perhaps the question needs more explanation than that...
i always heard, when i was a christian, that Jesus basically took the place of yearly animal sacrifices done by the jews. because Jesus died for humanity, now we dont have to sacrifice animals for our sins.
if that is the case why did God use Jesus? why didnt he just say "no more animal sacs. just ask forgiveness and your good".
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Originally Posted by kidsagainstkows
my question is simple. Why was Jesus necessary?
perhaps the question needs more explanation than that...
i always heard, when i was a christian, that Jesus basically took the place of yearly animal sacrifices done by the jews. because Jesus died for humanity, now we dont have to sacrifice animals for our sins.
if that is the case why did God use Jesus? why didnt he just say "no more animal sacs. just ask forgiveness and your good".
I think you believe Jesus was a creation: no no no no no no. Jesus wasn't 'created' by the Father, Jesus IS God stepping into His own creation. He's necessary because without Jesus, there is no creation. I think the better question would be 'Why did Jesus sacrifice Himself', although you answered that already. Because animal rights groups were very upset.
God gave the Jewish people customs and instead of destroying those customs, He gave humanity Himself in Jesus, in order that they may be 'ever seeing but never percieving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!' (Mark 4:12)
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Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Dear kidsagainstkows. You know that Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden with God, and they were good. Until temptation, in the guise of a Serpent, turned them into disobedient people. Instead of listening to God`s advice: Not to eat fruit of the Tree of knowledge, they believed the lying Serpent, and did what God asked them Not to do. They paid the consequences, and were sent away from God, to Earth. On Earth, Adam and Eve, and all who came after them, did follow their selfish and wilfull characters, and moved farther and farther away from God. In time Jesus, the promised Messiah came to show us God as He really is, our loving Heavenly Father who wants us back again. BUT we had to become loving and trusting sons and daughters, to be forgiven of our many sins and wrongdoings. But sadly there was NOBODY without sins, and God`s Holy Law demanded an absolutely innocent sacrifice. Jesus, born of woman, was the ONLY Sinless sacrifice on this Earth. Jesus died that we might live, and Jesus died out of love for all of us. Jesus became the Sacrifice which reconciled us to God. And now we have to become as God wants us to be. Jesus paid for all our sins and transgressions, and we are free now to Repent, to exchange our selfish and wilfull character into loving God with all our hearts, souls and minds, and loving our neighbour, all others, friend or foe, As we love ourselves. We have years to get better, we have Jesus to help and guide us, and we have God to forgive us, as we forgive each other. I say this humbly and with love, kidsagainstkows. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.
perhaps the question needs more explanation than that...
i always heard, when i was a christian, that Jesus basically took the place of yearly animal sacrifices done by the jews. because Jesus died for humanity, now we dont have to sacrifice animals for our sins.
if that is the case why did God use Jesus? why didnt he just say "no more animal sacs. just ask forgiveness and your good".
Saying "I forgive you" is good, but it doesn't deal with the problem.
The trouble with your question is it is set against the wrong picture of what the Christian story is all about.
It's not about "We are naughty and God needs to forgive us so we can go somewhere nice when we die" but "our failure messes up the world so that there is suffering and death, and God wants to put that right so that evil, suffering and death are done away with and all creation can be redeemed and restored".
To that end Jesus took all the consequence of misdoing upon himself, let evil do its worst to him, and came through that and out the other side in the Resurrection. By doing that evil was de-powered once and for all. All of that needs to be finally consumated at the final resurrection and judgement. We live between those two times, in a New Creation that has begun but is not complete, with a vocation to be part of New Creation coming to fullness, in the process becoming ourselves part of New Creation - made fit for the world to come.
__________________ Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us.
(++Desmond Tutu)
perhaps the question needs more explanation than that...
i always heard, when i was a christian, that Jesus basically took the place of yearly animal sacrifices done by the jews. because Jesus died for humanity, now we dont have to sacrifice animals for our sins.
if that is the case why did God use Jesus? why didnt he just say "no more animal sacs. just ask forgiveness and your good".
Because:
1). The wages of sin is death. (Ro. 6:23)
2). For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. (Ro. 3:23; 3:10)
3). The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Ro. 8:7)
4.) For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. (He. 7:18-19)
5). But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. (He. 9:11-15)
Sin must have a just consequence, a punishment; God could not be a holy, just God and allow sin to exist unpunished. Thus, God instituted the Law of Sin and Death: He who sins, dies. Because our sin is always ultimately against an infinite, holy, perfect God it deserves an everlasting punishment, which we know as Hell. However, God is also loving and merciful and made a way for us to escape the terrible and eternal consequence of our sin against Him. But He couldn't do this without fulfilling the necessary requirements of His own holiness and justice: Someone would have to pay with their life for our sin. That someone who would pay our sin-debt for us had to be perfect, he had to be sinless, in order that the sacrifice might pay for all sin forever. Only God could meet the standard of holy perfection necessary to satisfy the demands of His holy and just Law. So, the Bible tells us, "He took on flesh and dwelt among us" and sacrificed Himself on a cross to free us from the penalty of our own sin.
This is why Jesus is necessary. Are you a good person? The Good Test Can you keep the 10 Commandments all the time 100% of the time? Only Jesus could.
Yes, he did take the place of animal sacrifices who just covered sins. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice that takes away sins.
