Why was a sacrifice needed at all?

[nobspeople]

It's said Jesus came as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. But to whom did the sacrifice matter? God? If Jesus was also god, in a way (like some claim), he was sacrificing himself to himself...? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
If Jesus is not god, then Jesus sacrificed himself to god. Why does god need a sacrifice at all? Some would say 'god can't be with sin' or the like. But why not? Surely, if god is the god it's said it is, god could change any 'rule' set up (as god itself had to set up the 'rule') and not require such a painful, terrible sacrifice? Isn't god 'enough' that being in its presence would, for lack of a better term, vaporize or negate all sin? God is greater than all sin (as some claim) then why is a sacrifice needed)
For discussion:
Why would god need a sacrifice if god created everything that is and had the ability not to need a sacrifice at all?

[1213]

Jesus forgave sins before his death, and gave the same right for his disciples. Therefore his death was not required for forgiveness.

So, what was it required for?

What does the Bible say? I think one reason is explained in this parable:

Most assuredly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24

Before the death of Jesus, his disciples were afraid and especially after he died. The death gave him opportunity to be raised from death, which then gave courage for his disciples to continue fearlessly, which then led to this situation that even we can hear the message. So, I believe the reason why it was allowed to happen is that it made the “tree bear much fruit”.

Well, there's "12 Verses to Remember the Sacrifice Christ Made for You," of which I especially liked #7: It satisfied god's wrath. Can't have god going along day after day filled with wrath, now can we, and what better way to stop it than to have a human sacrifice.
.

I think it is wrong to say God’s wrath was satisfied because of the murder of Jesus. I believe the meaning is that God was satisfied for the example Jesus showed in how people should live and love others. Jesus was willing to die for all of us so that we could have life. I believe that is the thing that satisfied God.

[TRANSPONDER]

It has to be of course that Belief in Jesus is what makes the loophole in sin - death and the blood accomplishes nothing in itself, unless you would agree with my reading of Paul that Jesus was not God, a a reincarnated spirit (effectively) undoing (by extreme obedience) the disobedience that the original man had committed thus making mankind sinful.

Transponder, I don't believe in original sin. I think what God wanted all along was for man to be fruitful-meaning produce good spiritual fruit. As He says to Cain, "Do well and it will be well with you." And according to Isaiah, animal sacrifices and rituals are worthless. What was necessary was for man to put away his evil ways and learn to do good "and your sins will be as white as snow." I think these people were living in world steeped in superstition, pagan rituals, etc. and it takes time to change such beliefs. Like Isaiah, Jesus was killed for denouncing all of these things.

I like that (sorry if you've explained this before, I can't remember everyone's take on religious claims). Since I don't believe the Bible at all I won't believe in original sin, Hell or heaven of slvation through Jesus or any other divine figure.

I can see what you propose as really .... ...the evolutionary purpose (Eat, survive, reproduce (1) plus human concepts of Ethics and if Jesus was a teacher arguing against religious rites and superstitions, I'm all for it. And if the Sanhedrin forced Rome's arm to get rid of Jesus it's a shame.

Not that I believe that but I don't mind if you do.

(1) given a degree of Social Sophistication..Drive carefully, where shall we have lunch and your place or mine?

[TRANSPONDER]

Interesting. Then what is thee implication for Christianity in your view? The crucifixion -death itself is not the Loophole in the law of sin -death (which can be accessed only by Faith, not Works) but simply Jesus saying (effectively) that God has Just Forgiven us? So Original sin is now gone? We are not sinful from Birth? Can you identify the creed of Christianity that has such a Dogma, or is this some understanding of your own?

I think modern Christianity has too much human doctrines that are not well based to the Bible. In my opinion it would be best, if Christians would simply return directly to the teachings of Jesus. After all, Christian meant originally a disciple of Jesus. And if person is truly his disciple, it means:

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
John 8:31-32

I think Paul and others have also good teachings, but the problem with them is that they can be easily twisted to doctrines that are not well supported by what Jesus said in the Bible, but they are useful for to establish religious sects that can be used to exploit people.

