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Original poster

Why did God need Jesus to be killed?

226 replies

Machadaynu · 01/10/2012 11:14

Not much to add to the title I suppose.

It's just never made sense to me that an omnipotent God would need to do anything he didn't want to, therefore he must have wanted to have Jesus killed.

He could have forgiven us without him being killed - or he isn't omnipotent.

He could have made a world that remained without sin, rather than letting Satan mess this one up in the first week - or he isn't omnipoitent

He could have invented another way of making a symbolic gesture that didn't involve murdering his son - maybe he could have made the earth spin backwards or something to signify a new start.

I just don't understand God thinking "well, I don't need to murder my son, but I think I will anyway because that will show people how loving I am"

So why did he claim to need to have Jesus killed?

OP posts:
sashh · 02/10/2012 06:01

They died in pain, scared and with uncertainty. Jesus may well have died in pain, but there the similarity ends.

"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

OP, IMHO because Mithras did.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 02/10/2012 08:59

Who is Mithras?

Did God forsake Jesus? What does that mean?

OP posts:
CoteDAzur · 02/10/2012 17:48

DandyDan: And I give you en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truism

CoteDAzur · 02/10/2012 17:50

If God is then He is a being.

Do we need to remember the conjugation of the verb "to be"?

TO BE
I am
You are
He is

Knowsabitabouteducation · 02/10/2012 19:43

Jesus died for our sins.

When we sin, we damage our relationship with God. The wages of sin is death (permanent separation from God).

Jesus was sinless, so had a right relationship with God. He took on our sins, and so had to die. Meanwhile, we became free to have a right relationship with God.

Whe Jesus rose from the dead, he overcame death and the devil for all time.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 02/10/2012 20:08

If Jesus overcame the devil when he overcame death, what is the source of all the bad things we see around us now, 2000 years later?

OP posts:
Knowsabitabouteducation · 02/10/2012 20:40

We live in a fallen world.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 02/10/2012 21:09

But if God is pure good, and there is no devil as he was overcome 2000 years ago, where is the new evil coming from? Who or what is creating it?

OP posts:
Knowsabitabouteducation · 02/10/2012 21:35

God gave us free will. We have the choice to walk with him or to go it alone .

When we are separated from God, bad things can happen.

We are descended from Adam and inherit his sinful nature.

Jesus' sacrifice on the cross does not remove our sinful nature, but instead forgives our sins and allows us to have a right relationship with God.

HolofernesesHead · 02/10/2012 21:55

My response to the OP: God didn't kill Jesus, the Romans did.

IMO the death of Jesus was the obvious thing that was going to happen: Roman-occupied Jewish Jerusalem was a political-religious tinderbox, and there were thousands of Jewish people killed by Roman rulers in the 1st c. (esp at the command of Nero).

So what makes Jesus' death especially meaningful? The christian answer is that Jesus wasn't just another person, he was God incarnate. So in Jesus, God suffered and died and was raised from death. And in doing so, God blew away everyone's expectations of what death and life are - yes, many Jews believed in a final resurrection of all people, but no one expected the future event of general resurrection to break into the present. No one expected that the messiah would suffer. The very idea was an outrage.

But the more the believers in Jesus pondered it, the more nuances and facets they saw. Jesus suffered - so he can share in our suffering. Jesus died - we no longer need fear death. Jesus was killed near or on Passover - that's where the sacrificial language kicks in. Jesus was killed as a token Jew - he died for the people, on their behalf, in a way that goes way beyond the romans' understanding. (that's where the substitutionary language kicks in). You see? So the beliefs regarding Jesus' death came from the prior belief in Jesus as God's messiah, and as God incarnate. If God can die, that takes some radical redefinition of God. If the Messiah can suffer, the word Messiah needs to be understood in a whole new light.

If that were not the case, Jesus would be just yet another Jew fallen foul of the Romans. That's my take on it, anyway!

