(July 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm)possibletarian Wrote:(July 6, 2018 at 11:15 am)SteveII Wrote: No, you are not understanding. Holiness and Justice are part of the nature of God and cannot be set aside--even by him. Sin has consequences affecting these attributes. The consequences must be dealt with--satisfying a requirement, which is not the same as an act of God's will (as forgiveness is).
Oh I do understand, but what I don't understand is why you think that god would demand death (consequences) because that's the rules and his holiness/righteousness judgement requires it, then think it's fine he breaks his own rules by sacrificing an innocent person ? isn't that breaking his own rules of righteous judgement too ?
No. The flaw in your sentence is that God did not sacrifice an innocent person--GOD took the penalty on himself. A perfect sacrifice, freely given, was sufficient for everyone who wants to claim it.
Quote: I mean it's not even like jesus's death was ever going to be permanent or anything so he didn't even really pay the price, only played at paying the price.
That's an extremely naive concept of what happened. From earlier in the thread:
Jesus most certainly died--in every sense of the word. A couple of points of clarification:
1. It is impossible for man to atone for his own sin.
2. So God decided to do so.
3. But in order to atone for man's sin, God had to become a man in order to stand in for us. So, the sacrifice was not simply "symbolic" as you put it.
4. That means that Jesus was truly human. He was still God, so he was not just merely human. He had a unique dual nature.
5. His human nature endured life, suffering and death. There is another thing that comes up--God (the Father) turned away from him at the time of his death because he represented the sins of the world. This was apparently a heavy thing to go through.
Quote:Even we understand that having the innocent suffer, even as a free choice does not satisfy anything, and if so again we are back to the question..
Why didn't he simply let us off, given that he clearly pays fast and free with his own (supposedly) unbreakable rules anyway. ?
The truth is if god is not big enough to deal in an adult manner with people doing stuff wrong, then what kind of feeble god is he. ?
Also from earlier in this thread:
One last point on this. You mention that you "forgive, and it's done". That is not the same thing as what is happening with the Christ's atonement. Christ's atonement does not forgive, it wipes the slate clean--as if it never happened. This is an important distinction in systematic theology that few ever take note of.
If you want to know more about Jesus' dual nature, read this response to Jorm.