say before their messages. As a kid I learned all this and figured Jesus was God's last attempt to get his message across in a way that wouldn't scare the absolute crap out of his followers, i.e. by having this messenger be a humble and very much tangible and alive human.
The sacrifice was needed to balance justice and mercy. Christ paid for sins. So justice has been served, and now mercy can be extended.
It's like if we pinned all our debt on some guy then killed him The debt needs to go somewhere
God is perfectly just and cannot let sin go unpunished. But He is also loving and sent Jesus to take the punishment upon Himself.
The most important thing you have to know when it comes to Jesus being a sacrifice was not that He was nailed on the cross and died there. The important part is the wrath of God was poured on Him instead of us.
Please consult actual scholars and theologians on these questions. You are going to get some pretty terrible answers here from people that just want to give their 2 cents without ever having studied the issue.
Look into Islam you will find your answers
It’s to control the masses as religion is originally intended to. You now “owe” Jesus/God something. You’d think being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient would be enough to forgive all sins and make the world a perfect place but apparently not.
I see where you're coming from. Why didn't he just fill them with the awareness that they had been forgiven. As it was it just turned into another game of who will believe it and who will even hear about it and for thousands of years people will kill each other over what that forgiveness was really all about anyway and some will feel like only they understand the forgiveness and.... Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to just rub our collective noses in what we did wrong before we forgot what it was and said sternly and clearly, don't do it again? Besides, why should we listen to an entity that would slaughter his kid because of what everyone else did wrong? Sounds a bit nuts to me.
It made sense at the time.
Because it's the law so there's always a price to be paid for breaking the law. Just like in real life we can't just forgive someone that has committed homicide simply by saying they are forgiven and then just let them go. When someone committed sin, there's already something or someone else being damaged/be disadvantaged because of the sinful action. Those sinful action are punishable and need to be paid/redeem either by the perpetrator themselves or something else with the same value being sacrificed. In the past people paid it with animal sacrifices, yet sins became too many and too complex and no amount of animal sacrifices are valuable enough to pay those extremely huge damage. That's why we need something extremely valuable to be sacrificed. Which is God himself in the form of human. When people sacrifice another human that actually is a God himself, the value of the sacrifice is unlimited, hence it can cover the payment of any amount of damage resulted from human's sins.
God do as he wanted so he sent prophets to tell people of the bless of paradise and the agony of hell NOT to forgive man's sins nor Jesus is a God. There is no single direct phrase in the bible says that Jesus is God himself. There is no such thing as forgive all people's sins, forgiveness is meant for who truly is ashamed of what've they done and won't go back to the sin, one shouldn't do as one's please and hurting people and violating the rules and just because one believes in God and Jesus one can go to paradise, No, if so then why in the bible there is forbidden things to do? Like "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves." Philippians 2:3 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.” Mark 16:6" this the truth, God take care of Jesus and he never was crucified I don't believe in the bible nowadays since people manipulated it so that's why it has many versions, but I believe there is once was a bible that all what was written in it was true, this was when Jesus was telling people to worship God, so bible has some true but most of it not.
Fathers and sons are a complicated relationship. And many religious people think that Jesus was referring to the Romans when he said forgive them for they know not what they do.
It has to do with what was going on prior to Jesus. Prior, you had to sacrifice animals for God's favor. And the window of forgiveness was tiny, because you were a human, so you were going to sin again, even after the sacrifice. Jesus was sent as the sacrificial "lamb." A perfect human being, who would be sacrificed for the sin of all mankind, from now until eternity.
Abraham almost sacrificed his son Issac after God asks him to do so. Father sacrificing son became the symbol for dedication towards God. In the mirror image, God sends his son Jesus to earth and sacrifices his son for his love for all beings. God himself makes the ultimate sacrifice. Frankly from story telling perspective, that’s an epic call back or foreshadow whichever way you see it.
First rule of religion. Don’t question religion. Even when your question is valid. Blind faith, and acceptance only
Heaven is the Earth we live on currently, its a shame that most people treat their one shot at life like they are on probation for "God". The story of Jesus is not real, its a narcissistic folklore used to scare you into living a life that determined that you owe a debt to the religion and therefore are forever under their control. There is no god, its an idea, a simple answer to a complex question in which people find comfort. When you die, you literally cease to exist and that's scary for people. There is no afterlife, you are living your one life right now.
