To Christians: Jesus' Death: The Ultimate Love? for Christians

[loyal 0]

Hello Christians. Hope you are well. I have some questions:

 

 

"Jesus dying on the cross is a demonstration of how much God loves us. God wants us to see that, by sacrificing Jesus on the cross, it is a demonstration of His love."

 

 

This has been a puzzle to me and I would sincerely like to ask you "how"?

 

 

How does allowing someone to die a demonstration of love?

 

 

If I am not mistaken, didn't Jesus cry and beg to be saved according to the Bible.

 

 

"About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" {Matthew 27:46}

 

 

If I had the power to save someone who was bleeding, crying, praying and begging to me to save him or her, I would save them. Not to save them would prove I was heartless, to save them would show I have Mercy, let alone love.

 

 

Not saving Jesus only demonstrates God does not listen to our prayers, does not have mercy, not even to his prophet according to the Bible.

 

 

Not to mention discrediting his prophethood to millions of Jews past present and future.

 

 

Please be logical in your explanation and kindly keep in mind that God is All Powerful and does not need "blood" to forgive sins.

 

 

One last question to consider in your reply, if Jesus's intention was to be a sacrifice, why would he "Beg" and "Pray" to God to be saved, and if your answer is that Jesus had a moment of weakness, than why say Jesus is 1/3 God, seeing many Christians say "Jesus is God in human form", because Jesus had the power to heal and raise people from the dead and walk on water, why then is Jesus at this moment helpless and powerless and most of all, not wanting to be sacrificed?

 

 

Wouldn't the point of love from God be to have peace, wouldn't there be peace between the Jews and the Christians, past present and future be a reality if Jesus was saved from the cross as clarified in the Qur'an??

 

 

My concern is sincere, I would like to know the logic behind the thinking Sacrafice=Love.

 

 

If I were in a room full of people and there was one person singled out to be sacrificed so all the other people in the room could be saved, wouldn't the loving thing be not sacrifice at all, understand that if your sin is as large as a mountain, God Created the Mountains and can remove them as well.

 

 

If your sin is as deep as the Sea, God Created All the Seas in this world and the Universe and can remove them too, God loves and saved Jesus.

 

 

 

[Hadi 0]

Sacrifice is giving a very important thing in the human live to nobody in order to save somebody's else's life it could be a person, a people, or even a whole civlistaion, or in order to save a valuable object, or a treasure, a culture for example. And that thing that you give could be your life. Doing so may prevent you from living but someone else will have another life or will be saved from something because of you. So this thing is a significance of extreme generosity and loyalty. Then comes the part of Love, sacrificing is done by someone because he loves someone, or something. Usually we don't see someone sacrificing himself to save his friend or the one he or she loves nowadays. But back then, Jesus sacrificed himself in the purpose of protecting the Christanity religion, and so protecting all the people on earth. Because if all religions didn't exist so God will be too much angry and everyone after Christ will go to Hell! That is a truth so thank God of sending us a way to show our love for God and being loyal to him. And this way was sent by prophets like Jesus Christ, Mohamed, Noa etc...

[loyal 0]

Sacrifice is giving a very important thing in the human live to nobody in order to save somebody's else's life it could be a person, a people, or even a whole civlistaion, or in order to save a valuable object, or a treasure, a culture for example. And that thing that you give could be your life. Doing so may prevent you from living but someone else will have another life or will be saved from something because of you. So this thing is a significance of extreme generosity and loyalty. Then comes the part of Love, sacrificing is done by someone because he loves someone, or something. Usually we don't see someone sacrificing himself to save his friend or the one he or she loves nowadays. But back then, Jesus sacrificed himself in the purpose of protecting the Christanity religion, and so protecting all the people on earth. Because if all religions didn't exist so God will be too much angry and everyone after Christ will go to Hell! That is a truth so thank God of sending us a way to show our love for God and being loyal to him. And this way was sent by prophets like Jesus Christ, Mohamed, Noa etc...

I understand. But this does not answer the questions:

-If God wanted to save lots of people, He could keep His religion alive, and many pious people would follow it. God will not save everyone because there are some who hate no matter what and deserve punishment. What is the point of Hell if everyone is going to Heaven?

