I may be wrong, but I understand it to be that supposedly Christ died for our sins. He then rose from his grave three days later.
I’m confused as to what part of this was sacrifice. I mean, yes, he was tortured horribly, and I presume as he took everyone’s sin he went to Hell - but for three days? That really just doesn’t sound all that bad, considering he’d taken into himself the sin of everyone currently living. Can someone explain this to me?
Hmm. Thinking about it, this might be better in GD.
He actually rose 2 days later. And when you consider that he died on a Friday afternoon and rose first thing Sunday morning, the guy barely spent a day and a half in Hell.
3 days my ass.
Jesus wasn’t tortured any worse than any other criminal sentenced to death in Roman times. In fact, the writers of the Gospels go out of their way to stress how little he suffered compared to other crucified persons. E.g., he is reported to have died quite quickly and even Pilate was surprised.
It was that he died that was important to the writers, not his suffering.
The “Passion of the Christ” style focus on suffering was a later development.
I asked a similar question earlier this year, and it led to some interesting discussion. Not trying to derail this thread, but if anyone’s interested in what the arguments were like a 8 months back, here ya go!
Jesus gave up a weekend for our sins
Ta, Qadgop; I’ll give it a read.
You’re probably right.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
The idea that one person (god, man or combo) dying, and having any effect on future events other than as an historical footnote is purely a magical concept with philosphical underpinnings.
Religions are full of magical concepts and supernatural events. This is just another in a long list. Is there any logic to the connection of dying/resurrection/sacrifice for our sins? Only in a philosophical sense.
The same connection eye of newt and wing of bat have to a lover’s potion. If you believe, it might work.
He may not have suffered long, but it certainly put a damper on his Easter weekend.
Not if He arose in time to get his Easter Bunny candy.
How long is long enough?Maybe a day in hell is 10,000 years
Well if you are a Christian you believe he was God’s son, as well as God incarnate; also he was just a man. He was pure and did nothing sinful.
So being God, he had every right to be worshipped and adored. Instead he surrendered the “rights” of godship and taught us that we should love God and love each other, even though that meant he would tick off those in power.
When they came to arrest Him, he allowed it to happen. He allowed a sham trial to find Him guilty, and allowed Himself to be killed in a painful and humiliating way, naked on a cross.
He didn’t have to suffer any of this. As a human, it had to be excruciating, and I don’t think he was spared any of the human suffering involved.
He willingly died as an example to us that we should love each other, even to the point of death. We should give of ourselves to others even if it means giving EVERYTHING.
So being man, He died a terrible death even though He was innocent. Being God, He could not be defeated by death. Both are significant.
Of course you will only find this relavent if you believe it is true.
I do.
Isn’t it strange how easily we give up the myths of Santa and the Easter Bunny but hold on to others.
Even when I was a Christian I asked myself{not other Christians} the same question. If Jesus knew he was going to rise again and live forever in bliss then how can you call his death a sacrifice. My last bastion of belief was that it wasn’t so much the extent of the sacrifice but the conquest of death. Here’s the short version.
Through sin we are all seperated from God and there is no way back since God, being true to his nature, cannot tolerate any sin. Spiritual death{seperation from God}reigned. There was nothing any person could do to remove sin and therefore nothing that we could do to be reconciled with God.
Jesus was the only sinless human {virgin birth helped with that} and so death had no claim on him. Even though he suffered and died, because of his being without sin, he conquered death and rose again. Now that death was conquered for all mankind,and the gulf between us and God was bridged by Jesus’ conquest of death. Through belief in Jesus sacrifice we can be washed clean of our sins and accept the gift of eternal life. That’s it in a nutshell. In this version the degree of sacrifice was not as crucial as death being conquered. The sacrifice is more that God so loved the world that he would send his beloved son to experience mortality and suffereing and death, in order to conquer death so that mankind could be saved.
All that being said, I no longer believe that. I now believe that Christianity has pretty much hijacked the teachings of Jesus and stressed belief in Christ over the inner spiritual journey that Jesus spoke of. Can I get an Amen?? 
Ok…
So why? Why come from heaven as a man? Why allow himself to be murdered? What’s the point?
And on a similar note:
Was this *really *such a sacrifice? C’mon, he is God. He is everywhere. He was *with *his Son, so what did he *really *give? Even if he wasn’t with his Son, we are to believe that Jesus rose and went back to heaven. So basically God and Jesus were separated for what? 33+ years? Compared to eternity, this is insignificant. A blink in time.
I like what Jesus taught. I don’t practice it well, but I try.
But I don’t see the logic in the religion. (For this and other reasons.)
AMEN!
I completely agree with you here. I struggle to reconcile my “Christianity” with my spiritual journey of following Jesus Christ. However I feel an inadequate writer to communicate this complex issue via message board.
He loves us so much that he is willing to lay aside his God-ship and become man. To be the perfect man, loving others, and to die horribly. He loves you so much, that he did this, even though he was not required to.
It may not make sense, but it works well for me. Often when you are trying to make sense of this you will find 2+2=5. There is not a logic to it that will always make sense to our minds. But somehow, in my heart I know it is true. It’s not that I am not acritical thinker, and I challenge my own self often in what I believe. However the idea that God loves me enough to come down and fully enter the human experience, be good, and love me all the way to his own death, challenges me to love others in the smae way…
I also wonder about this. With God being the supreme power in existence who can do absolutely anything why could He not save us from our sins without sacrificing Himself in the form of Jesus?
I wonder about this for a similar reason - if God can do anything then why can He not tolerate any sin?
It doesn’t really sound right to me. Yet any time I ask these questions to other Christians I never get an acceptable answer. It really is no surprise to me that so many people are sceptical about religion.
None. It makes no sense, when you get right down to it. Frankly, if a god wanted to make the world better, there are all sorts of things it could do; the Crucifixion isn’t even on the list.
That’s a pretty weird way of expressing love. If he had saved my parents from cancer, I’d be more impressed. If he’d stopped Bush from invading Iraq, I’d be impressed. Dying temporarily on a cross - that doesn’t impress me.
Precisely. Even in it’s own context, it makes no sense.
What confuses me most is, God being all-powerful and all, is he chose to sacrifice his son. Ok, that sounds good, but think about it; he could just do whatever he wanted - to put it pretty simply, he could have snapped his fingers and bingo! No more sin. When you see he presumeably chose to sacrifice his son - well, that seems more mean than nice.
It’s been said that if J.C. had not sacrificed himself then we would not have learnt the lesson - I find it hard to believe an omnipotent deity must resort to human ideas (death, pain) in order to teach us a lesson, or to save us. Sounds a bit more like rationalisation by humans after the event.