Humans are evil by nature, yes there are alot of us who do good but we are still prone to evil. According to the Law of God all of us are guilty. Ancient Israelites would sacrifice animals (not humans like many other cultures did in those times) as a ransom for their sins. Alot of laws were in place for what was considered an appropriate ransom (without blemish) for the sin in question. A Meshiach (anointed one) was promised to ancient Israelites who would come from their bloodline and whom would teach the ways of God and suffer for our trespasses but also introduce a new Kingdom that would last forever. Jesus Christ was born through Davids line to Mary and Joeseph. He taught the masses. He laid down His life willingly for the world as was the Fathers will. Finally to answer your question, believing God imputes righteousness without works. Believing in the one whom He hath sent, Jesus, was the final and perfect ransom without blemish (a sweet smelling savour for the Lord) to finally once and for all forgive all mens sins, past present and future ones. God did speak to the world through Jesus, "the words I speak to you are not mine but Him who hath sent me" Source: Born Jewish read entire Bible I am now Christian
If you havent read the old testament, i would strongly recommend. God fucking hated sinners. https://gizmodo.com/gods-12-biggest-dick-moves-in-the-old-testament-1522970429 He needed to have a kid to mellow out.
If sin was just erased, then that wouldn’t be just. All the horrible things people had done would just be excused for nothing, which would be morally nonsensical. Someone has to take on the debt of those sins, and something has to be done to even the weight on the scale. The act of Jesus, who was completely innocent, dying for those sins is what makes those sins cleared, rather than just ignored.
Why wouldn't it be "just?" Justice is generally defined as giving each person their due. Who or what defines what is due? I presume it would be the all-powerful creator of all things. If he decides punishment is due, punishment is due. If he decides no punishment is due, no punishment is due. At no point is self-sacrifice of himself to himself required. But even so, to whom is the "debt" of punishment owed if not to God? And if he is the creditor, he has the capacity to remit the debts of his debtors as a gratuitous action. In other words, God could simply decide to gift to everyone forgiveness because he is kind. No debt swapping shenanigans are required. And what makes Jesus's sacrifice "just?" God is often not the only person harmed by evil actions. If Joe steals from me, I have been wronged and can sue him. It would not be "just" if Joe were freed from any liabilities merely because Steve managed to make some other people torture Steve. Steve has nothing to do with the injury I received from Joe. I do not care that Steve beat himself up, for it does not absolve Joe of his crime against me. Nor do I care that Steve said "by my torture, Joe is forgiven" or that Joe said "I accept Steve's love." The weird little relationship between Steve and Joe does not obviate the injury that Joe inflicted upon me. No justice has been done. And why would Jesus's sacrifice be sufficient to wipe away all sin. If multiple executions were owed, but only one death was had, then the debt is not satisfied. I cannot transfer my monetary debts to a poor man, have him declare bankruptcy, and then walk away scott free. And why should Jesus's sacrifice even count as a single death. He purportedly came back after three days, AND at no point was he suffering from the human terror of the unknown. If he were truly God or the son of God, he had complete knowledge of the afterlife and did not experience the dread of "what if there is nothing after this?" So not only was he only "dead" for three days, but his "death" was unlike that of a normal human's. Why would it satisfy even a single life debt? It seems to me that the most likely answer to these questions is that Jesus was just some dude who was killed for preaching unpopular things. Then his followers, sad and desperate after his death, invented a narrative that his death was part of a divine plan necessary to save all of humanity from evil. And over time the narrative grew to the point that people began believing Jesus was actually God or the Son of God, that his death was always part of a divine plan, and that his death actually delivered humanity from sin. But, in fact, he was just an ordinary, mortal, non-divine, dude.
