How Could Christ Pay For Our Sins?
Christians really excel at promoting Christianity in such a way that
it turns modern people into skeptics and critics. One big reason
for this is that Christians are so culturally inbred that they can only
talk to each other and not to outsiders. Outsiders then don't
understand what Christians are talking about and assume Christianity
is just nonsense. I know. I am culturally a science kind of guy
and all the stuff I heard about Christianity did not MAKE SENSE. It
wasn't even easy for me to figure out what Christianity was all
about.
A second important reason Christians fail is that they will simply say
"God said it. I believe it. That's it!" or "The Bible clearly
teaches bla, bla, bla." Modern people just don't accept things that
don't MAKE SENSE. Modern people look for the why behind it all.
Unfortunately, Christians seldom (it seems) can show why what God
says, MAKES SENSE. And they don't know why God does what He does
and says what He says because their knowledge of God is so very
shallow because they aren't eager to know more about Him.
Memorizing scripture is very popular but understanding what you
memorized isn't really emphasized enough. Christians, then, simply
become mind-numbed robots who repeat words that they don't really
understand.
Here is one nice example of the problem. I found a critic in a
Google+ discussion group who said this:
sorry, but the entire concept of a god sacrificing itself to itself
to appease itself for a rule it set up in the first place makes no
sense whatsoever.
Given the assumptions that go into it, this critic is absolutely
right! This doesn't make any sense. Well, but, the assumptions
that go into it are wrong. But where did these assumptions come
from? Well, from Christians of course. Christians will tell you
that this, that and the next thing is a sin. Sin has to be paid
for. And Jesus paid for sin. But to find WHY this makes sense
you have to go behind the legalism to see where it came from. Laws
or rules, including the ones God makes up, always have some sense
behind them. Take for instance, the speed limit in cities on
residential streets in the US is usually 30 miles per hour. Why not
65? Or have no limit at all? The reason is that there are going to
be too many terrible accidents if people go over 30 miles per hour.
In this particular case we have Jesus coming to Earth, living among
us, loving us and doing miracles for us to prove Who He is. And He
died a very painful death. And He rose from the dead. Rising from
the dead proves that God endorsed everything Jesus said and did.
All of this gets the attention of lots of people. (In John 12:32
Jesus says: "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw
everyone to myself.") So people will want to know more about Him
and what happened to Him. And why it happened to Him. So when it
comes to the sense behind it all, you can say this:
Jesus paid the penalty for our sins in the sense that He did what
was necessary to get our attention and make us want to follow
Him.
By analogy, think of advertisements, like on TV, like for the Super
Bowl. Companies put together something really expensive (they pay a
penalty by sacrificing some profits) in order to get people to think
about their product. And they want you to become their loyal
followers. When I responded to the critic with a short summary he
said then that what Jesus did "was a publicity stunt." I said, "You
are absolutely right!". Jesus' expedition to Earth is a much
grander (and nobler, to be sure) advertisement trying to get people
to give up their selfishness, follow God and get a really wonderful
life in the future. So here you have something that MAKES SENSE.
Well, now, how to you turn this idea that makes sense into the
legalism that does not seem to make sense? First there is a given:
the penalty for sin is death. This doesn't just mean physical
death, it also means spiritual death. Spiritual death means
separation from God. If you never want to give up sin you will end
up REALLY separated from God, you end up in Hell. The other side of
this is that you can only really get life, that is, a real,
meaningful, full spiritual life by hanging out with God. If you
don't think this makes sense, then read another essay,
"Hell, Yes!" where I develop the idea in more detail.
Next, in the end, people are saved by having faith in God. That is,
trusting Him to the point where they decide to follow Him forever.
(Just believing that God exists is not good enough. Demons know
that God exists and that's not going to do them any good.) Abraham
is the classic Old Testament case. God was working with Abraham one
on one. God was appearing to Abraham. And talking with Abraham.
And doing good things for Abraham. The biggest thing God did for
Abraham was that God gave Abraham, a son, Isaac, long after
Abraham's wife, Sarah could not have children. In this whole
process, Abraham grew to trust in God. Abraham thus demonstrated
that he wanted to follow God. And for this reason, God declared him
righteous, or in other words, God was going to make Abraham over
into a perfect person who would be fit for heaven, who would get
eternal life (a great spiritual life) by having a close, personal
relationship with God.
Well, with Abraham, God was working one on one. But there were
going to be a whole lot more souls coming to Earth. God knew that
these souls would take to sin like ducks take to water. He gives
these souls the opportunity to be sinful (selfish) and then He is
basically, constantly, asking them if they really like being selfish
and living in a selfish world filled with selfish people for all
eternity? Or would they like to move on to a better, perfect world?
God did not decide to work with these souls one on one in a personal
way in exactly the same way God worked with Abraham. Instead, we
have Jesus, who works with a massive number of people rather than
just one. Now it is given that Jesus was simply present from "the
beginning" (He always existed, just like God the Father) and this
puts Jesus in a really unique position to be able to explain
everything to human beings. Jesus is then really said to be God
(but I will not touch the Trinity issue in this essay, the problem
of how God can have three parts.)
So, Jesus was given a project to work with a massive number
of people. His mission is to get people to trust in Him (and
therefore God) in same basic way God got Abraham to trust in God.
To do this, Jesus needed to demonstrate just how much God loves
people. Jesus was able to do this by healing people and even
raising a few of them from the dead. Also, Jesus demonstrated his
love for people by suffering a terrible death on the cross in
order to make this project work. All of this is quite a sacrifice.
He put our happiness ahead of His own (This, of course, is a nice
demonstration of how people really need to be, and will be, in
heaven. Put everyone ahead of yourself and let God coordinate the
details.)
God said there had to be a perfect sacrifice to pay for human sins.
Jesus was perfect so He really did not deserve death. He got death
anyway. But since He was sinless, God could raise Him from the
dead. God proved Jesus was perfect because God raised Him from the
dead. The fact that God could do this for Jesus means that God can
do this for other people as well. Jesus was saying exactly that
while He was on Earth.
So to summarize:
God came up with a project where massive numbers of people could
come to trust in Him. To accomplish this project, God needed someone
who really knew God and that would be Jesus (who was also God).
Jesus would also be perfect (sinless) and that meant Jesus could be
raised from the dead. Or another short way to put it is, only
God/Jesus dying on the cross and later being resurrected could
result in large numbers of people coming to God/Jesus and having
their sinful nature taken away. Jesus paid for our sins in the
sense that He did what was necessary to get our attention and make
us want to follow Him.
Christians: modern people are looking for things that MAKE SENSE.
They are not going to accept "The Bible clearly teaches bla bla bla"
or "God said it. I believe it. That's it." Ages ago, when people
were poorly educated, Christians could get away with this. They
could say, "Well, the priest knows all about this so just believe
what he says, OK!" But, now, when Christians can't give the sense
behind what God does, then naturally, modern people just won't believe
Christians.
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