Shallishanti · 02/10/2012 22:33

HH, I think your explanation is quite plausible.
But I want to know, from someone who 'believes'...
WHY? why are 'the wages of sin death'? and how does it work that Jesus 'took on our sins'? why does the sacrifice 'work'? and why did god set it up to be that way? because it always get talked about as if it was somehow logical and inevitable and I just don't get it.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 02/10/2012 22:43

Good luck Shallishanti - we're on message 87 so far and no where nearer to an answer to that :)

OP posts:
Shallishanti · 02/10/2012 22:49

just thought I'd ask Grin
as this was the train of thought that led to me leaving the church when I was about 14

JugglingWithPossibilities · 02/10/2012 22:56

Is it really fair to ask though I wonder Shallishanti ?

You've come to the conclusion that it can't make logical sense .... better to leave those who do still find a value in it in peace perhaps ?

But only perhaps .... and some might find such a view patronising I guess ... it's not meant to be ... just tolerant and kind is what I have in mind Smile

Also of course it's fair enough to ask ... especially if you're still curious whether there could be satisfactory answers to these things.

Shallishanti · 02/10/2012 23:04

well, you have a point, and that's why I never really pursued it with my parents who of course were upset that I had 'lost my faith'

so, the opportunity to ask in a forum where people seem to be up for the discussion is tempting- if they felt vulnerable they wouldn't be here, would they?

I don't think actually there can be a satisfactory answer, but I'm not trying to catch people out or persuade them, I'm just curious. OK, I'm nosy.

HolofernesesHead · 03/10/2012 06:24

Why are the wages of sin death? Or why is the wages of sin death? The grammar of that statement has always driven me slightly mad, let alone the theology! :)

But I do believe, so here's a rough kind of answer: BIM that thus is a quote from Paul (from the letter to the Romans), and is half of a saying which ends thus: 'the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' so there's a contrast between wages and free gift (in Greek, 'charisma' - beautiful word) and wages, and a contrast between life and death, and a contrast between sin and Jesus. So it's a very beautifully balanced, almost poetic, statement. The context is about being enslaved to sin - so if sin is a slavedriver, the only 'wages' it pays is death.

All of that suggests to me that this saying is part of a discourse that personifies sin and sets it in opposition to Jesus. We can either be enslaved to sin, or receive the free gift of life. So the next question is, what is sin? Huge question; my very short answer would be 'living self-centredly.' If we put ourselves not only first but first, last and everything in between, we will find ourselves ultimately alone - and 'enslaved' is a good metaphor for that. If we live the way of Jesus (and one of the big implications of Jesus' death is that the way if Jesus is a way of self-sacrifice) then we will find life in all its depth and wonder and fulness (I'm not saying we'll have it any easier than anyone else, NB). In Romans, the message is very much that we humans cannot escape the slavery of sin by ourselves; we're too sinful / selfish to change, we need to be set free by an outside party, in this case, Jesus. That might sound like a very negative verdict on humanity, but.....What do you think?

There is so much more that I could say about this; for me, it's pretty close to the heart of why I am a Christian. There's so much in the Gospels along the lines of 'take up your cross and follow me', and the promise is that those who go the way of Jesus, wherever that leads, will know the life of Jesus in them, empowering them.

HolofernesesHead · 03/10/2012 06:27

Oh, just to add to that tome ;) if I don't respond straight away to posts I'm not evading the hard questions, I'm at work! :)

CoteDAzur · 03/10/2012 07:19

Why does God need someone to die a prolonged, torturous, and horrific death for forgiveness? And how can that death forgive all future sins of humanity?

"we need to be set free by an outside party, in this case, Jesus"

If one person being put to death in agony set others free, there would be lots of this freedom during Dark Ages - the Inquisition, mass torture & murder of 10,000s of Templar Knights over two years, more than 30,000 women killed in gruesome ways for being "witches".

