I have been a Christian since birth, but I am just now starting to become interested in Christian theology and why things are the way they are, so I have a few basic questions. As I understand it, Jesus had to be sent because God is perfect and we are imperfect, therefore if we were with God, God would become imperfect, so we must be made perfect by Jesus' sacrifice. So Jesus sort of takes the blame for our sins. My first question is how did the three days between death and resurrection clense Jesus of our sins? My second question is why did He have to be crucified and go through so much pain? Why would Him simply having a quick, painless death not have the same effect? My third question is that I have heard that blasphemy is the only unforgivable sin; what is blasphemy and why is it unforgivable? Thank you for any answers you can give.
Basic Theology Questions
- Thread starter jwsiii
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Non nobis domine sed tuo nomine da gloriam
Hmmm...how did you come to this conclusion? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't know that I fully understand you here. The reason it's unclear to me is because it addresses an impossibility. "...we are imperfect, therefore if we were with God, God would become imperfect,..." No one who has not been redeemed through the substitutionary, sacrificial and providential death of Christ would be with God, and those that have been imputed with His righteousness are justified by His work. The possibility of an imperfect person (one who has not received salvitic grace through Christ) being with God in Heaven is actually an impossibility.
It was not the three days between death and resurrection that cleansed Jesus of our sins. He was not actually "cleansed" of our sins. He paid the penalty. He actually atoned for those sins. Jesus took upon Himself the penalty and guilt of the sins of His chosen and because He was sinless His sacrifice was adequate to appease God's wrath for the iniquities of God's elect. His death was the "cleansing" catalyst for the propitiation. As for His resurrection, well, He was God and death had no power over the spotless Lamb. Death had no claim to Christ.
The main reason would be because that is the way God ordained that the redemption of His people would come about. If all that was needed was Christ's death then He would have just come to earth and been killed right away.
It's not exactly "blasphemy." Rather it's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. "Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" means to attribute the work of the Spirit of God to the devil. IOW, to speak evil of the work the Holy Spirit.
Hope that helps,
God bless
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Could you give me an example of something that would be considered blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Also, if you do this, does it mean that you can't be saved?
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JWSII:
There are many assumptions embedded in your questions, that you may or may not agree with once you "unpack" them. First of all you are making the asssumption that the reason Jesus came was to "take the blame" for us. Eph. 1 tells us that the reason we were created and subsequently why Christ came was so that we would be adopted as sons and daughters of God. This was God's first and foremost desire to accomplish on our behalf. This means that Christ would have come and become man even if sin had not occurred. However, sin did occur and for this reason the incarnation was painful and bloody.
One of the most significant aspects of the Son of God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ was so that He could become everything that we had become in our sinfulness, indeed become sin. In this act, Jesus Christ does not yield to sin as we had, but overcomes it for us. As a man, in sinful flesh, Jesus Christ does not yield to sin but loves His Father with all of His heart, soul, mind and strength. As a man, in sinful flesh, Jesus Christ repents of the sins we are unable to repent of properly. As a man, in sinful flesh, Jesus Christ believes and obeys His Father. This life of obedience is not separate from ours because in Jesus Christ God and Man are forever united. So, when Jesus Christ submits to the humiliating and painful death of the cross He is suffering the death that is our own. And He takes us to death in Himself, and raises us up in Himself and seats us in heavenly places in Himself. The three days do not cleanse Him from our sin, He submits to the consequence of sin and raises us up in Himself as a new creation, as born again men and women.
I hope this is of some help.
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Well the Biblical example is found in Mark 3:20-30. Here Christ preforms an excorcism, and given that Satan would not cast out his own demons (for a divided house cannot stand), it was clear that Christ did this through the power of God (specifically the Holy Spirit). The teachers, knowing full-well that it was of God, accuse Christ of being demonically possessed and of expelling demons in the name of Beelzebub. This wilful blasphemy is the "unpardonable" sin. It doesn't mean that you cannot be saved, it means that you will not be saved. For as long as you attribute the workings of the Holy Spirit to demonic activity, you will never come to the point of salvation. So it isn't unforgivable from God's perspective (despite many misconceptions), rather it is self-damning.
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