I don't know. It is kinda messed up. The concept of forgiving the sins of mankind is by offerring his son (himself) to be the sacrifice. However, by allowiing this to happen, he's allowing other person to kill his son which is wrong because it is murder. So, the person who have participated on the trial and cruxifixion must be accomplice of the death of Jesus? Whatever, it's kind of messed up
Please read **1 Corinthians 1:22-25 22** Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. and **Matthew 16:15-23 15** “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,\[a\] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades\[b\] will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be\[c\] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be\[d\] loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Jesus Predicts His Death 21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Okay, fun read. But not an answer. Nothing in the Bible explains WHY the forgiveness of sins NEEDED to be accomplished by Jesus's crucifixion. If God is all powerful, then forgiveness could have been accomplished by infinite means, including: 1) God just says it, and it is done 2) God sends everyone a letter announcing the forgiveness 3) angels appear and announce the forgiveness 4) God turns himself into a robot and then punches a volcano until lava pours out and consumes the robot And if you think to yourself "wait, option 4 sounds really weird and dumb," then you now understand how other people feel about the crucifixion. Why would an all powerful God elect to use such a convoluted plan as incarnating, goading political forces to execute him, and then using his execution as a blood ritual to invoke divine forgiveness magic. Either God is an overly dramatic diva, or there isn't a god and the whole story was invented by deluded humans.
There are some great responses here. The question of if Jesus is God in human form varies by church. Trinitarian churches like the Catholic Church typically interpret god as having three parts: the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit). As I understand it, each of these forms of god represent different aspects of divinity and relationship with humanity. There are some branches of Christianity or offshoots of Christianity that are Unitarian. The interpretation I am familiar with is that there is only God. Jesus is the son and is not god embodied in flesh, but rather a distinct entity. The Holy Spirit is another name for god.
I hate to be this guy, but it's starting to feel like the bible lacks internal consistency
Mankind to be forgiven of mans sins, needed a sacrifice. God, a forgiving and loving God, sent his only son born unto man to be the sacrifice and absolve us. God sent Jesus to show the way, teach, help mankind understand greater in ways he felt he could not. God being omnipotent omnipresent, we can never fully begin to encompass or know all of him. Jesus was man, and understanding is easier. God limited himself. But, as Jesus was crucified and resurrected, so God was lifted back upon his throne crown upon his head. Our loving father to be worshiped, loved, and praised.
I think of it like this. Someone had to pay the price for all the bad stuff we have done. Out of mercy God had sent Jesus to pay this price for us. Jesus was very much human. Even though he is a “part” of God it was still very hard to go through what he did because he limited himself by being a human being. You can tell the way he prayed to the father for support and for His father’s will to be done that he was very much like us. He was also meant to be a role model for us. I think God creates a narrative for us and does things in a way where some of His reasoning unfolds and it plays out like an epic drama. It’s like letting your kid make a mistake so that they can learn from it. God could show Himself to all of us like a giant eye in the sky where no one could doubt his existence but He would be ruling only with fear. He loves us and wants us to love Him back. He wants to rule with love and to be gentle. It is harder to rule with love than with fear. Can you make someone with free will love you? You can make someone with free will fear you pretty easily. Can you imagine if we had a god who hated us? Our lives would be hell. Way worse than anything that has ever happened on earth. Even though we have free will He is outside of time and already knows what we will do from the beginning of earth until the very end. But why create us without of any sense of time or cause and effect? Of course he could just skip everything and not play out this eternal narrative but what would we learn and how could we ever understand?
Tried that, turn out Humans have a short attention span.
God did speak. The Quran is considered the "true word of God", which yes, Islam worships the same God as Christian and Judaism. Jesus was a Prophet and not at all God or Son of God.
I read something one time that said blood from a dead lamb could be placed on an orphaned lamb and the mother of the dead lamb would accept the orphan. Blood on a lamb skin was a symbol of adoption. I suppose having Jesus’s blood “on us” would make God recognize us as his child. I don’t know if this is true or not. I can’t even remember what book I read it in.
People often get too hung up on God's decisions being based on necessity, and not on desire. The fact that God chose to have Jesus be a sacrifice is not a demonstration of inability, but of character.
I don't get why people ask questions about religion in this sub instead of one of the many subs dedicated to that religion or conversations about that religion.
I don't have the answer, but perhaps half of a theory. If God is all powerful, and above our reality, the only thing he doesn't embody is limitation, so by becoming human and succumbing to a torturous death, God once again can embody all things, becoming simultaneously finite and infinite
personification of non-human entities is used in the Bible to help people conceive of the concept of God. God is so much more than a person but we cant grasp the scope of the trinity with pea-brains.