__________________ Sola Scriptura is Eternal Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, 2 Peter 1:20. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams (October 11, 1798). Roe vs. Wade - 45 million **Proverbs 6:16-17 - states that there are seven things that are an abomination to the Lord; one of them is the shedding of innocentblood. The B.O. Must Go! Huckabee in 2012
As Saint Athanasius said : "God became man so that man could become god". Christ took on our nature to glorify it and unite it to Himself.
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"Only love overcomes the fragmentation of human nature."
St Maximus the Confessor
"Those who are held by the bonds of hell, in seeing your bounty, go towards the light, O Christ, on joyous feet, praising the eternal Pascha"
perhaps the question needs more explanation than that...
i always heard, when i was a christian, that Jesus basically took the place of yearly animal sacrifices done by the jews. because Jesus died for humanity, now we dont have to sacrifice animals for our sins.
if that is the case why did God use Jesus? why didnt he just say "no more animal sacs. just ask forgiveness and your good".
So there could be children of Jesus, children of God...
thanks for your replies, ill attempt to answer each one in kind.
in reguards to Supreme . Why wouldn't God destroy Jewish customs if he decided that they would be no longer necessary? why the huge work around? it doesnt seem to make since to me.
Emmy: truefully, i have always seen the fall story to be about sex. tree of "knowledge", eating of the "fruit", eve tempted by the "snake". but anyways your post still doesnt answer why God didnt just say your forgiven. also, thank you for speaking with love, it made my day .
Ebia: why does somebody have to pay with their life? doesnt god set the rules? cant he just create or abolish them as he/she/it pleases? i know answering questions with questions is a terrible practice but i truly dont understand what the using a loophole to abolish the rule when you can just abolish the rule with no consequences.
Saida: i dont think anyone could say that they are good in Jesus standards "thinking badly of someone is murder" ect. i do however think that i am a good and useful member of society. i could argue that Jesus himself did sin in the gospels. he threw tables when the market was in the temple, he called Peter Satan, he forsook his family. do u think he wasnt angry with the market people and the church when he did that? do you think he wasnt angered at peter when jesus called him Satan? all of this still doesnt answer the question of why God used Jesus and didnt just abolish the rule.
Christos Anesti: why? there are plenty of examples that god could have lifted up who lived well before Jesus and probably at the time too. there was Moses, Noah, Josh, David, and getting away from the christian faith, Plato, Homer, Socrates, and many others. did all of these people sin? Most certainly, but does that take away from the great things that they did? not at all.
Freeport: why did God wait so long before he decided he wanted people in heaven (if no people went there before Jesus)? God creates something and 4,000 years into it (yay YEC) he decides he wants people up there with him? and he doesnt just say "come on up", he does this huge workaround loophole to do it. im also proud of myself for not saying Jesus had children? (whoops just said it).
I look forward to your responses
I leave you with a parable
A family had one son. when that son was old enough they decided to remove his curfew. however, instead of just removing the curfew they decided to have another kid, convince the son that the kid was them reincarnate, wait thirty years, kill the kid, and now the son doesnt have a curfew... or they could have just removed the freakin thing.
__________________ 15But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, (1 peter 3:15)
Ebia: why does somebody have to pay with their life? doesnt god set the rules? cant he just create or abolish them as he/she/it pleases? i know answering questions with questions is a terrible practice but i truly dont understand what the using a loophole to abolish the rule when you can just abolish the rule with no consequences.
I'm not sure what rule you think you can abolish without consequence. You seem to assume that "the rules" (I'm not quite sure what rules you are thinking of) are entirely arbitrary and pointless when the whole point of Genesis 3-5 is that suffering and death are what happens when we don't act the way we are meant to act.
As for "paying with one's life", think you need to move away from the punishment mode of looking at things. If one's behaviour is corrupting and damaging to the rest of creation ultimately one has to choose between being transformed by following Jesus or being excluded so that the rest of creation can be put right. What that exclusion might look like isn't something Scripture dwells on a lot, but two ideas that do a good job of making sense of it are CS Lewis's narrative picture in The Great Divorce (well worth reading) and Tom Wright's suggestion that, since we become like that which we worship, ultimately anyone who chooses not to worship God inevitably becomes less and less like the image of God until they are no longer human in any meaningful sense.
I leave you with a parable
A family had one son. when that son was old enough they decided to remove his curfew. however, instead of just removing the curfew they decided to have another kid, convince the son that the kid was them reincarnate, wait thirty years, kill the kid, and now the son doesnt have a curfew... or they could have just removed the freakin thing.
Your parable simply doesn't understand what the thing is about - as is demonstrated by where you end. Resurrection changed the world.
It's that resurrection that is the climax of Israel's purpose that means that all the rules designed for keeping Israel apart and as God's people have served their purpose.
One think I think you may be missing that you need is remembering who Jesus was. We live in a world that talks about Jesus as God so much the rest gets forgotten. Jesus own claim wasn't focused on that at all, but on his humanity and Jewishness. Jesus as Messiah isn't Jesus as God but Jesus as annointed King, and the King (in Jewish thinking) is the representative of his people. What happens to the King happens to Israel and vice versa, and Israel's role is to represent all humanity, and humanity's role is to represent all creation.
Jesus is Israel's coming of age (in your parable) and his death and resurrection is the event that enables Israel and all humanity to take responsibility for their own actions - providing they appropriate that death and resurrection for themselves as part of the People of God.
__________________ Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us.
(++Desmond Tutu)
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