Did Jesus Really have to Die to Save People from Sin?
One of the cornerstones in the belief of many Christians is that “Jesus died for our sins.” However, I often struggled with this idea on many levels. Why would a God of peace, love and mercy require blood atonement? Didn’t Jesus forgive sin before his death? And doesn’t this, in some ways, put the power in the hands of Jesus’ executioners?
What I also learned as I met other Christians was that I’m not alone in wrestling with these questions. While some argue you can’t be a Christian without claiming this belief, others quietly wonder if this might actually be a misunderstanding, or at the very least, a limited understanding of salvation.
So when putting together Banned Questions About Jesus, I wanted to make sure to include this question among the fifty I posed to my crew of respondents. Below are three reflections on this challenging but important question.
Jesus forgave people of their sins before he died. How could he do this if he actually had to die in order to save us from sin?
Phil Snider: For many years I sat in church quietly wondering why God’s forgiveness was based on the idea that awful violence had to be inflicted upon Jesus in order for God to save us from sin. I was never comfortable with this idea, but I feared voicing my questions would make my Christian friends think I was a hell-bound heretic.
It was only when I went to seminary that I learned this wasn’t the only way to view Jesus’ death, and I’m glad to say I no longer believe Jesus had to die in order to save us from sin.
As it turns out, the idea that Jesus had to die on the cross in order for God to forgive our sins took nearly a thousand years to develop, and numerous theologians have pointed to its problematic implications. Chief among these concerns are questions related to God’s power and God’s character. In terms of God’s power, why is it necessary for God to sacrifice God’s Son in order to grant forgiveness? Is there “some higher authority or necessity above God with whom God has to comply in doing this?”
In terms of God’s character, can’t such a belief make God out to be “a perverse subject who plays obscene games with humanity and His own Son,” like the narcissistic governess from Patricia Highsmith’s “Heroine” who sets the family house on fire in order to be able to prove her devotion to the family by bravely saving the children from the raging flames?
Instead, my Christian faith is grounded in the affirmation that God’s love is unconditional, which leads me to believe that God’s forgiveness is unconditional as well. All of which means that Jesus’ unconditional forgiveness – offered before he died – is one of the things that makes him most God-like!
Amy Reeder Worley: I’m a lawyer. My first reaction upon reading this particular banned question was to leap from my desk and shout, “Objection! This question assumes facts not in evidence.” Yes, I know that is weird. But it’s also true. The question as posed assumes that Jesus had to die to “save” people from sin. I don’t find much biblical or historical evidence to support this “substitutionary atonement” theory of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Rather, I agree with Marcus Borg and other post-modern theologians who argue that Jesus died because of human sin, not in the place of humans who sin. As it relates to the question at hand, my view of the crucifixion means necessarily that forgiveness of sin emanates directly from God, and it existed before, during, and after Jesus’ life and resurrection. Like many religious ideas, God’s forgiveness operates outside of our limited view of space-time.
So how is it, exactly, that Jesus had the authority to forgive people? Sacred texts throughout the world speak of forgiving our enemies as a sacred and holy act. When Jesus forgave the unclean, criminal, and gentile he embodied God’s preexisting forgiveness of us all, teaching his followers that forgiveness was not limited to the religiously “in” crowd of the day.
In Matthew 9:1-8, Jesus forgives and then heals a paralyzed man. The rabbis accuse Jesus of blasphemy for claiming the authority to forgive sins, an authority they believed was reserved for YAWEH. Jesus responds, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins….” Jesus turned to the paralytic and healed him. The crowd was “filled with awe; and they praised God who gave such authority to men.” Here, as throughout the gospels, Jesus reaffirms the message that God’s love and forgiveness are available to all of us, all of the time.
Tripp Fuller: One could answer the question by saying that Jesus knew he was going to die and rise so he could forgive with the future known and certain, or possibly that Jesus’ divine identity gave him the ability to forgive sin at will, or one could even suggest that if forgiveness could be given before the cross, then the cross may not have been necessary.
It is important to recognize that in forgiving sins Jesus is acting on behalf of God and was one of the reasons Jesus was opposed by the religious leaders, thus forcing one to explain how Jesus’ identity is tied to that of God. To understand this I have found it helpful to see how Paul re-imagined the sacrificial system in light of Christ’s work.
Traditionally an act of sacrifice began with the sinner transferring their identity to the animal through an act of consecration. Afterward the animal was killed so that the person was reincorporated into the people of God. Paul reverses the process so that the process begins with Christ identifying with us and ends with the consecration, us identifying with that which is sacrificed.
In a sense Paul sees, in Christ, God coming to put an end to sacrifice by turning it upside down and beginning with God’s coming to sinner with Good News. From this perspective it would make sense that Jesus could forgive sin without having died because God had come in Christ to consecrate the world as God’s beloved.
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As you can tell by reading the Old Testament, certain Jews learned to control the rest of them through monetary system manipulation, slavery and outright stealing in god's name. This sect of Jews became the bankers for non-Jewish kings. They would then interbreed with the "royal" families. The Rothschilds are one very successful banking family. The US Federal Reserve is a private bank owned by a few interbred families. They want us on the "national debt" hook and to pay for wars they started and profited from.
Jesus may have been a real person but the Biblical stories are certainly not all true. There is undeniable proof that emperor Constantine and certain Jews sifted through Jewish religious texts to pick what suited their lust for power and also added Pagan customs to develop an unquestionable state religion. Almost all ethnic groups of people on the planet had gods, goddess's, nature worship or some independent, tribal meaning of life teachings. Just as the Jews; each one of these peoples naturally put their people at the center as "god's chosen people".
