"Jesus Died For Your Sins". Please explain.

I’ve never received a simple “yes”, or “no” to that question, although I’ve done everything but beg for a simple, concise one word answer.

Of course, I have a strong suspicion that there are real, unstated reasons as to why a simple “yes” or “no” is so hard to render.

But a simple “no” would have sufficed. :rolleyes:

As I say, I wanted to illustrate how utterly inept the question was.

Yea, I read that. :dubious:

I have a very relevant quesiton for you. If you knew. And I mean, knew, that one of your own children was going very bad, would you take the bastard out back and wring his neck?

I very much doubt it. And a being of pure love can creation can no more do than than I would kill my children (granted, I don’t have any, but still). We are Adam and Eve: we are jsut the same as they. We are the ones who would eat the apple. We are the kind of people who would jump off a bridge because everyone else was doing it, or just to be contrary. The problem is us, our choices. That said, it’s not as if the situastion is hopeless: Jesus’s entire purpose in dying was to both state that and make hope real.

Yeah… let’s just say that willfully making shit up to make things sound bad is not exactly a good argument.

An “interpretation” which was was never abandoned by mainstream Chistiranity because it was never a part of mainstream Chirstianity. Oh granted, it was a common peasant folk belief, but I can think of no major Christian figure (outside of a few cranks who attracted a lot of attention, but little influence) who actually held this.

Have you stopped beating your girlfriend? A simple yes or no will suffice.

Isn’t that a case of the “excluded middle”? You either kill them or damn them to hell for all eternity? How about educating them, or explaining why eating the apple is not good, or putting a fence around it, or making the snake mute? As a parent I put locks on cabinet doors and those plastic thingies in the outlets. I didn’t hand my kid a knife, say “don’t cut yourself” and then expect good things to happen. The whole idea that man is born “evil” is repellent. The idea that on would let the acts of two people many, many generations ago taint new born children is sociopathic.

What part of that was not in scripture?

Someone should tell the Vatican:

So official doctrine is that baptism is necessary for salvation, but there is *hope *that God *may *forgive pagan babies.

Don’t worry. We really don’t know exactly what forbidden fruit Adam ate.

There are lots of nitpicking you could do over this story. Like, why did God decide that was the time to sacrifice Jesus and wipe out sin? Why would he decide that at all? Did he realize he made a mistake condemning all humans after the Garden of Eden?

But forget that. What about the cosmological history of God’s plan? Lay out the events of the Bible. Jesus does his thing. Add 2000+ years. Jesus is supposed to come back at some point and will judge the living and the dead and all that jazz. Cool. So…what was the point of that 10,000 year block of time? Are we ants and God is the big kid with the galactic magnifying glass? Why the celestial conspiracy theory?

I think the raping of Mary by one of the Trinity is a rather radical reinterpretation of the text.

raindog- I think a lot of people here really don’t know what you believe about the spiritual status of Jesus & his relationship to God. Now, I do know and realize that while you do not hold him to be God along with the Father, you also hold that he is more than just another creation. So could you explain for the rest your view of the status of Jesus & why his life is sufficient to redeem all of humanity?

Btw, I’m thinking of opening up a discussion- “Does the New Testament teach that Jesus is God & if not, what does the NT teach Jesus is?” thread.

Can you point me to the passage where she consents to being impregnated? I searched my copy of the NT and can’t find it.

God is omniscient. He knows the answer is yes, so He doesn’t have to ask.

Besides, there was no penetration. God doesn’t have a penis.

Well I just did: I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
:smack:

I was just about to post!

May I be permitted a Jack Chickian- “HAW HAW!”? :wink:

I deserve it.

Yes.

But??? How old was Mary when this all went down ? Age of consent in Israel is 16.

You should be imprisoned for your past crimes. Absolutely disgusting.

Hello Friar Ted.

I hold that Jesus is ‘the firstborn of all creation’ and God’s Son.

As to why his life is ‘sufficient’----which I take to mean ‘In which way is he qualified?’, I would say simply it is/was his position as a perfect human life. Along the way I would note:

  1. My reading of the OT doesn’t indicate that the anticipated Messiah was to be God, or any part of God. There was no expectation of God coming to earth.

2)It seems apparent to me that even his direct contemporaries didn’t grasp the notion of a propitiatory sacrifice. They were surprised and alarmed at the notion he’d be killed.

3)Its only later that Paul made the direction connection-----and more than once----that Jesus’s perfect life answered for the perfect [yet rebelling] perfect life of Adam. A perfect life for a perfect life; a redemption for human kind.

No where in my reading indicates that this perfect life had to be God, or even the Son of God. On the other hand, some divine intervention had to happen to provide a perfect human life, as the offspring of Adam could only produce imperfection.

It is a a result of love and concern for human kind that Jesus was selected/volunteered. Surely God could have made another human in the fashion he made Adam. In any event he chose to use Mary, and the result was that a perfect human life answered for Adamic sin.

Wasn’t that an ex post facto announcement, though?