(May 1, 2025 at 9:53 pm)Alan V Wrote:
It seems to me that a God would have some over-arching plan, instead of it being an arbitrary death for some trivial reason. Did Jesus simply annoy the Roman authorities with his teachings when he should have known better? That makes no sense within the over-arching concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly-good deity. God should have had a better plan unless such a death was required for some purpose.
There's a lot that can be said here. I think a point that often gets overlooked is that Jesus doesn't solely play the role of sacrifice, he also plays the role of a living example. By that I mean he takes on human flesh to prove to us that it is possible for us to live a sinless life. Because it's one thing for an all powerful God to mandate perfection from up in the clouds, and another to put that power aside and physically show us how it's done. To me that's a more interesting subject than the cross.
