Christ's Sacrifice

[Zadeth]

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

I am having a hard time understanding this, please help me make sense of it.

 

[TimothyH]

Jesus died.

Jesus was a human person who was crucified, died and was buried. That’s what we say we believe when we recite the creed at Mass. The fact that he rose from the dead or knew what the outcome would be does not change the fact that he died.

Jesus was also God. That made him the perfect mediator and perfect sacrifice to establish the new covenant between God and man. He alone was both God and man.

-Tim-

 

[Wesrock]

Jesus was also fully man, and he had to master his human will to submit to the will of God. He knew what was to come, but was still anxious about his Passion and asked for another way. There was still a total offering of self on his part.

 

[hiramross]

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

I am having a hard time understanding this, please help me make sense of it.

Yes; a sacrifice is giving up something. God in humble love for us doesn’t have to experience human complexities like our social constructs, our physical pains, and our bodily wants/desires, hunger, tears, fear, joy, sadness, and joy. God gives up for up us. He gives himself and takes on all of these things including the experience of death as a sacrifice for us.

Jesus did it freely because it was the way to unite all of us with the Father so that we can all share in the eternal life with Him in His kingdom.

 

[hiramross]

I noticed I wrote joy twice… sorry.

 

[Della]

Jesus died on the cross to satisfy God’s justice by offering his body and blood for our sins. Jesus death was as real as any other human being’s. He took on human flesh when he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary–what we recite every Sunday in the Nicene Creed.

Having said that, he could have shed a single tear or given one drop of blood and it would have been sufficient, but he gave us all of himself, not merely part, because God gives us all of himself, just as we give him all of ourselves. It’s about love, not merely about paying the price of our sins. He and we are bound in his love, not by a mere contract. It is the covenant in his body and blood, which is one of agape love.

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Jesus, the human, died on the cross, buried, rose on the third day. He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. That is the sacrifice He made for us.

Jesus’ divinity lives on forever.

 

[porthos11]

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

I am having a hard time understanding this, please help me make sense of it.

What I’m not understanding is the notion that Jesus did not die. He did die.

 

[Della]

What I’m not understanding is the notion that Jesus did not die. He did die.

Roman soldiers were quite good at dealing out death–on the battle field as well as executions. It was up to them how much they made the condemned suffer, hence breaking the two thieves legs to hasten their deaths to please Jewish customs. But Jesus’ legs were not broken. When the soldier saw that he had already died, he made sure by piercing Jesus’ body with a lance. The blood and water flowed out, not spurted out. If Jesus has still been alive, the blood and water would have spurted. Oh yes, Roman soldiers knew their business.

 

[jeffrey_erwin]

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

I am having a hard time understanding this, please help me make sense of it.

**Crucifixion is death by prolonged torture. The victim’s weight is supported by the two nails through his wrists and the one though his feet. There is no nice little seat or angled foot-rest as sometimes depicted on a crucifix.
The victim cannot expand his lungs to breath while his weight is being held by his arms. He must transfer his weight onto the nail in his feet and push himself up with his legs.
When he has a breath and can’t stand the severe pain in his feet, his weight transfers back to his arms. Then the tortuous process repeats itself.
That’s why breaking the victim’s legs brings a quick death: the victim can no longer push himself up so as to expand his lungs for air.

Jesus was also subjected to the Roman scourging: the forty or more lashes inflicted by the Roman flagellum with the little weights at its whip ends.
Then He was forced to carry the wood beam of His cross lashed to His arms. He could not break His falls, and that is why His burial Shroud has traces of dirt at its nose image.

Our Lord’s great accomplishment in undergoing all this brutality was to provide humanity with an object lesson in how to follow our Creator’s Law: **

Do not resist the wicked. Trust in YWWH, and return good for evil.

**The idea that Jesus’ death by torture constitutes some kind of weird Old Testament sacrifice to placate an angry God is not correct.
Jewish animal sacrifice never allowed for the torture of the animal. It had to be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Jesus repeatedly demonstrated that He had the authority to forgive sins. Therefore the idea that He would have to undergo death by torture to enable anyone’s sins to be forgiven does not make sense.
He already had the ability to do that.

We should take our Sacred Teacher’s great lesson to heart. Is there some way in which we are not “treating others as we would like them to treat us?”
Are we as a democratic nation allowing our country to aim ICBMs at our Christian brothers and sisters on the other side of the planet?
Are we approving of that travesty?
**
The nations have sunk into a pit of their own making,
they are caught by the feet in the snare they set themselves.
YHWH…has trapped the wicked in the work of their own hands.
Psalm 9:16-16

 

[fhansen]

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

I am having a hard time understanding this, please help me make sense of it.

For myself Christ’s sacrifice involved His willingness to suffer the excruciating humiliation and pains of His passion and death-having foreknowledge of the horror of it all-in order to demonstrate what He’d do-what *God *would endure- to convince us of His trustworthiness, mercy, goodness, and love. All of it was suffered to the same extent that any of us would experience it-and He could’ve walked away instead. He experienced death as we do-and this provides the opportunity for the resurrection as well-capping off the proof of His love and goodwill for man.

 

[spiderweb]

Originally Posted by Zadeth

If we are to go with the Christian understanding of God, God knows and is in command of all things. Therefore, He knew the outcome of Jesus’ death on the cross. He knew Jesus (his son) would not die. To have a sacrifice you must give up something.

If Jesus didn’t die where is the sacrifice? And since Jesus is God, He knew the same.

God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is a Divine Person with a Divine Nature. When he became the man Jesus, he took upon himself a Human Nature united together with his Divine Nature (hypostatic union). Thus you have a Divine Person with both a human and divine nature. Not two people, one which is human and one which is divine, one person with two natures.

God the Son, Jesus, is fully human and fully divine according to his nature.
God the Son, Jesus, is, was, and always will be a divine person and only a divine person (i.e. Not a human person).

Person answers the question “Who is that?” Nature answers the question “What is that?” Nature defines what the person can or cannot do, but it is always the person that does them. Jesus forgave sins, walked on water, commanded the weather, raised the dead, etc. according to his divine nature as God. Jesus also walked, talked, ate, slept, cried, felt pain, and even died, according to his human nature as man. But in all instances whether these things were done by his divine nature or by his human nature, the same person did all these things; God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus.

When we die, we do not cease to exist. Our body returns to the ground and our spirit returns to God for judgment. Death is unnatural. In a sense we are incomplete without our bodies, naked even. Which is why we look forward to the bodily resurrection of the dead, not because we are being brought back to life, but because without our bodies we are not how God created us to be; body and soul united together which is what makes us fully human according to our nature.

Death is not annihilation or ceasing to exist, or even ceasing to be aware. Death is the separation of body and soul from a living being. Jesus truly died on the cross. His body and spirit were separated. His body went into a tomb and his spirit went to preach to those in prison (1 Peter 3:18-19). God literally died on the cross. Not God the Trinity, but God the Son, second person of the Trinity. According to Gods’ divine nature, he cannot die. Jesus took upon himself human nature, so that he could die as a sacrifice for us.

Jesus was truly dead (soul separated from body) until the moment of the resurrection of the body, when his body and soul were reunited and glorified for eternity. Jesus sacrificed his entire life which ended on the cross, where he truly died. In order to have the outcome of the resurrection, he had to truly sacrifice his life first. Knowing the outcome of his resurrection does not negate the sacrifice required in order to achieve the outcome. Most importantly, in doing so he made it possible for us also.