What's the big deal with Jesus' "sacrifice"? (page 4)

Zico

Focusing on just the death and resurrection seems to miss a part of the story here in my opinion. Since he knew, as you say, that he was going to be resurrected, it seems to be about more than a bit of suffering.

Another view is that Jesus 'originally' lives in eternity. (Isa.46:10) He then enters into our world, and thus into time (Phil.2:6-8) In the flesh of man, he then stands between time and eternity, and reaches out to all of us by looking at all eternity, and taking all sin that has ever happened and ever will happen, on himself and away with him in his death, then just waits for us to reach back accept what he has to offer.

It's a beautiful story (IMHO!) about a God who became a man, and reached out to us in love. It resonates with millions of people, and, at the very least it offers people an object for their 'faith' A man, Jesus, to understand and build a relationship with when God is so incomprehensible, and his death provides a way for man to understand a God's love.

bluesapphire

LOL ... yeah cuz NO ONE besides Jesus has ever been tortured. The fact is that Jesus (if it even happened) is not the only human to have undergone such an experience and even worse. And if this experience happened to me, it would be a crime as it was with Jesus, but no religion would come of it.

And it was pointless and done for a stupid reason, that being some dim-wits eating a fruit and his own father condemning him for that act which he had nothing to do with. Even if it was Adam who had undergone what Jesus underwent, the punishment inflicted on him BY GOD surely can't remotely be considered to fit the crime, let alone someone who was innocent.

That's why your xtian story gets ridiculed, because it doesn't even meet up to our own system of justice, as flawed as it is.

Awakened07

A perfect Spirit creature so loved the world, as did His Father, that He came to earth, commited no sin, yet was beaten, scourged, mocked, spit upon, tortured, finally being executed in a very tortuous manner, all to redeem fallen mankind. Did He have to do it? No.
Yet He did, because He and His Father love us. And because of His doing so, we now can look forward to something more than our puny, sinful, fleshly, few, years of life, having the opportunity to live forever!
That's why it's a "big deal".
BA- Thank God and Christ for their love and faithfulness!

I fear my questions will drown in the 'noise' in this thread, but I just can't see how the above works. To me, it reads like a huge non sequitur - the conclusions do not follow the premise, imo.

Let me try to reiterate as I see it:

God came to earth.
Committed no sin.
Was killed.

Thereby redeemed mankind
Because he loves us.

Seems like there are a few bullet points missing between "was killed" and "because he loves us". I don't understand why his death had any bearing on our 'sins'? One explanation I have heard, and the only one I can make sense of, is that Adam was perfect, thus a perfect human had to live a life free of sin to show that it would be possible for a perfect human to live a sin-free life, and thus this person would redeem mankind. No ordinary human is free of sin, so Jesus had to come and do it. That story kinda makes sense, but it's not the explanation I hear from most of Christianity (and it wouldn't require a sacrificial death, only a sin-free lifetime). There, it's simply "Jesus died for our sins". Yes, but how exactly? Why did it change anything? It seems to me the sacrifice itself somehow changed things? But why? Why not simply pardon mankind and be done with it? Why is a sacrifice so important?

If I could have this explained in an understandable way once and for all, I would be grateful (and that's not a joke, actually).

bluesapphire

If I could have this explained in an understandable way once and for all, I would be grateful (and that's not a joke, actually).

You know I felt that way for a long time. Then I fell for the ransom con by the Watchtower. But deep down inside I always knew something was "off".

Eventually, after years, I realized what it was. It was hard to let go of this belief because it was dear to my heart - having been brought up Catholic then reverted to Catholicism ... I needed it for crying out loud!

But in the end, reason won out. And I'm so much happier for it. I like knowing this is probably the only life I'm going to get and I don't waste my time feeling guilty for non-sins which religion imposes on people.

I want to live a secular life and leave my mark for my children and their futures and anyone else I come into contact with along the way. And this is liberating!

Awakened07

-Just to have mentioned it, I am aware of the 'scape goat' principle and where it comes from; where people could put their sins onto a goat, that was then sent into the wilderness and thereby redeemed their sins. And I guess that was meant as a prefiguration of Jesus' sacrifice. But it just doesn't make any sense to me. Why? How? How does it work?

Gregor

Don't forget the blood clause in this elaborate, theatrical sacrifice ritual. Jesus could not drown or be suffocated or killed in some way that did not shed his blood. He was not killed for some clear cut religous point. He was killed for sedition against the Roman Empire and to conveniently appease the Jewish religeous hierarchy who were being annoyed by this upstart, bi-polar, loose cannon.

The whole idea contradicts itself. He sacrificed his life for three days? Big deal. There are people who regularly take three days to sleep off a binge. All the trappings of the Jesus story were added years after his death in the rosy glow of hindsight. Virgin birth? Now there's a convenient story! How do we know it was a virgin birth? Because the gospel writers said so! The fairy tale just gets deeper and deeper. There's a sucker born every minute.

Hortensia

it's a story from thousands of years ago - it's illogical. If Jehovah made these people, why did he have to test them? If it was some sort of quality assurance test, then why not destroy the defective models and create something new, rather than allowing them to reproduce until there are nearly 7 billion on the earth and THEN decide to wipe out most of them and start over with a few. And then the imbalance - two people break a rule, all seven billion of their descendants (or is it 13 billion over the centuries?) suffer the consequences. One person dies when theoretically he doesn't have to, and 6 million or so are saved. If Donald Trump were running the universe, god would have been fired long ago, for all the damage he did to the bottom line through not making a more businesslike decision.

blueviceroy

Hey lets all argue about something none of us had anything to do with and act like its real!!

And we can voice horrible and infantile opinions based soley on what we like to believe rather than on any conected to our own experience!!

It will prove very productive and give us real world solutions and won't go around in pointless circles at all!!

James Free

Jesus' death paid God for the sins of Mankind and redeemed us all from Adamic sin. That's why, two thousand years later, things are so much better.

5go

Jesus' death paid God for the sins of Mankind and redeemed us all from Adamic sin. That's why, two thousand years later, things are so much better.

Yeah, we are just sitting on the brink of a possible nuclear or climate exinction, nothing to worry about things are so much better. Billions go hungary every day but it was much worse back then.

What's the big deal with Jesus' "sacrifice"?

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