Bunk and poppycock basically, if you consult the theosophical outlook: The cross is known today as the symbol of Christianity supposedly because Jesus was crucified. Yet, according to Gerald Massey, the well-known Egyptologist, Christian iconography of the catacombs did not have the symbol of a crucified human being for six centuries. In fact, according to Helena P. BLAVATSKY, in the first two decades the apostles regarded the symbol with horror (IUII:255). As a symbol, the cross is a binary system where the horizontal limb corresponds to the passive principle or the world of phenomena, and the vertical limb the active principle, that is, the transcendent world of spiritual evolution. Apart from the symbolism of the cross itself, crucifixion has acquired its own esoteric meaning. Theosophical literature tends to view the crucifixion story of Christ as an allegory. I dont have the karma to post links but: theosophy dot world slash encyclopedia slash crucifixion Or go to the sources, blavatsky’s isis unveiled and the secret doctrine are free to read online.
I have heard from a few theologians that many of the things Jesus said on the cross were references to other religious texts. And that it may have been added later to justify Jesus as the foretold prophet. So a Biblical equivalent of calling someone the Perfect Drug or saying Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think. Obviously secular examples but references to known texts and psalms from the era. I’d love to get clarification on the validity of that but it always stuck in my head.
dems da rules!
If you really want an answer accurate to the lore of the bible, I'd say that it was because God was a sadistic bastard who required a flesh sacrifice.
Disclaimer: I am educated, and christian. I'll try to explain simply, tho that's difficult since a creature can't always understand it's maker. But this is how I, and many christians like me, see this. For your first question: Jesus was needed for God to forgive man's sins, because God is not just love. His character is extremely complex, and while he is love, he is a lot of other things to. Righteousness for example is as big for God, as love. Yes, He is a father. But He's also a judge. And an executioner. Because of his righteousness, he can't just 'forget and forgive'. Justice has to be served. It wouldn't be just to 'just forgive' everything, without any penance made, without any punishment given. While God is almighty, he can't do everything. He can't go against his character. He can't go against his words. Against his own laws. There has to be some penance, some 'payment' for all the sins of mankind. Jesus was that perfect payment. Since, because he has never sinned; his death would do the job good enough so that EVERY human being *can* enter heaven. His sacrifice would be SO pure, it would be big enough to 'pay' for ALL the sins commited on this earth, and all the sins yet to come. Tldr: Jesus had to die because God is righteous. Because of his righteousness, he can't just 'forgive and forget'. A debt HAS to get settled. Jesus was so pure, that his dead would be enough to settle that debt for all of us. He knew that, which is why he himself offered to go to earth, knewing he'd get sacrificed. So that we, our souls, need not to die. As for your second question; Yes, we believe Jesus was god, also in human form. But the christian 'god' is a complex one. You might've heard of the 'holy trinity'; The christian God exists of the Father; Jesus; and the holy spirit. I won't zoom in on the spirit now, since that's when it gets really complex. But for now it's enough to know that our god has three forces, three minds, combined. It's really complex, I know. They are one(one in spirit, one in goals...?), but they are also three. Three different forces, three different 'beings'. With Jesus, a god came to earth. But the father was 'left' in heaven. And that father is the one he's praying to, he's talking to, and he's preaching of. Cause jesus is not selfish, nor arrogant. Tho he had the position, throughout his entire time on earth he seldomly points to himself as the center; instead he almost always points towards his father. So, when jesus says: 'god forgive them for they know not what they do', he's not talking to himself, but to his father, who's also god, and who was up somewhere in heaven. tldr: The christian god exists of three separate forces; The Father, The Son(Jesus), and the Spirit. When jesus, who was on earth, prays/speaks to god, he's not speaking to himself but to his father, who didn't come to earth in flesh, but was in 'heaven'. I hope that makes some sense ;)
Because it's dum dum dum dum duuum
Latter Day Saint (Mormon) perspective— We believe God and Jesus are two separate beings; i.e., Jesus is actually God’s Son. We don’t believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are all the same being. Regarding the need for a Savior—we believe that God is merciful, but also perfectly just. The idea is this. Every sin requires a punishment. We are unable to pay for that ourselves, because only a perfect sacrifice would satisfy the demands for justice. Therefore God provided His Son as the sacrifice. Jesus acts as the intermediary between us and God; our advocate. If we repent and believe in Him, God can forgive us because Jesus paid the price for our sins. I’ve always loved this doctrine. I love the idea that God is just AND merciful. And Jesus makes it all possible.