And in the case of original sin. If it means the first sin that people did, that Adam and Eve rejected God in the paradise, then it is ok and Biblical. They were expelled from the paradise and for us that means, we are born to this “first death” in separation from God. And because sin can be understood as rejecting God, or being separated from God, it can be said we are born in sin, in sinful state. Luckily that is not a problem, because we have for example Jesus to show way back to God, to restore the lost connection. In this case original sin is not something that must be forgiven for us, because it is not something we did. It means only that because we bare the consequence, there is a solution to counter that, we have way back to God.

Forgiveness of sins is for our own wrong doings. If we have done something wrong, it can be forgiven. However, as Jesus said:

“Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.”
John 8:11

By what Jesus said, there must happen change in us, we should be born anew and become righteous, which I think is the opposite of sinful. In Bible, eternal life is promised only for those who are righteous.

http://www.kolumbus.fi/r.berg/Newborn.html
http://www.kolumbus.fi/r.berg/Righteous.html

Well that was all ok until we got to Eden. Clearly that is a stitch -up and makes no sense unless God is either working blind or doing a deliberate stitch up to ensure that man is sinful. For that and other reasons it can't be true except as metaphor. Nor does it make sense that Jesus is needed to make a loophole in the Law. If God has any decency He'd have have just made us sinless just as Adam was originally.

Of course if you are talking metaphorically it gets a bit foggy. Like Man can't reach God because we are mortal and God needs to find a way to bring us along so we can Join with him after death. But how odd that it's only Jesus. All those other teachers of morals and right living. You'd think that God would get everyone doing the same message and you wouldn't need Jesus at all.

No after all, ingenious though it is, trying to make Jesus into anyone other than (at best) just another human bean preaching his own beliefs, doesn't convince me, at least.

[1213]

Well that was all ok until we got to Eden. Clearly that is a stitch -up and makes no sense unless God is either working blind or doing a deliberate stitch up to ensure that man is sinful.

Sorry, I disagree with that.

For that and other reasons it can't be true except as metaphor. Nor does it make sense that Jesus is needed to make a loophole in the Law. If God has any decency He'd have have just made us sinless just as Adam was originally.

I don’t think Jesus “is needed to make loophole in the law”. The message of Jesus is basically that sins have been forgiven, repent, become righteous and for those who are righteous, there will be eternal life waiting. And it is possible that person who has not even heard of Jesus can be counted righteous by this:

For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without the law. As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it isn't the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified (for when Gentiles who don't have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.
Romans 2:12-16

And this is only connected to Adam and Eve by that, because of them, people were expelled to this “life”. Now, Jesus just shows the way back to life with God by that message, for those who want it.

God can make people sinless, but it depends on do people want it. By what I see, not all want it.

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God's children, to those who believe in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13

…Whoever is born of God doesn't commit sin, because his seed remains in him; and he can't sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn't do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn't love his brother.
1 John 3:7-10

…Man can't reach God because we are mortal and God needs to find a way to bring us along so we can Join with him after death. …

Man can reach, but God gives the conditions on what is required. And righteousness is required. If person is not righteous, he needs to find a way to become righteous. It can happen by the words that were declared trough Jesus, but it may be that person is already righteous enough so that he can be counted righteous even, if he has not heard of Jesus.

[TRANSPONDER]

We almost seem to be on the same page, because you seem to be saying that a person can become righteous with or without Jesus. Now my view (and you won't agree, I know) is that doing right is a matter of morality and ethics, not of belief or Following any particular person. And if human morality can do better than what's in the Bible, then follow human ethics rather than the Bible.

We'd seem to agree that the ethical message was what mattered and the crucifixion and death, never mind the supposed resurrection (which I don't believe) did not save anyone (least of all him) and Paul's belief (that the death was necessary to allow God to rescind sin -death for Believers) was mistaken.

[cms]

I can see what you propose as really .... ...the evolutionary purpose (Eat, survive, reproduce (1) plus human concepts of Ethics and if Jesus was a teacher arguing against religious rites and superstitions, I'm all for it. And if the Sanhedrin forced Rome's arm to get rid of Jesus it's a shame.

Transponder, Actually, I don't believe in evolution, as in a fish grew legs and walked out of the ocean etc. Many see the Bible as progressive, in which the people of the Old Testament were not quite as intelligent, growing in the knowledge of God through the ages until Jesus reveals the truth. I, on the other hand, see a whole different picture. The people of Israel were quite an advanced civilization in the beginning. They were well beyond the times in their ways of thinking. However, as time went on, they lost this knowledge as paganism and corruption crept in which eventually destroyed them.