The only difference is the Jewish tribal leaders controlled the religion and the money. To bring non-Jews under their reign they had to include them into their religious indoctrination so they would accept their rule by their money. So at this point, please read the whole Bible before seriously asking such a question as Jesus dying to save people from sin. If you want to hand pick a Bible saying or two and voluntarily submit to be slaves for the greediest, monetary system manipulating, energy resource monopolizing war profiteering inhumane spawn on the planet, I can't stop you. Go from here to godisimarinary.com. Jesus said chop your arm off if it offends the king, hate your family, and slaves should obey their masters. Jesus saves no one, neither does their god, no good has ever come from this psychological propaganda which is the Bible. If you want to join a collective cooperative effort for the health, wellbeing and longevity of our species and life on our planet I welcome you.
I'll take friendly Christians and pick-and-choose heretics over poisonous Antisemitic pseudohistory any day, thank you very much.
Before you continue to make yourself look stupid: Study 1913 to 1960's Wall Street and you will find they backed Hitler and Franco against communism. Look up Bank of International Settlements and you will find they were Hitler's bankers right up into 1945 and yes not all of them were Jews. Look up Haavara agreement and you will find that Zionists made deals with Hitler that lasted from 1933 to 1941. The Lehi (Zionists) actually made a formal proposal to the Germans of a military alliance between the Jewish revolutionary organization and the Nazis just before Amerika entered WWII. The Zionist banksters ended up with Jew, Gypsy and Polish Christian gold watches, wedding bands and teeth fillings from Holocaust victims. My family didn't, did yours? Also we are supposed to bow and cry and be forever in debt because maybe 6 million Jews died in WWII. Well, buddy the war that CERTAIN ZIONISTS profited from cost between 60 and 80 million deaths world wide. So you better think twice before ever thinking about labeling me an anti-semitic again. Most US Jews are liberal, progessive, anti war and would prefer to make peace with the Palistinians by ending aparthied. All Jews are not ZioNazis trying to get dum US Goyim to die for their infinite greed. Blood dripping from their Zionist smacking lips with them chomping on dead babies in wait of them leading the United States of ZioNaziland into Iran to start WWIII.
I'll hold a conversation with just about anybody, but you? Seriously, take your blood libel and get the fuck out.
Well spoken for a true ZIONAZI. Like I said many well informed Jews realize what the bankster class of people have done and continue to do to humanity and our natural planet. Yes skeptical of everything but ZioNazi rule of the planet that is well documented. Zionism is not a religion or an ethnic or racial group; so it is you that started a biased ad hominem attack on me. Since you are the one who brought up "blood libel" I think you better talk to yourself because you are obviously delusional and probably schizophrenic and should look up your disease in the DSM IV, instead of trying to communicate with others who are aware that what I wrote is true and well documented.
I apologize in advance, but there's really no way to describe the situation without using inflammatory terms: God incarnates himself as his own son so that he can sacrifice himself to himself as a means of essentially changing his own rules. Thereafter, people can be saved by signing on to this grand absurdity as though it were some kind of divine class-action settlement.
In later years, after all primary evidence of these events are lost, salvation becomes contingent upon credulity, of accepting this narrative upon no evidence whatsoever. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Paul cloaks the concept in oxymorons: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
The substance of hope and the invisible evidence are themselves absurdities. All because God cannot will himself to forgive that which, ipso facto, he wishes to forgive. He instead must go through this elaborate ritual to change his own rules.
This was the reason I left Christianity, nobody could ever get this to make sense to me.
Having fun, are we?????
Playing the straight man....
"...God incarnates himself as his own son so that he can sacrifice himself to himself as a means of essentially changing his own rules..."
This is the kind of opponent anyone would want. For any entity with the power, knowledge and breadth of a God to first incarnate himself as a human being would by necessity strip that entity of just about all of the power and knowledge that entity *used to have*. Any and all opponents of that entity would be able to remove the now mortal as if he never existed. Case Closed: on to the important stuff.
Your scenario is circular based on disbelief. I can accept your disbelief - along with your humor.
The circularity is what makes it absurd, but the absurdity is not mine, it is the religion's.
As to your argument, you haven't begun to make one. You've got some half-witted fairy story about why you believe it's true, but that doesn't address my question. We can have that debate if you want, but my point is that even if I take Christianity at its word, even if I provisionally grant the truth of scripture, IT DOESN'T MAKE A LICK OF SENSE. Case emphatically _not_ closed.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
I happen to actually believe, in the form that I described perhaps clumsily, in the God represented by a possibly fictional man named Jesus.
Assuming for the sake of argument that the Gospels are reasonably accurate; your initial statement of God incarnating himself and then sacrificing himself in order to change the rules is wildly inaccurate at best, but as stated by you, humorous to me.
You are right about one thing: there are most likely a lot of ministers and priests who will take a dim view of how I see the role Jesus played and the gamble that I believe God took.
Finally, the primary difference between you and I here is one of belief. You don't; I do. There is no logical way for us to arrive at an agreement other than each to his own.
Fair winds and following seas, my friend.....
It was stated for humorous effect, but I don't believe it's inaccurate. And remember, this is the problem I've had with it since the days when I did believe, when I was a Christian. The difference between you and me is that I have looked at the available evidence and found it lacking.
There are not good reasons to presume the Gospels are accurate in any meaningful sense. They were written decades after the fact, we have no original sources, and your comment about the Sanhedrin notwithstanding, we in fact have no contemporary extra-biblical sources which confirm even one event in the life of Jesus, including his birth, ministry or death.
That, and as I said, the theology of the Redemption (primarily formulated by Paul, not the Gospels) makes little to no sense.