How did Jesus die for our sins?

[racheljohnson]

This is a question that I have had for a great while. I grew up Catholic so I am fully aware that Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin, but my question is: how? If God is the one that is pardoning us, and Jesus is God, why could He not simply have just forgiven us? If the matter is concerning the fact that we needed someone to guide us, why not then could have Jesus come down to Earth and then ascended when He was done. Also, if Jesus “opened the gate of Heaven for us” why could God have not simply just allowed us to come into Heaven if we were clean of spirit? I mean this question with the utmost of respect, I just very curious.

 

[1newcatholic]

This is a question that I have had for a great while. I grew up Catholic so I am fully aware that Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin, but my question is: how? If God is the one that is pardoning us, and Jesus is God, why could He not simply have just forgiven us? If the matter is concerning the fact that we needed someone to guide us, why not then could have Jesus come down to Earth and then ascended when He was done. Also, if Jesus “opened the gate of Heaven for us” why could God have not simply just allowed us to come into Heaven if we were clean of spirit? I mean this question with the utmost of respect, I just very curious.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection unfolded according to a narrative pattern already recorded in the scriptures. If Jesus had come down from heaven as simply a good teacher with good religious insights, his teachings would’ve had no verifiable connection to the Jewish scriptures, no test of revelatory authenticity. Because Jesus was a perfect sacrifice, he embodied the scriptures to an unprecedented and unrepeatable degree, which validates his message and his ministry in a way that abstract theology could not.

And there is no evidence that God DOESN’T allow people into heaven who are “clean of spirit.” Catholicism specifically and Christianity in general are systems of faith that help people achieve this cleanliness, but ultimately God alone is the judge of a soul’s value. Only the sick need a physician.

 

[John_Martin]

It was necessary because:

1. Jesus said it was necessary to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you would not see life, repeating the requirement multiple times in John 6 so there would be no confusion with simile or metaphor. You cannot eat the flesh of a person walking around, nor drink the blood of a person while it is pumping through his veins, but if the person were sacrificed, and body and blood were side by side on the altar of offering, then you can indeed eat the flesh and drink the blood of the sacrificed victim as is required for Life.
2. Jesus said “You must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. Without this there is no entry into heaven or eternal life and resurrection. The beginning of this is to have your sins forgiven and be justified (be made “good”, a “just and righteous person”). As we are now, we have stolen our “perfection”, therefore we have a perfection that is not as our “Heavenly Father is Perfect”. Our “perfection” that is stolen is our self-devised solutions for satisfaction of what we think makes life worthwhile. We seek and work to acquire knowledge, beauty, wealth, long life, pleasures, honor in the sight of men, just like Eve sought and worked to gain good looking fruit that would make her and Adam wise and to be self-sustaining in having life. This was a trespassing into God’s identity as the Giver of Life, and a stealing of what he gives, namely fulfillment of life, perfection of our desires to be alive and complete. Jesus offered himself back to God, a sinless offering, meaning he gave back a life that was not stolen from God but gave a life that was fully a gift of his Father. Then he let us participate in his death, by eating and drinking of his sacrificed body and blood. And also gives to us participation in his resurrected being alive, which includes his Spirit. The Mass is not just the sacrifice, but includes us eating and drinking the body and blood that are side by side on the altar, to accept his death and our own death rather than to steal our own life from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and only eat of the fruit of the other tree in the Garden, the Tree of Life, the Cross.
3. There are over a billion Catholics in the world. We all would have to personally be with Jesus just as his disciples were, to have life without him having to die, because he is “the resurrection and the life”. We would all have to be next to him to touch the hem of his robe to be healed. It cannot happen unless he is all over the world personally. This is necessary because we are human, and our souls come to know all things through our bodies’ senses, including coming to know God and our forgiveness and receiving his Gift. This happens by his now present Body, the Church, the Kingdom of God, animated by the Soul of the Church, the Holy Spirit, in all its members. One thing we come to know is precisely due to Jesus’ death and resurrection. That one thing we come to know is the resurrection of the dead itself, and includes the ability to believe we too will live even if we die in giving up our stolen lives. Eternal Life is not just a continuation of being alive as we know life now; it is the return of stolen life (repentance, death of stolen life), and the granting of a “new birth from above”. Peter knew the resurrection was real because he saw the risen Lord. The next Pope knew it was real because he believed Peter, and so on, down to Francis today with all the Bishops who tell it to us through the Priests who are faithful to them in what they tell us. And so, we know he was raised, and that we, also, will rise from death.
   How is that?

 

[Praedicare]

I think it’s more accurate to say that on the Cross, Death tried to kill Life, but Life killed Death. That is what sin makes us to be: a dead corpse, separate from God… but in Christ and His resurrection, we are made alive.

Please watch this:

youtube.com/watch?v=WosgwLekgn8

The view of Salvation (i.e. forgiveness of sins) presented in this video is labelled “Orthodox”, but it can be believed by Catholics too. The audio-visual setup is perfect, in my opinion.

I understand that Jesus “forgave our sins” - i.e. erased and killed them - by uniting Himself completely and totally with us: taking on a human nature, living a human life, and dying a very human death. His Divine Nature was hypostatically united with His created human nature, without any mixture or confusion. Because of this union, there is a bridge between man and God; mortality and immortality; time and eternity. That bridge is Christ.

Christ is Life Itself, and when Life Himself enters into Death - as He died on Good Friday - then Death must die. When we enter the waters of Baptism, we are on the Cross, in the Tomb, and outside the Tomb all in a few seconds. All is brought into the embrace of God the Father. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enter and dwell in us as in a home.

The Cross, the Resurrection, Baptism, the Eucharist… none of these are separable. All is one big process in life, taking light and life from Life Himself: Christ.

 

[Tom_Baum]

This is a question that I have had for a great while. I grew up Catholic so I am fully aware that Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin, but my question is: how? If God is the one that is pardoning us, and Jesus is God, why could He not simply have just forgiven us? If the matter is concerning the fact that we needed someone to guide us, why not then could have Jesus come down to Earth and then ascended when He was done. Also, if Jesus “opened the gate of Heaven for us” why could God have not simply just allowed us to come into Heaven if we were clean of spirit? I mean this question with the utmost of respect, I just very curious.

I suppose one way to look at it is that God had to go to everyone’s hell, hell being custom-built by its potential inhabitant and with God-Incarnate taking on ALL of the sins (wrongdoing or whatever one wishes to call it) of ALL and in the process taking on the “price of all of this wrongdoing” (hell and spiritual death), so that God could be, ultimately, ALL in ALL.

In other words, God found a way to go to hell for ALL so that, ultimately, ALL could be with God in God’s Kingdom, this is what God’s Plan, which God has had since before creation, is about and what is unfolding even as we speak.

Seeing as God did NOT create hell but let us “custom build our own hell”, since everyone’s hell is different from everyone else’s hell, God actually did more than quite a few think God capable of doing.

As far as “why” did God come up with a plan that essentially put God in hell for everyone, I suppose that we will all have to wait until this is somehow “revealed” to us, until then, we can be thankful that God cares about ALL even if many don’t seem to believe this.