How did Jesus die for our sins?

[DrZoidberg]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

 

[Horatio Parker]

By sharing in his divine power. That quality that enables you to examine yourself and make judgements about your actions is the divine power. By recognizing error, or sin, we are able to improve ourselves.

At least that's how I understand the theology. YMMV.

 

[Syed]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

i guess jesus had near death experience for our sin

 

[DrZoidberg]

By sharing in his divine power. That quality that enables you to examine yourself and make judgements about your actions is the divine power. By recognizing error, or sin, we are able to improve ourselves.

At least that's how I understand the theology. YMMV.

Sounds way deeper than my meagre mind can comprehend. How do we share in his divine power?

 

[Horatio Parker]

By sharing in his divine power. That quality that enables you to examine yourself and make judgements about your actions is the divine power. By recognizing error, or sin, we are able to improve ourselves.

At least that's how I understand the theology. YMMV.

Sounds way deeper than my meagre mind can comprehend. How do we share in his divine power?

Consciousness, perception, ability to reason, create, and judge. These are the godlike aspects of ourselves.

 

[Keith&Co.]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

He was dead for long enough that the attached sins were redeemed.

Doesn't matter if he was raised after that.

Kind of like a debit card. It only matters that there's money on the card at the point of purchase. Doesn't matter what the balance was yesterday or the day after, it's all about that point in time.

 

[Malintent]

Sounds way deeper than my meagre mind can comprehend. How do we share in his divine power?

Consciousness, perception, ability to reason, create, and judge. These are the godlike aspects of ourselves.

My cat has all the attributes you listed.

He is definitely conscious at least 4 hours a day (when he is not sleeping)
He perceives quite a bit.. more than I do in some ways. He can track a spec of dust floating in a shaft of light from 20 yards
He reasons quite a bit.. plans, schemes.. his nickname in my house is, "little shit". He has been hunting crickets lately (it's the season they get in the house). He figures out where they are, and where they are coming from, and sets up ambushes. He even catches them and takes them over to his 'other' toys to integrate the fun.
Create? tough one. He creates quite a bit of doody. He does organize his toys, creating order out of disorder. He creates destruction... he can create an intracate pile of toilet paper out of a simple roll in like 15 seconds flat.
He's always judging me. Every move I make. It is always a question of, "is there any food in this for me"

So there you have it. My cat is god. but the Egyptians knew this millennia before the Jesus story was made up.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Consciousness, perception, ability to reason, create, and judge. These are the godlike aspects of ourselves.

My cat has all the attributes you listed.

He is definitely conscious at least 4 hours a day (when he is not sleeping)
He perceives quite a bit.. more than I do in some ways. He can track a spec of dust floating in a shaft of light from 20 yards
He reasons quite a bit.. plans, schemes.. his nickname in my house is, "little shit". He has been hunting crickets lately (it's the season they get in the house). He figures out where they are, and where they are coming from, and sets up ambushes. He even catches them and takes them over to his 'other' toys to integrate the fun.
Create? tough one. He creates quite a bit of doody. He does organize his toys, creating order out of disorder. He creates destruction... he can create an intracate pile of toilet paper out of a simple roll in like 15 seconds flat.
He's always judging me. Every move I make. It is always a question of, "is there any food in this for me"

So there you have it. My cat is god. but the Egyptians knew this millennia before the Jesus story was made up.

Sure, your cat is god. And the Egyptians knew this.

Got it.

 

[funinspace]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

He was dead for long enough that the attached sins were redeemed.

I dunno, was the long form death certificate ever provided?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, Jesus is God, so he's the one who decided he died for our sins. He gets to make up the rationales for his actions.

It's sort of like if you say "Well, I just did 20 pushups, so I deserve a piece of pie". You earned that piece of pie. Sure, you could have just gone and gotten yourself a piece of pie without needing to do the pushups first, but you imposed a requirement on yourself for whatever reasons made sense to you at that moment and met that requirement.

It's the same with God. He could have absolved humankind of our sins while sitting on the porch reading a book, but he decided that a dog-and-pony show of taking a human form and pretending to die for a bit was a requirement for his doing that. He imposed that requirement on himself for whatever reasons made sense at that moment and met that requirement. The guy's immortal, FFS, he has to come up with something to pass the time.

 

[Bronzeage]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

Apparently.

The whole miracle of the resurrection thing is the idea that he was dead and then alive again. So, it's not a matter of "not dead," but more of "not dead, anymore".

 

[credoconsolans]

A critical detail in death is the lack of life. Anybody dead for a while and then alive again is not dead.

Am I the only person who doesn't get it?

Apparently.

The whole miracle of the resurrection thing is the idea that he was dead and then alive again. So, it's not a matter of "not dead," but more of "not dead, anymore".

No, you're not.

I always question it to believers thusly, "If I 'sacrifice' my favorite pair of shoes to a homeless kid on the streets...then 3 days later, go back to him and take them back, can I still claim to have sacrificed anything?