-God is All-Powerful. He can forgive by wishing.

-Jesus was only sent to the Jews according to the Bible's gospel writers. So he only saved the Jews.
Edited June 11, 2006 by loyal (see edit history)

[Simeonus 0]

Hey dude

You said

-God is All-Powerful. He can forgive by wishing.

Indeed God does have all the power you can imagine! EXCEPT for one thing, God has to keep His Word, God can do whatever He wants, except for not doing what He says.

God said He can't be in the present of persons who are not clean, if someone sins, satan will be his lord
BUT He also said that if someone is being blamed without a reason, He would get all he wants from the one that hurts him.

So a short summary:
We sin, satan owns us
satan blames Jesus, and crucifies Him.
Jesus wants us to be happy, and don't want us to burn in hell
So Jesus says to satan "You crucified me, while I am without a sin, so give me back those people I love"
But, Jesus only wants to save those who believe in him, because they can choose satan or Jesus.

Jesus is God. But satan would never crucify God, so God came to the earth as a human being.
If satan knew Jesus was without a sin, he would never crucify Jesus Christ.

Do you get it, or do you have any more questions?


I also have proof for why God is real!!
I'll first call 1 simple proof, if you still don't believe in God, after it, I'll call another:

That the bible is as old as it is, is one of the most proven things, so the bible book Job is written more than 2500 years ago...
In the bible book Job, 38:31 God asks Job:
" Can you tie the Pleiades together
or loosen the bonds that hold Orion? "
Now, a couple of thousands years later, we found out that the Pleiades, a group of stars are tied together with little stones, we also found out the Orion are not tied together. We can see this since a few years with a super telescope, Job couldn't know this because they didn't have that knowledge then.
Drs. Ben Hobrink recently calculated that the chance a human could say such a thing without having talked with a God or such a thing, is 1 in 10^127!!!

Are you convinced?

[truefusion 3]

Jesus is God.

Jesus is not God. There's more evidence against this statement than there is for it.

I also have proof for why God is real!!I'll first call 1 simple proof, if you still don't believe in God...

Loyal believes in God. He's just asking a few things.
Edited June 11, 2006 by truefusion (see edit history)

[CarlU 0]

Jesus is not God. There's more evidence against this statement than there is for it.Jesus is not God. There's more evidence against this statement than there is for it.

lol, I see this starting a new debate and one which will most likely go nowhere...this a potential 100 pager.

 

-Jesus was only sent to the Jews according to the Bible's gospel writers. So he only saved the Jews.

in 1 Tim 4:10 it says God is the saviour of all mankind, Jesus Christ also tells his disciples to preach to ALL nations .Jesus also said that he did not come to judge the world, but to save it...these are just a few of many verses.

, I struggle to find any exclusivism from the passages.

Edited June 12, 2006 by CarlU (see edit history)

[Hadi 0]

What is the point of Hell if everyone is going to Heaven?

Every man and women on earth will go to hell first. As you see no one has never done something wrong. Each and everyone have done at least one mistake in his life that didn't pleased god. So you go to hell and suffer the pain that your mistake did to another human being. That's the point of hell, and if these mistakes were numerless then that person will stay in Hell for ever. Then after the person has lived the pain he caused he (or she) shall go to heaven next to god.

-Jesus was only sent to the Jews according to the Bible's gospel writers. So he only saved the Jews.

Yes that's right, but if Jesus didn't save the jews then christanity wouldn't exist nor the other religions.

Jesus is God.

God, how could someone think of such a horrible idea?! Jesus is not and won't be God, nor he will be his son and he ain't his son. God is the creator of the universe. This is a translated paragraph by meaning from the holy Qoran:

God is not someone nor something, the mighty and resistant lord, he isn't born, and he didn't give birth to nothing and to no one, and he never had a partner.

Please respect the way I think in the following: I don't think Jesus is crucified. Because none of the prophets must suffer as God said in his skied books. Everyone has his own way to think and that is my way of thinking, eventually God will know how to deal with people and how to punish them bacuse God knows what happened, what is happening and what will happen.

[dodgerblue 0]

If I am not mistaken, didn't Jesus cry and beg to be saved according to the Bible.

