Christ died for our Sins - what does it mean?

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Andrew2009

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Hi all

This concept is absolutely central to Catholicism (and Christianity in general) and is a basic, core belief, but I still have a lot of trouble understanding it. What does it mean exactly? What does it mean to say that Jesus died for our sins? How did His death “redeem” us? Why was His death necessary for this? How does this work exactly?

Also - if we have been “redeemed” from Sin, and Jesus’s death “expiated” our sins - why do we still need to go to Confession? Why are we judged for our actions in life when we die, if Jesus has already “paid the price” for our sins through the Cross?

I’ve read the relevant part of the CCC (paras. 599 - 623) but I find this quite confusing. Can anyone suggest some reading that will explain this in clear and simple terms? Or - is this simply a “mystery” that we accept without understanding all the whys and wherefores…

These may be dumb questions, maybe, but this whole area is very difficult for me, so if anyone can help I would be very grateful.

Many thanks

Andrew
 
Andrew2009 said:
Hi all

This concept is absolutely central to Catholicism (and Christianity in general) and is a basic, core belief, but I still have a lot of trouble understanding it.
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Hi Andrew. Take heart! You’re not the only one…
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What does it mean exactly? What does it mean to say that Jesus died for our sins?
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It means that He chose to let Himself be reviled, scourged and crucified so that we could be “delivered from evil”.
How did His death “redeem” us?
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The power of His love liberated us from our ignorance, weakness and selfishness.
Why was His death necessary for this?
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We don’t know for certain because no one could have predicted He would become a man, suffer and die for our sake. It is difficult to know how He could have inspired, enlightened and loved us so much without sharing our life in everything except sin but it would be presumptuous to say it would be impossible for God to find another way.
How does this work exactly?
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Love is the most powerful force that exists. St John wrote that God is Love implying that it is the key to understanding His nature. The three Persons are One because Their Love is perfect. Jesus identified Himself with us in every possible way so we could be united to Him in heaven. Just as we are forgiven to the precise extent that we forgive others so we are loved to the precise extent that we love Him. And we love Him when we love others, regardless of whether we know them or not.
Also - if we have been “redeemed” from Sin, and Jesus’s death “expiated” our sins - why do we still need to go to Confession?
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Because we still have our part to play. Salvation is a co-operative enterprise!
Why are we judged for our actions in life when we die, if Jesus has already “paid the price” for our sins through the Cross?
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Because God is infinitely just as well as infinitely merciful. Do you think we should be handed heaven on a plate regardless of how we behave?
 
I am struggling with this as well. It makes no sense to me. And God really isn’t seeming merciful to me. Letting your children live in a world where even Christianity is infinitely confusing and then condemning them to eternal torture and misery if they make the wrong choice doesn’t seem very merciful to me. Which makes the crucifixion seem kind of pointless…which makes it seem like a suicide mission. I’m so confused right now.
 
Greetings:

Our Lord is also known as The Most Holy Redeemer. This is so because our Lord “redeemed” us from the bondage of the Evil One, a bondage placed upon us by the first human couple.

Heaven is open to us again thanks to the Redeemer!

However, we must live lives worthy of Heaven during our brief stay on Earth.

My His hand be over you today and always…
 
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:8

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for the purpose of exposing sin for what it is-for exposing it’s reality and convicting us of it, revealing that all fall short of obedience, whether or not they even care to try. .

Say that mankind is cruising along, thinking more or less that they’re wonderful, as usual, and then hears a strange message, a message that someone willfully suffered and died an excruciatingly painful and humiliating death in order to pay the price for their sins. Now, this message may or may not be taken seriously at the time its heard but the point has been made-something’s wrong with mankind-something’s wrong even with me-and this “something” potentially explains why there’s so much pain, violence, abuse, and general unhappiness in this world. Something’s lacking, the way things “should be” aren’t quite the way they are; selfishness very often reigns in this world, often to a shocking degree.

What’s lacking in humankind, according to Christian thought, is love, at least in the quantity and quality we were designed to possess. And this lack of love reveals itself daily in a myriad of ways, large and small, in human life. This lack of love-this sin in us-is a direct result of mans separating himself from the source of love, from God who is love, in order to pursue his own way. But his own way leads nowhere except to his own destruction and this is the lesson man needs to learn: simply that he needs the God he spurned in order to have life and have it abundantly-and in order to even be capable of refraining from the sin that enslaves him and further destroys love in his heart.