Has all that pleased the Lord very much, then? Are all our sins already forgiven, thanks to the pain, suffering, and death inflicted on fellow humans in those dark times? Sad

HolofernesesHead · 03/10/2012 07:48

No no, Cote. See my previous post; the death of Jesus as salvific is only meaningful if there is a prior belief in Jesus as the Messiah and as God incarnate. From a Christian POV, death is not salvific, murder certainly isn't salvific; but the death of God incarnate is. It doesn't make sense without the prior beliefs about who Jesus is.

CoteDAzur · 03/10/2012 07:57

So all sins past and future forgiven by God if and only if we believe that the person we torture and kill is somehow divine?

It Just Doesn't Make Sense.

AMumInScotland · 03/10/2012 09:53

I don't think HH means that believing Jesus is divine makes it work, but that Jesus being divine (which is what we believe) makes it work. Jesus (as God incarnate) dying is a one-off, and changes things in ways that any number of people dying hadn't changed, and any number of animal sacrifices hadn't changed.

To me the important thing about the incarnation is the idea that God could actually experience what it's like to be human - both living and dying - and that it changes the possible relationship between God and humanity for ever. The sacrifice/substitution explanations don't work that well for me, because I didn't grow up into generations of people who believed that buying a pigeon and having it killed on the altar of the temple would repay anything that was due to God.

shallishanti not sure if you're clear now after HHs explanation, but I think it's about the definitions of the words. Sins are things that separate us from God. We can sin, but have to recognise them and repent of them. And death will be permanent if we are not in a state of relationship with God when we die. So the effect of us doing things which separate us from God, and not repenting of them, is that when we die, we will not move forward onto the "new creation" (whatever and wherever that is) but will stop existing, and truly be dead. So the effects of sin, what it "earns" us as "wages", is death.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 03/10/2012 10:28

Christians - you're not getting this I don't think.

I get that you think it had to be Jesus who was killed as he was pure/divine - however you want to describe his properties - I get that you believe it had to be him.

What I don't get is how him being killed changed anything. Who, or what said "well, now that he has been killed/separated from God/resurrected/reunited with God/whatever, now that has happened I can forgive people, but before I couldn't"

I understand that only God can forgive sins in the Christian belief, so it must have been God who said/thought that or similar.

The question is why did he make the death of Jesus a condition, when he can do anything he likes? Or did Jesus have to die so that someone else was satisfied and that is what then allowed God to forgive - and if so, who was the someone else, and how come they had a power God didn't have?

OP posts:
wildstrawberryplace · 03/10/2012 10:35

I always thought it was an allegory about the necessity for self sacrifice. In terms of ego.

Original poster
Machadaynu · 03/10/2012 10:39

So you don't think it actually happened, wild? That's not an orthodox Christian view I don't think? It seems fairly key to Christianity that he was actually killed.

OP posts:
AMumInScotland · 03/10/2012 10:40

God has been forgiving people all through history - the whole of the Old Testament is full of stories where He forgives. The whole story of Jonah is based on the fact that Jonah just knew God would forgive all the inhabitants of Nineveh if he went and preached there, and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction because he didn't want God to go around being forgiving towards "bad people" and foreigners.

So the death of Jesus isn't the only thing that allows God to be forgiving. It just changed the way that it happened - up till then the people of Israel had to make sacrifices in the Temple to show their repentance of their sins. And they kept having to do that over and over again, because they kept sinning (as everyone does, all the time). But the death of Jesus was a game-changer - if you view it from the sacrifice/substitution point of view, that's because instead of lots of tiny little repetitive sacrifices that could never be good enough, this was one perfect sacrifice which wiped out the need to keep doing it - how would you follow sacrificing God incarnate? You don't, and you don't have to.

But like I said above I don't really see it from that point of view, because I don't think people "needed" to make sacrifices like that, they just needed a way of relating to God that allowed them to reoent of their sins and move forwards. And I think the incarnation made a link between God and humanity that was different from the way it had been before.