"About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" {Matthew 27:46}

He was asking for a reason, not begging to be saved. Even without going into theology or dogma, this can be already literally interpreted from the word "why".

Figuratively, it can also be interpreted as a rhetorical question. Just as how sometimes we know our parents will not allow us to do something for whatever reasons (which sometimes we may not understand given youth and etc), we know that obedience is demanded of us, and that in failing to obey, there will be consequences. However, it does not necessarily mean that our obeying them is something that we wish to do. We may possibly just obey them because we love them, even if it's something awful, like ballet lessons or something. Just an example. I'm sure ballet's great and all ... but I digress ...

Please be logical in your explanation and kindly keep in mind that God is All Powerful and does not need "blood" to forgive sins.

The bible explicitly states that "almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission" The word "remission" refers to absolving a person's sins. (go to google and search "define: remission") This is found in verse 22 of Hebrews chapter 9. This dates back to the laws as commanded by God in the very beginning, regarding the kinds of animal sacrifices to be made depending on what offence a person had done.

One last question to consider in your reply, if Jesus's intention was to be a sacrifice, why would he "Beg" and "Pray" to God to be saved, and if your answer is that Jesus had a moment of weakness, than why say Jesus is 1/3 God, seeing many Christians say "Jesus is God in human form", because Jesus had the power to heal and raise people from the dead and walk on water, why then is Jesus at this moment helpless and powerless and most of all, not wanting to be sacrificed?

see above.

Wouldn't the point of love from God be to have peace, wouldn't there be peace between the Jews and the Christians, past present and future be a reality if Jesus was saved from the cross as clarified in the Qur'an??

If you're asking for Christians' points of view, why would you look at the quran? Wouldn't you be looking at the bible instead?? Sorry, I don't see the link there...

This is a translated paragraph by meaning from the holy Qoran:
Please respect the way I think in the following: I don't think Jesus is crucified. Because none of the prophets must suffer as God said in his skied books. Everyone has his own way to think and that is my way of thinking, eventually God will know how to deal with people and how to punish them bacuse God knows what happened, what is happening and what will happen.

Similarly for this, think it kind of doesn't really answer the question since the Quran is the Muslim holy book... and not the Christian holy book...

My concern is sincere, I would like to know the logic behind the thinking Sacrafice=Love.

Let me put forth to you in a mathematical form:

P1 - God is infinite and eternal, existing beyond the boundaries of Time and Space, as evidenced in the word "infinite" - without any "finite", or end (again, google "define: finite"). For what it's worth, I am sure that both Islam and Christianity agree on this point.

P2 - Man is finite and mortal. In every way, and especially in the fact that even this definition has to be bounded by time - within this life/existence on earth.

P3 - God has laws for Man that Man must adhere to. We shall for the moment pass by the definition of what those laws are, but for the purposes of this exercise we shall assume that the 10 commandments are the laws (there are more, but we'll just leave it at this for now). The full list is found in the book of Exodus.

P4 - Just looking at the 10 commandments (the short summary is in Exodus 20, verses 1-17), I am equally sure that no one has ever not broken a single law (eg. if you say you have never lied, then, well...)

P5 - Breaking of the law = judgement

P6 - God's judgement for the breaking of his law is death. For any offence. One of the most well-known examples I believe is found in Genesis, where Adam and Eve were sentenced to die (not immediately, but over a passage of time - the process of ageing, and finally also ending in death of body and death of soul) and driven out of the Garden of Eden. (We'll skip the reason behind this penalty for now.)

P7 - Animal sacrifices (ie, a death, the "shedding of blood") has to be made for every offence.

I interrupt my postulating here to pose a few questions -

Is there ever any way in which making animal sacrifices for offences can guarantee that a person's heart is as good and holy as he is outwardly religious?

What if you were poor and couldn't afford to buy a goat to sacrifice? Would you be sentenced to hell?
What if you could only afford to sacrifice a cat or a bird or some small animal? Only half your sins forgiven?
What if someone who wasn't sorry at all sacrificed a huge cow just so he wouldn't be sent to hell - would you say that's justice?

Is that what you'd call a loving God?

Right, continuing on...

P8 - There's the problem of time. Even if a person sacrificed for his sins today, he would sin again sometime in the future, which'll require another sacrifice.

