Jesus Christ having to die

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pwlj_christ87

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ok i have posted this sort of question numerous times, i hope im not getting offensive by doing so its more to have a conversation so I hope no moderators are mad,

so anyways, I know that God created humanity and the earth, and heaven, where he resides. I know that personal choice gave us the ability to choose to do wrong thus committing evil against God, and I also know that God does not take that lightly on evil humanity.

I understand, that Jesus Christ was God in human form, his Son, come down to earth to spread the message of the kingdom, that it was at hand, and that he was to die.

But, my question is, why does Jesus’ death, constitute our renewal? Why, couldnt God perhaps say, let Jesus turn this mountain into a fountain or do some other physical act other than his crucifixtion,

why,

is seems unfair, it seems cruel, all those sorts of things, and also other than jesus being flesh in the form of the eucharist, it does not make that much sense other than him dying for being a supposed blasphemer or for doing good works

did christ have to die, why is it his blood that saves us, i just dont understand, I dont understand the sacrifical slaughter, it seems legitimate, and i dont deny it is, but i dont understand it completely

i know that in the old testament they slaughtered lambs but jesus to die that has to be more significant as an offering for sin, so if he did nt die than our sins wuld not be forgiven? but why is sort of my thing,
 
+JMJ+

First off, Catholic teaching has always maintained that Jesus did not have to die on the cross to redeem us. Indeed, God is God, He is perfect: Jesus having a pin prick is just as efficacious in redeeming us as Him suffering on the Cross. Heck, God is Omnipotent: He could have just willed it, thought about it, and our sins could have been wiped away.

Read Fr. Serpa’s answer to this question.

Also, read St. Pope John Paul II’s answer to the same question from KathyCatholic80’s link here.

The short answer from the two Catholic sources is that Jesus died so He can show His unfathomable love for us, among other things by (1) being one with us in our suffering, and (2) letting us participate in His salvation of men.

But for many, which to be honest included me, this explanation is lacking. An act of love is useless if the act repulses the loved one; indeed, it is less than useless, because it shows that either the lover does not know the beloved, or does not care of the beloved’s wants. As an example, imagine a man mutilating his own body just to prove his love for a woman. Unless the woman is as insane as the man such an act would only disgust the woman and would most certainly not be a loving act but a monstrous one! And to be honest, Jesus’ act of dying for us on the Cross really does seem like that: not a loving act, but a monstrous one.

I had thought about this before, and the only answer I could think of was that if Jesus’ death on the Cross is a loving act for us, then that means God knew that we, deep in our hearts, want the consequence of Jesus’ death.

And what is this consequence? Glory.

We were made to be the Glory of God (1 Corinthians 11:7), and if that is so, that is one of our deepest desires. And glory is not achieved in comfort, but in struggle.

“The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” ---- Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Indeed, man knew this from the beginning. We have always admired and revered heroes since ancient times up to now. We love sports and challenges. Glory even rears its ugly head with wars and crime. Indeed, we have parables of men rejecting ideal worlds because they have no struggle in them; the movies The Matrix and Star Trek Generations come into mind.

And all of this would not be possible if God just willed sin away. We would have not been able to struggle and be glorious, and thus we would have not been able to fulfill our purpose.

Anything that does not seek glory, then, does not come from you, but from sin. It is abnormal to shun all seeking of glory, to not struggle, to be afraid, to hide from the light.

On the other hand, if we understand this deep desire of us, we would then seek the Eucharist, because with It we become one with God and His Glory, and we would not have it any other way.

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven,
exult, let Angel ministers of God exult,
let the trumpet of salvation
sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,
arrayed with the lightning of his glory,
let this holy building shake with joy,
filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.

…

O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

----- The Exsultet
 
The death of Jesus is one of the most obscurest things there is. It obscures God even more. It is one of the stupidest idea believed all over the world. Jesus having to die is proof that no religion is benevolent, kind and all moral… It is the proof of a cruel, vindictive , blood thirsty and perverted God. And the hypostatic conflict among Jesus is even more sickening. Sometimes he knows something, sometimes he does not. Sometimes he prays to himself(he is God) and so and so on… And if Jesus is God does that mean he impregnated his own mother? And is the Trinity made of tree self-conscious Persons? If it is the same God why did he tripled himself ? It also appears sick , like one talking to himself. Or is that tritheism? To me the death of Jesus is proof that Christianity is just another false religion like all false religions.
 
I like to re-read these passages when I can’t wrap my head around some mysterious aspect of our faith.