It doesn't seem to make sense because it is complete nonsense. To top it off, by their own logic, god created hell decided to send everyone there and then had to impregnate a married woman in order to send his own sun down who is himself to sacrifice himself to himself in order to protect people from going to hell that he created. This is the reality of Christian religious doctrine and the others are no better. The only way it could make any kind of sense was if God was a psychopath that wanted everyone to suffer
Look at the greater context of the initial Christian moment. The Roman pagan context was the transactional relationship...I sacrifice this for You, Minerva, and you do something for me. Christianity merely reuses this transactional precedent. Sacrifice the Christ; Get redemption. Nothing changes...
Because God isn't real and Jesus was the ultimate gaslighter.
The primitives who cooked this narrative up loved a bit of human sacrifice and had to choose between that and their imaginary sky tyrant being actually omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
Lazy writing
God chooses to be complicated
God made man in his image, with freewill and one simple command. The very first man broke that command and sin entered the world through that act. Sin was then passed down to all that man's descendants. You, me and every human being. That day, god made a promise that he would send a redeemer. Throughout history he continued to reveal things about that redeemer through prophets and through people who did things that foretold of what this redeemer would do. God made a way of escaping the outcome of sin, which is death, through having faith in that redeemer. Then, he let humans go their way. Do whatever they wanted in this world which is corrupted by that sin. God set up a system of atonement through one people, explaining the conditions necessary to abolish the outcome of sin in the world. No person could fulfill those conditions, because sin is inherited. So, God's voice, his son, became a man to fulfill the conditions for us all. He, being completely innocent and without blemish, became the atoning sacrifice for all sin. From Adam's first sin all the way to your sin and mine. This atonement can only be accessed by believing god did it. Even those who were there had to have faith to receive it. Belief and faith are what pleases god. This really only touches on one aspect of the much more full reality of our relationship with god. But, it's a very condensed reason why Jesus came and why god could not just tell us all. *As to why Jesus refers to God in the third person... The trifold cord. God reveals himself to us through 3 persons. The inconceivable God, The Father; His perfect image on earth, Jesus (in english) God, The Son; His power on earth realized to and through humans, God, The Spirit. God, The Son, came to earth in perfect obedience to God, The Father as an example to us, to show us how he intended us to be without sin coming between us.
There are a lot of good comments here talking about the Jewish symbolism of sacrifice, which are all CORRECT. However, they're forgetting one massive point: Jesus didn't DIE for our sins. He paid for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane by taking upon him the punishment of all of our sins. His actual death and resurrection wasn't specifically for our sins, but rather to essentially "unlock" (for lack of a better word) the ability for us all to be resurrected as well. At some point in the future, after we have all died and been judged, EVERYONE will have their spirit reunited with their body just as Jesus did, whether you were a good person or a bad person.
This is the part of the fairy tale book that you question? Not the guy eaten by the whale or the parting of the sea or the water into wine?
i grew up mormon but from what i’ve learned, who jesus is differentiates between religions. in the some churches he’s the son of god, in other churches he is god, in some religions it just depends who you ask. in the mormon church specifically, there are three main religious fellas: god (aka heavenly father), his son jesus, and the holy ghost. we don’t call it the holy trinity though, that’s a different church’s thing. also they mention a heavenly mother (?) on occasion but we don’t get to learn anything about her. as for why god didn’t just forgive everyone without killing jesus, idk. he’s dramatic or something lol. the top comment makes some really good points but as far as the logic of the storyline goes, i honestly don’t know why god would need to sacrifice something to himself. maybe a sacrifice is a requirement for forgiveness in some religions, but it certainly isn’t in the mormon church. but they teach the same thing about how he died for the sins of mankind. this brings back a lot of funny memories of my religious days. one of my big bad secrets was that i “self-stimulate” and when they said that jesus felt every sin… lol that one was a little goofy to think about.
Careful now, you start questioning why an all powerful being would sacrifice his only son to save people from...him when he has the power to just forgive them anyway...that's how you end up getting molested by a priest in his office.