What can save man from this plight? We don’t even know where we came from, what we’re here for, or where we’re going-we’re lost without knowing -or admitting to- it. What can pierce this insanity and ignorance and wake man from his slumber? Certainly not a religion that merely attempts to satiate mans’ already insatiable vanity-or one that appeals strictly to our reason, as if we could figure it all out on our own given enough information. But a god who inserts himself into human life and history, who reveals the true nature of love, is one who truly loves us in spite of our failure to love Him -and each other.

The name Jesus means God saves. So now we have a historical event-one that we can navigate to when we find that life fails to deliver all it promises-when we find that there ain’ t no promised land to be found here on earth-but that one does exist for those who turn in faith and love to God, recognizing who He is by what He’s done. I’m sure He could’ve done it a different way, but this way definitively shows the heart of humble servant hood and love that is our God.

Mans’ will has been the problem to begin with, when he fell by freely rejecting God. But God won’t force the issue. He wants us to freely rise, with His help, He wants us to freely choose love when we finally begin to thirst for it and begin to recognize it’s presence in the cross, and therefore in Himself, the foundation of our universe, which is the only place we’ll find it in the quantity and quality sufficient to give worth to the existence we’ve been given. It gives us the choice.
 
aejimison82 said:
I am struggling with this as well. It makes no sense to me. And God really isn’t seeming merciful to me. Letting your children live in a world where even Christianity is infinitely confusing and then condemning them to eternal torture and misery if they make the wrong choice doesn’t seem very merciful to me. Which makes the crucifixion seem kind of pointless…which makes it seem like a suicide mission. I’m so confused right now.
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It makes no sense to believe the Son of God died for us and then condemns us! In reality He condemns no one but forgives us. We are condemned by no one but ourselves - when we choose to reject His love.

How can Christianity be infinitely confusing when it gives us a concrete example of the greatest love the world has ever known and a model on which we can base our lives?

The Crucifixion was indeed a suicide mission in the sense that Jesus allowed Himself to be tortured and murdered when He could simply have chosen not to go to Jerusalem. But He knew the world would not change unless He showed us how to overcome evil - not by indifference but by intervention, not by revenge but by forgiveness, not by violence but by love…
 
fhansen said:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:8

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for the purpose of exposing sin for what it is-for exposing it’s reality and convicting us of it, revealing that all fall short of obedience, whether or not they even care to try. .

Say that mankind is cruising along, thinking more or less that they’re wonderful, as usual, and then hears a strange message, a message that someone willfully suffered and died an excruciatingly painful and humiliating death in order to pay the price for their sins. Now, this message may or may not be taken seriously at the time its heard but the point has been made-something’s wrong with mankind-something’s wrong even with me-and this “something” potentially explains why there’s so much pain, violence, abuse, and general unhappiness in this world. Something’s lacking, the way things “should be” aren’t quite the way they are; selfishness very often reigns in this world, often to a shocking degree.

What’s lacking in humankind, according to Christian thought, is love, at least in the quantity and quality we were designed to possess. And this lack of love reveals itself daily in a myriad of ways, large and small, in human life. This lack of love-this sin in us-is a direct result of mans separating himself from the source of love, from God who is love, in order to pursue his own way. But his own way leads nowhere except to his own destruction and this is the lesson man needs to learn: simply that he needs the God he spurned in order to have life and have it abundantly-and in order to even be capable of refraining from the sin that enslaves him and further destroys love in his heart.

What can save man from this plight? We don’t even know where we came from, what we’re here for, or where we’re going-we’re lost without knowing -or admitting to- it. What can pierce this insanity and ignorance and wake man from his slumber? Certainly not a religion that merely attempts to satiate mans’ already insatiable vanity-or one that appeals strictly to our reason, as if we could figure it all out on our own given enough information. But a god who inserts himself into human life and history, who reveals the true nature of love, is one who truly loves us in spite of our failure to love Him -and each other.

The name Jesus means God saves. So now we have a historical event-one that we can navigate to when we find that life fails to deliver all it promises-when we find that there ain’ t no promised land to be found here on earth-but that one does exist for those who turn in faith and love to God, recognizing who He is by what He’s done. I’m sure He could’ve done it a different way, but this way definitively shows the heart of humble servant hood and love that is our God.