Job 28:20-28

20 As for wisdom, where does she come from?
Where is the place of understanding?
21 She is hidden from the eyes of every living thing;
even from the birds of the air she is concealed.
22 Abaddon and Death say,
“Only by rumor have we heard of her.”
23 But God understands the way to her;
it is he who knows her place.
24 For he beholds the ends of the earth
and sees all that is under the heavens.
25 When he weighed out the wind,
and measured out the waters;
26 When he made a rule for the rain
and a path for the thunderbolts,
27 Then he saw wisdom and appraised her,
established her, and searched her out.
28 And to mortals he said:
See: the fear of the Lord is wisdom;
and avoiding evil is understanding.

Matthew 16:23

"You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
 
The following is an extract from Crossing the Threshold of Hope by His Holiness, St. Pope John Paul II:

God is always on the side of the suffering. His omnipotence is manifested precisely in the fact that He freely accepted suffering. He could have chosen not to do so. He could have chosen to demonstrate His omnipotence even at the moment of the Crucifixion. In fact, it was proposed to Him: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mk 15:32).

But He did not accept that challenge. The fact that He stayed on the Cross until the end, the fact that on the Cross He could say, as do all who suffer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34), has remained in human history the strongest argument. If the agony on the Cross had not happened, the truth that God is Love would have been unfounded. Yes! God is Love and precisely for this He gave His Son, to reveal Himself completely as Love. Christ is the One who “loved to the end” (Jn 13:1). “To the end” means to the last breath. “To the end” means accepting all the consequences of man’s sin, taking it upon Himself.

This happened exactly as prophet Isaiah affirmed: “It was our infirmities that he bore, /We had all gone astray like sheep, / each following his own way; / But the Lord laid upon him / the guilt of us all” (Is 53:4-6).
 
Jesus died to put the law of sin and death, to death.

The law, when introduced, produced sin by its interaction with human nature.

Rom 7
What then can we say? That the law is sin? Of course not! Yet I did not know sin except through the law, and I did not know what it is to covet except that the law said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, finding an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness.

Apart from the law sin is dead. I once lived outside the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive; then I died, and the commandment that was for life turned out to be death for me. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it put me to death. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

He “became sin” by allowing himself to be accused and killed under the law, when He was completely innocent.

That proved that the law of sin and death, when in the hands of men, is a FAIL. If a perfect man is put to death under the law, that means the law cannot be complete. This proved the law itself was incapable of discerning a perfect man from a sinner.

Part of the reason is that the law has been interpreted and used by one man to reinforce against another, in a way that did not constitute the love and mercy that it would have, if men had known how to put 2 and 2 together and recognize that all the laws together constituted love for God, neighbor, and enemy. Instead, it was about punishment and death.

Rom 8:1-13
Hence, now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death. For what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For those who live according to the flesh are concerned with the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit with the things of the spirit.

The concern of the flesh is death, but the concern of the spirit is life and peace. For the concern of the flesh is hostility toward God; it does not submit to the law of God, nor can it; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Consequently, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

His death may not have been necessary to reconcile us with God, but it does show us what happens when laws of morality are enforced by men who think it’s about punishment rather than mercy.

Gal 3:7-14
Realize then that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham. Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, “Through you shall all the nations be blessed.” Consequently, those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham who had faith.

For all who depend on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not persevere in doing all the things written in the book of the law.”

And that no one is justified before God by the law is clear, for “the one who is righteous by faith will live.” But the law does not depend on faith; rather, “the one who does these things will live by them.” Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,” that the blessing of Abraham might be extended to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

So Jesus became a curse by allowing Himself to be hung on a tree, which kind of made things rough for the law. It’s amazing how many still think that they need to justify themselves by the law and somehow hope Jesus isn’t too mad at us or something. He proved that even behaving well under the law, does nothing.
 
So often the question comes up “why wasn’t this world created better if God is all knowing?”

The simple answer to that is that the world, no matter how it is created, will always be an imperfect place precisely because it was created and is not God. The world by nature is imperfect because it is not God. The only perfect place is heaven because that is God…face to face vision of the all perfect divinity…oneness in God.

But the one perfect thing that he did put in this world is his Son, Jesus. And everything about his Son is perfect. And because God loved the world, as imperfect as it was, he sent his perfect Son to put in it perfection itself, to show us what perfect love means, and how much we meant to him.

And so the perfect way of expressing love is to give everything to its beloved. And so in a sense God is a victim of himself who is perfect love itself, and gave us himself thu a perfect act of love for us … his all … suffering and death. The perfect Love, was true to himself by doing what He is … all Love.

Some have said that there was the possibility of saving us some other way. But I don’t believe there was any other way since action follows nature… God being a simple being of perfection and Love rolled into one…which spells “perfect love”…“perfect giving”.

And so we experience his greatest self-giving in view of what he “is”. Whereby He tells us that noone should ever hesitate for one moment to come to him … ever.
 
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