[TRANSPONDER]

I don't think I need comment on the dismissal of overwhelming evidence that evolution IS true, and pretty equally totally evidence that the people of Israel were no more advanced than their contemporaries and maybe less so. The horrors of the OT hardly strike us as a people that we should admire today.

But that's quite apart from the total turnaround associated with Jesus. When God apparently turned his back on the Jews and either

(a) planned their destruction

(b) sent Jesus to save them but they wouldn't listen

(c) sent Jesus to spread the message that would save people just in the area of the middle east while Paul was earmarked to take the message to the Roman world.

If you read the Gospels (always a good idea )it seems pretty clear that the Jews were damned from the start. Jesus and thus God knew they wouldn't listen that Jesus would be killed which is ok because he'd come alive again. There's even an indication that Jesus spake parables to make sure that certain groups of people wouldn't understand him. This is pretty clear; God with-held the message from some people because he'd already decided on their destruction

...except he hadn't. It's also a Christian apologetic point that the Jews survived no matter what the world threw at them and God even planned (and prophecied) the state of Israel. While arranging for the success of Islam to show how difficult it would be but they nevertheless succeeded where the Crusader states failed.

Oddly hard to fathom even if God was working blind. It almost looks as though it's just humans doing what they do and God is nothing to do with it at all.

[JehovahsWitness]

The following is supposing God exists ...

For discussion:
Why would god need a sacrifice if god created everything that is and had the ability not to need a sacrifice at all?

• Biblically* because a blood sacrifice was the only way for God to release mankind from the damage caused by inherited sin without compromising his own righteous standards.

Why could he not have just repaired the damage without the sacrifice?

• Because that would have involved leaving sin unpunished, which is the very definition of corruption.

To illustrate: A wicked man kills a child; he says he is very sorry, and promises not to repeat the crime so the judge not wanting to cause any additional suffering is merciful and lets him go unpunished. What does that say about the judge ? What if the judge decides to remove murder from the statute books? That way nobody will ever be punished for such crimes, what would that say about the judge's morals? What would it say about the value of life? What would happen, in the long run in a society that does this? What might dissatified parents do to the criminal if they see no basis for the judges mercy?

THE POINT? To overlook that which is bad is to embrace corruption; to tolerate corruption is to cause more suffering

For the above not to be true of Him, Almighty God had to enforce his own just law: Sin carries the death penalty. All humans sin, thus all humans are destined to die! to release them and ignore his own law is to become corrupt .

UNLESS ....

Someone else (that would not have died anyway) could die on behalf of the condemned. This way the punishment has been extracted (so no corruption has taken place) and there would be a real basis for mercy to be extended.










JW


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Was there no other way?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 33#p848933

Objections
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 11#p389911

To learn more please go to other posts related to

SIN, THE RANSOM SACRIFICE and ... MEMORIAL OF CHRIST'S DEATH

[ * ]I usually use conditionals ( ... or suppositions, hypothesis etc ) when discussing God in this subforum in order to respect forum guidelines while also avoiding making any absolute claims in this regard.This hopefully avoids being sidetracked by challenges to prove God's existence when that is not the point of discussion.

[TRANSPONDER]

No. That just makes no sense. If God imposed the sin in some way, He could unimpose it without a rigmarole of a sacrifice. If it is innate nature of humans without God having anything to do with it, where does He get off making laws about it?

And if he imposed Laws (aside that Morals and Ethics are human anyway) what screwball kind of idea is behind taking some poor dude and torturing him to death and saying 'There you go. Your sin nature is forgiven'. Except you still have the sin nature just like before.' How does that make any kind of sense?

cue: 'God knows what he is doing'.

[JehovahsWitness]

I dont know'if you are talking to me (one can use the "repy" button to a specific post to avoid confusion) but in case you are addressing a point in my post ....

If God imposed the sin in some way, He could unimpose it without a rigmarole of a sacrifice. If it is innate nature of humans without God having anything to do with it, where does He get off making laws about it?

Biblically God did neither: Sin was neither imposed nor is it innate. The possibility of sin is innate for all moral intelligent beings. For perfect beings the choice not to is always there. Law exists to highlight the consequences of making the wrong choice.


Given the above the rest of the post is I think, moot.



JW