Mans’ will has been the problem to begin with, when he fell by freely rejecting God. But God won’t force the issue. He wants us to freely rise, with His help, He wants us to freely choose love when we finally begin to thirst for it and begin to recognize it’s presence in the cross, and therefore in Himself, the foundation of our universe, which is the only place we’ll find it in the quantity and quality sufficient to give worth to the existence we’ve been given. It gives us the choice.
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Bravo! A powerful, moving and irrefutable explanation of why Our Lord allowed Himself to be unjustly punished and executed.

I agree that “the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for the purpose of exposing sin for what it is-for exposing its reality”. But “convicting us of it, revealing that all fall short of obedience, whether or not they even care to try” could imply that we are guilty even when we try to be obedient! There is no doubt that much of the suffering in the world is caused by our carelessness but we are not always aware of the full extent to which we could help those in need. Ignorance is no excuse but it can be a mitigating factor. 🙂
 
tonyrey said:
Bravo! A powerful, moving and irrefutable explanation of why Our Lord allowed Himself to be unjustly punished and executed.

I agree that “the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for the purpose of exposing sin for what it is-for exposing its reality”. But “convicting us of it, revealing that all fall short of obedience, whether or not they even care to try” could imply that we are guilty even when we try to be obedient! There is no doubt that much of the suffering in the world is caused by our carelessness but we are not always aware of the full extent to which we could help those in need. Ignorance is no excuse but it can be a mitigating factor. 🙂
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Thanks, tonyrey-although I doubt anything’s irrefutable, at least by someone or another. 🙂 What I was getting at is a legalistic, Old Covenant obedience- that even if we were to obey the Law by the letter, as the Pharisees presumably did, rather than by the Spirit, out of the love that’s been molded into and living within us, we’re still not justified, we still fall short. Obedience to God out of love for Him vs. obedience out of pride and/or fear.
 
aejimison82 said:
I am struggling with this as well. It makes no sense to me. And God really isn’t seeming merciful to me. Letting your children live in a world where even Christianity is infinitely confusing and then condemning them to eternal torture and misery if they make the wrong choice doesn’t seem very merciful to me. Which makes the crucifixion seem kind of pointless…which makes it seem like a suicide mission. I’m so confused right now.
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I’m currently doing a bible study on Hebrews and I think it would help you answer these questions. I hope my explanation helps a little as these were questions I’ve had issues with as well. I’ll try to summarize.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the ****throne of grace **to receive mercy **and to find grace for timely help.”

Hebrews describes Jesus a both the one “great high priest” and the “perfect sacrifice”.

By being fully human, he knows exactly what we are going through. He is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses”. And because of this we should “approach the throne of grace to receive mercy…” It doesn’t mean life is going to be easy (that we won’t sin), but that our great high priest, our mediator, knows exactly what it’s like to face temptation and suffer even to death. Who else would rather have as mediator between you and God? Who else is going to have more mercy and provide more grace that one who has experienced the ultimate in sufferring?

While we are going to make mistakes (sin) along the way, we should have the confidence to ask forgiveness, knowing that we will receive mercy and grace.

Is the cruxifixion pointless?

Hebrews 9:13-14
“For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.”

Jesus, the great high priest, offers himself as the perfect sacrifice. There is no better sacrifice, nothing could be more efficacious. In cleanses our sins and makes it possible to “worship the living God”. This is not just a past event. Hebrews also shows, that Jesus’ actions as high priest are past, present and future. He is in heaven as our mediator NOW, as we see in Heb 9:24 “For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf.”

There is no sacrifice more effective, and nobody more merciful.

Hope this helps.
 
fhansen said:
Thanks, tonyrey-although I doubt anything’s irrefutable, at least by someone or another. 🙂
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I await a refutation which accepts the reality of love and evil… 🙂
What I was getting at is a legalistic, Old Covenant obedience- that even if we were to obey the Law by the letter, as the Pharisees presumably did, rather than by the Spirit, out of the love that’s been molded into and living within us, we’re still not justified, we still fall short. Obedience to God out of love for Him vs. obedience out of pride and/or fear.
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True enough. Thank God we are not justified by our adherence to the Law but by our love…
 
Can someone tell me what sins the five wounds of Jesus represents? Bishop Sheen wrote that the crown of thorns were for the sin of pride. What about the wounds?
 
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