Jesus gets kudos for sacrificing his life...and coming back.

Why can't I get kudos for sacrificing my shoes but getting my stuff back?"

They can never answer me.

 

[DBT]

Doesn't the god of the bible, Yahweh the belligerent son of El, require a blood sacrifice? Well somebody has to either offer or contribute blood....

 

[iolo]

The 'dying for' idea dates back to an unpleasant tribal religion, where an unpleasant tribal god liked to have animals killed and given to him to appease his unpleasant anger - this being extended, at a push, to human sacrifice - and as an explanation for anything it is clearly ridiculous. When it comes to the Resurrection story, clearly the Roman's did their traditional bully-boy public torturing-to-death of any popular leader who didn't worship their successful politicians and mass-murderers, and some people had the hugely powerful experience of Jesus's apparently coming back to life and walking away from the Great Dictators. What actually happened is something we can't know, but something evidently did. From our current position we must suppose he was still alive, as I take it.

 

[Malintent]

My cat has all the attributes you listed.

He is definitely conscious at least 4 hours a day (when he is not sleeping)
He perceives quite a bit.. more than I do in some ways. He can track a spec of dust floating in a shaft of light from 20 yards
He reasons quite a bit.. plans, schemes.. his nickname in my house is, "little shit". He has been hunting crickets lately (it's the season they get in the house). He figures out where they are, and where they are coming from, and sets up ambushes. He even catches them and takes them over to his 'other' toys to integrate the fun.
Create? tough one. He creates quite a bit of doody. He does organize his toys, creating order out of disorder. He creates destruction... he can create an intracate pile of toilet paper out of a simple roll in like 15 seconds flat.
He's always judging me. Every move I make. It is always a question of, "is there any food in this for me"

So there you have it. My cat is god. but the Egyptians knew this millennia before the Jesus story was made up.

Sure, your cat is god. And the Egyptians knew this.

Got it.

Not MY cat specifically, silly. My cat is just one of millions in the lineage. You seem sarcastic in your response, though. Are you unaware of ancient history?

Here is Bastet, the Egyptian goddess that can appear in the form of a cat, or a woman with a cat's head. She keeps the evil serpent god Apep at bay.

Here is Thebes (I don't know much about this cat god)...

... and here is Bastet again, standing with Sekhmet:

So who is this newfangled Jesus kid on the block? I'll stick with the original religions and pass on those modern renditions.

Like any Jewish mother always says about the New Testament... ANYONE can write a sequel.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Sure, your cat is god. And the Egyptians knew this.

Got it.

Not MY cat specifically, silly. My cat is just one of millions in the lineage. You seem sarcastic in your response, though.

No sarcasm. Your cat is god, and the Egyptians knew so. Is that not what you said? You addressed me, I responded. "Points" noted.

I don't claim any particular uniqueness or originality for the Jesus story. The point of the OP, however, was specifically about Jesus.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And the OP, about Jesus, wasn't questioning the whole 'sacrifice to the Big Guy' process as much as wondering how a temporary death qualified as a death.

Maybe it'd make more sense if he had been turned into a newt?

 

[ideologyhunter]

John 3:16, the Christians' favorite verse that supposedly clinches all the important points: God loved us soooo much that he actually sacrificed -- think about it, GAVE UP his own son -- or Himself, apparently, but whatever -- only he didn't do that at all, because Jesus is reigning over heaven right now, next to Dad, while the holy ghost sends in IMs from the road.

 

[Thomas II]

Consciousness, perception, ability to reason, create, and judge. These are the godlike aspects of ourselves.

My cat has all the attributes you listed.

He is definitely conscious at least 4 hours a day (when he is not sleeping)
He perceives quite a bit.. more than I do in some ways. He can track a spec of dust floating in a shaft of light from 20 yards
He reasons quite a bit.. plans, schemes.. his nickname in my house is, "little shit". He has been hunting crickets lately (it's the season they get in the house). He figures out where they are, and where they are coming from, and sets up ambushes. He even catches them and takes them over to his 'other' toys to integrate the fun.
Create? tough one. He creates quite a bit of doody. He does organize his toys, creating order out of disorder. He creates destruction... he can create an intracate pile of toilet paper out of a simple roll in like 15 seconds flat.
He's always judging me. Every move I make. It is always a question of, "is there any food in this for me"

So there you have it. My cat is god. but the Egyptians knew this millennia before the Jesus story was made up.

Apes create tools for different things, like catching termites, or extracting honey out of a tree trunk, or to crack nuts...

 

[whichphilosophy]

By sharing in his divine power. That quality that enables you to examine yourself and make judgements about your actions is the divine power. By recognizing error, or sin, we are able to improve ourselves.

At least that's how I understand the theology. YMMV.

That doesn't of course mean that to do this Jesus has to die for our sins. There are easier less harmful ways in which we can self examine.