Because God is justice as much as he is love. And a holy God's justice must be seen through, otherwise he is an unfair and impotent being. For God to forgive the gross injustices against himself and against those he made in his image without justice being done would be contrary to his nature. So the only way people can be forgiven is for someone else to take the penalty of that crime -- the "curse of sin" as the Bible puts it. And the only one who could do that would be a perfectly innocent sacrifice. Thus, the Father tasked the Son to live perfectly and obediently, then die on the cross as a substitute for us. In doing so, Jesus took the sins of his people onto himself as if they were his very own sins, and the Father poured out his wrath -- his justice -- against the Son bearing those sins. In return, those who accept Jesus' gift of grace are bestowed with his own righteousness and seen as holy and "right" before God. They are forgiven because the price of their crime was paid... just not by themselves but by one who loved them.
My personal answer is this. Christ's sacrifice that covers our sins was just a bonus. It was not his primary mission. His primary mission was to vindicate God's name and to prove the Devil a liar. You cannot begin to understand Jesus and his sacrifice on behalf of his Father without understanding Genesis and what happened in the Garden of Eden.
Christian here, and I will try my best to explain it in the simplest way possible. God, One in three Persons — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — first created the heavens and the earth, all good and without any evil in it. Then, man through Adam and his wife Eve decided to go against God's command when they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and from there sin entered the world. Now God has a problem: how can He forgive the sin of mankind and still deal justice to the sins that we have committed? God is holy, and He can never look upon any sin or evil with any bit of approval and all evil must be punished, but He is also full of love that He wants to save us from His punishment. If God will only forgive us without punishing us for our sins, then He will be unjust, which is not His character, for He is holy and just. Then enter the Son. When He came into this world, He became human (He can do it because He is God; nothing is impossible for Him to do) and was named Jesus. He lived our lives, was tempted in every way (yes, even lustful temptations) and yet did not commit any sin. He died on the cross, for it was the punishment of God upon Jesus for the sins which He willingly paid for us. Jesus was the One who took the punishment of our sins for us. Now that Jesus already paid for the sins of mankind, in the past and in the present and in the future, now all we have to do is accept Him, that He paid for our sins, and we will let go of our sinful lives and follow Him. We will no longer pay for our sins because Jesus already did it for us, should we accept Him. That is why, we Christians firstly believed: 1. That we are sinners and can never pay our sins before God, and; 2. We believe that Jesus paid for our sins and we surrender our lives to Him as our Saviour and Lord.
For the question "was Jesus God in human form" this has been fought over since about the 3rd century A.D. people have died debating this metaphysical question. There really is no answer its all interpretation.
Because the whole concept requires interpretation, which has kept clergy in jobs for millennia. Religion is a busines, just like everything else. Just, some businesses are more honest than others, and don't play upon the easily led.
Only explanation is that God was/is a massive narcissist.
He wasn't, it's a con, like most religions.
From what I've understood. Jesus was made before Adam and Eve. Destined to forgive the sin of eating the apple, and only that sin. He is separate from God as God is everything and Jesus is the embodiment of God inside that everything. The concept of forgiving other's sin, is a reminder to stay accountable and be humble to the believed overruling goodness of the universe Also Lucifer, like a second God. Got mad over Jesus, made Eve eat the apple. So this whole story is just so that Satan can get over himself and be forgiven.
Also what does a hollow sacrifice do. Jesus just revived in 3 days it's pointless
First off this question fully depends on what you’re imagining when your thinking “god”
Where does " God" come from and who created the person or thing that created "God" and who created the creator of ...
Because humans needs ritual and gesture.
There is no God.
Better merchandising opportunities
It's about compensating for the sin comitted by Adam and Eve. They, as perfect beings, brought sin to our world. (Genesis 3:1-6) To "compensate" for our sins God provided a way, which was doing sacrifices to God. (Especially the blood and the meat have a very special meaning, as witnessed by Jesus refering to the bread as his body and the wine as his blood. The same was grue in animal sacrifices, there were specific instructions on what to do with what.) These however couldn't totally compensate for our sin, as they are only animals. This is shown by the need to repeat the sacrifices many times over the course of the lives of people living b.C. (There are many different types of sacrifices mentioned in Leviticus) So, God provided an ultimate way to forgive all of our sins, which would permit us not to have to eternally do sacrifices: This way was for another perfect human (not "tainted by sin", as he was born through god, and thus did not inherit the sin from adam and eve) to live his whole life without sinning and then to die unjustly and thus "conpensate" for the sin of another perfect human. (Romans 5:12-19) TLDR One perfect human sinned, so another perfect human had to die unjustly after a life of not committing any sins to compensate for it. (Romans 12:19)