People are tied to the fact that they have to keep the law but can't, because there's no way anyone is ever gonna be able to keep the law perfectly, and sacrifices don't guarantee a person is really sorry for what he's done.

P9 - In order to end this so-called "slavery" to the law, the only way is to get rid of this requirement altogether. Altogether = atonement for the sins of all Mankind, both dead and living, and yet to be born. This requires time-travel!!!

P10 - Enter the only person who can transcend Time, and that is God himself.

It then follows that God must be sacrificed to satisfy P9.

It is important that you get the reasoning of this, it's a bit complicated I'll agree, all metaphysical logic is... because it's the whole argument that the Sacrifice=Love concept hinges upon.

Assuming you follow me, I'll move on...

We'll skip the God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit argument. Since this is a Christian concept, we'll just follow from those assumptions.

Now it's also important that you understand that there's no mention of God not wanting to sacrifice Jesus or Jesus not wanting to die.

"God sent his son." (John 3:16, that famous verse)

Look at the word "sent". (Yeah you'll notice I like looking at words. Sometimes they tell you a lot more than reading between the lines... )

From here we can tell that it was a deliberate act. Now I think this is the part where you're confused. If God deliberately sent his own son to die, you're wondering how this could be an act of love, right?

Let's go back to P9 and P10. Now here we see that only God is able to absolve all sins, and I mean all - yours, mine, his, hers, theirs, ours, yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, next month, etc.

In order to liberate Man from the law, Jesus would have to die. If Jesus didn't die, then Man would not be able to gain freedom.


Now we come to the part about Jesus being God. Now, supposing Jesus was not God, but just a Man. Then his death would have been for nothing, it would have been ineffectual - maybe good for sins up till that moment when he died, and everything else afterwards (Christians now included) won't be able to have any forgiveness for sins.

But supposing Jesus is God, then because only God is not constrained by Time, then Jesus' death would be able to absolve all sins - past, present and future ones.

So the sacrifice = love concept really refers to God's love to Man, as manifested in the act of him sending his (only) son to be the time-transcending, 100% once and for all, sacrifice for every sin committed.

I hope that was logical enough for you to follow.
Edited June 12, 2006 by dodgerblue (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

or Jesus not wanting to die.

Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42. Explain these verses for me, if they don't relate to this.

Now we come to the part about Jesus being God. Now, supposing Jesus was not God, but just a Man. Then his death would have been for nothing, it would have been ineffectual - maybe good for sins up till that moment when he died, and everything else afterwards (Christians now included) won't be able to have any forgiveness for sins.

If God wills to make it last until Christ's "second coming", then it would last to Christ's "second coming". Meaning, Jesus doesn't have to be God in order for it to last even into this generation. All Jesus has to do is be crucified. And Jesus doesn't have to be God in order for this sacrifice to take affect. So long as God wills. Which apparently, God did will.

But supposing Jesus is God, then because only God is not constrained by Time, then Jesus' death would be able to absolve all sins - past, present and future ones.

Again, if God willed, He could make Jesus not constrained to time. If God wills, He could make Jesus an immortal. Nothing is impossible with God.
After Jesus is done, he'll give over the Kingdom back to God. How can Jesus give over the Kingdom to God if he is God? 1 Corinthians 15:24-28
Edited June 12, 2006 by truefusion (see edit history)

[heavensounds 0]

Well I think that Jesus was understood wrong! In the first place he was human, he had a wife i guess, because this is the most normal way and such a great person and teacher as he was, certainly had one. This is natural and not having a wife is nothing good...Other than that, it is clearly visible from the things that were not deleted out of the bible later on, that he believed in reincarnation and if you look from that point of view, bible really has meaning. His suffering was suffering of a normal human being, maybe a bit bigger so we'd understand that TO LIVE MEANS TO SUFFER and he suffered as any other human being. But he had faith, he did good things and that is what than metaphorically brought him back to life...that saved him! So if we just believe in Jesus that is not enough. In my humble opinion we should only follow his path or the path he showed to us! And than when we ourseles are on the path of believing in divine, god and doing good things without bothering for everyday problems all the time (but still having compassion for everything that lives, including things like trees, stones), Jesus is only the one we should be grateful for showing us the path.His life story is just a metaphore so is the whole bible! And it must not be literaly understood...It shows the way of life...GO FOLLOW IT..

[masugidsk8r 0]

Hello Christians. Hope you are well. I have some questions:

 

 

"Jesus dying on the cross is a demonstration of how much God loves us. God wants us to see that, by sacrificing Jesus on the cross, it is a demonstration of His love."

 

 

This has been a puzzle to me and I would sincerely like to ask you "how"?

 

 

How does allowing someone to die a demonstration of love?

 

 

If I am not mistaken, didn't Jesus cry and beg to be saved according to the Bible.

 

 

"About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" {Matthew 27:46}

 

 

If I had the power to save someone who was bleeding, crying, praying and begging to me to save him or her, I would save them. Not to save them would prove I was heartless, to save them would show I have Mercy, let alone love.

 

 

Not saving Jesus only demonstrates God does not listen to our prayers, does not have mercy, not even to his prophet according to the Bible.

 

 

Not to mention discrediting his prophethood to millions of Jews past present and future.

 

 

Please be logical in your explanation and kindly keep in mind that God is All Powerful and does not need "blood" to forgive sins.

 

 

One last question to consider in your reply, if Jesus's intention was to be a sacrifice, why would he "Beg" and "Pray" to God to be saved, and if your answer is that Jesus had a moment of weakness, than why say Jesus is 1/3 God, seeing many Christians say "Jesus is God in human form", because Jesus had the power to heal and raise people from the dead and walk on water, why then is Jesus at this moment helpless and powerless and most of all, not wanting to be sacrificed?

 

 

Wouldn't the point of love from God be to have peace, wouldn't there be peace between the Jews and the Christians, past present and future be a reality if Jesus was saved from the cross as clarified in the Qur'an??

 

 

My concern is sincere, I would like to know the logic behind the thinking Sacrafice=Love.

 

 

If I were in a room full of people and there was one person singled out to be sacrificed so all the other people in the room could be saved, wouldn't the loving thing be not sacrifice at all, understand that if your sin is as large as a mountain, God Created the Mountains and can remove them as well.

 

 

If your sin is as deep as the Sea, God Created All the Seas in this world and the Universe and can remove them too, God loves and saved Jesus.

 

 

That's a great question. Okay, first what you have to know that since Jesus is God (God the Son), he has the power to heal. People would say, why couldn't he heal himself. The answer to that is He Can, but because He loves us so much, He is willing to give himself for us.

 

God's most precious is His Son, Jesus. He gave up his best for us. He gave his Son to a bunch of sinners! Because we are sinners at birth and forever will be, he saved us because He loves us.

 

How does allowing someone to die a demonstration of love?

It was Jesus who made the decision to die.

 

If I am not mistaken, didn't Jesus cry and beg to be saved according to the Bible.

"About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" {Matthew 27:46}

"It was suffering endured by Him that was due to us, and suffering by which, and by which alone, we can be saved from eternal death." -https://gotquestions.org/forsaken-me.html

 

Not saving Jesus only demonstrates God does not listen to our prayers, does not have mercy, not even to his prophet according to the Bible.

God didn't need to save Jesus, because Jesus is God Himself. You must know that the Holy Trinity means God in Three Persons (God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit)

 

God listens to our prayers. But he doesn't answer all of them. If you've ever seen the movie "Bruce Almighty" see how it turned out when God answered all their prayers... chaos!

 

God knows what's best for you, He cares for you. In John 11, the lesson it teaches is that "you can't always get what you ask for". In it, a dear friend of Jesus asked Him to visit her dying brother and heal him. But Jesus did not come until after 2 Days! When he arrived, the brother was already dead. The reason was that he would bring him back up and prove that He is God. (it took 2 days to be sure that he was truly dead, lying in the tomb)

 

Because of Jesus' death on the cross we are saved. That is the Good News! All is done by Christ, Salvation is the gift from God and all who accept it will be saved and go to Heaven. All we have to do is Believe and put our Faith in Him and we will have eternal life.

 

**All of us are sinners, even Christians, because we are humans. Jesus was God therefore He was sinless. Because there is NO way to save ourselves by doing good things, He died for us so that we could meet Him in heaven.

 

That's what the Good News is all about