WHY was Jesus cricified?

[RobbyPants]

And you've been answered multiple times. God tells us to forgive because we've been forgiven ourselves.

No definition of "forgive" that I can find involves a payment. It's a flat-out cancellation, going forward. God didn't do that, unless you're saying Jesus' death on the cross was unrelated.

Forgive

---

verb (used with object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
1.
to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.
2.
to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
3.
to grant pardon to (a person).
4.
to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.
5.
to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.

---

If you answered those questions, we'd see again that justice is a matter of opinion. Yours is different from god's.

And God's notion of justice is arbitrary, and the whole charade was unnecessary.

---

Christ didn't symbolically pay our sin debt, He functionally paid it.

By dying and then coming right back? How is that a payment?

If people had the ability to resurrect their goats, do you think God would have been appeased if they brought their burnt offerings back from the dead three days later, so they didn't have to lose one of their goats (i.e. sacrifice their goat).

[Jenny A]

So you do understand what atonement is, but you reject Christ's sacrificial atonement because it makes no emotional, logical, nor moral sense to you?

Bingo! We have a winner.

---- Seriously though, I view it as a myth. I'm not rejecting forgiveness from anything really because I don't believe there is any god out there to either be injured or do the forgiving. What I am saying is that even assuming the salvation myth were true, it's nutty as a bag of hammers. And the shear nuttiness of it makes the Christian god's existence that much less probable.

[Cato]

@OP

Same reason the chicken crossed the road.

[frasierc]

So, how does this mechanism work?

He symbolically pays everything while functionally paying nothing to somehow erase the real sins? That sounds a lot like me paying for a mansion with a giant novelty check that isn't actually worth any money.

Good question - I don't think this is a symbolic payment. What is the payment required? The payment required of Adam was physical death and estrangement from God.

This is exactly the payment that Jesus pays. He bears the estrangement from God and the physical death that humanity was required to pay. That's why when he dies his final words (It is finished) is actually one word in Greek and was a word used in business to mean your debts have been settled.

A human analogy might be: if you crashed my car rather than requiring you to pay the cost of fixing (which would be a just thing to do) I show you mercy and bear the cost myself. In one way I am just simply forgiving you for crashing my car - but in order to do that I'm paying the consequences your action deserved.

[orangebox21]

So you do understand what atonement is, but you reject Christ's sacrificial atonement because it makes no emotional, logical, nor moral sense to you?

Bingo! We have a winner.

---- Seriously though, I view it as a myth. I'm not rejecting forgiveness from anything really because I don't believe there is any god out there to either be injured or do the forgiving. What I am saying is that even assuming the salvation myth were true, it's nutty as a bag of hammers. And the shear nuttiness of it makes the Christian god's existence that much less probable.

Alright, thanks for the answer.

If you assume there is no God, then it logically follows there is no sacrificial atonement of Christ. Based upon your assumption your conclusion follows. If there is no God, there is no sin (legal debt) against Him, therefore there is no atonement.

In the last two sentences you said that if you assume salvation to be true, and I fully understand that you don't, it is as nutty as a bag of hammers. If you assume that Bible is true (the biblical plan of salvation) then:

According to the Bible...
does God exist?
is sin a legal debt to God?
are you a sinner and thus legally in debt to God?
what is the punishment for the debt?
what is the payment for the debt?
if someone were to pay the debt for you, does that fit the definition of atonement? of sacrifice?
who has paid the debt for you?
is salvation the result of Christ's finished work on the cross to those who believe?
how nutty are hammers?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I heard he owed God some money.

Oh, wait, that was Claude, from the south side of Philly. Sorry, never mind.

[Minimalist]

And fucking Claude don't take no shit, man.

[Cato]

No. I wasn't comparing the ability of God to the ability of humans. I was questioning why God commands us to forgive yet refuses to do so himself.

And you've been answered multiple times. God tells us to forgive because we've been forgiven ourselves.

There's no fucking justice in this idea. None!

Imagine a man who's most evil transgression is jaywalking. Imagine further that his teenage daughter is raped and murdered. Your idea of God requires the man to forgive his daughter's rapers the same as he's been forgiven for his jaywalking. There's no morality in this arrangement, but it's what you ask for the sake of morality.

Your God's idea of morality and justice doesn't even exist between our five year olds on the kindergarten playground. In fact, I'd rather see a class of five year olds taught the different uses of the word 'fuck' than any notion of your godboy.

[Chas]

So, how does this mechanism work?

He symbolically pays everything while functionally paying nothing to somehow erase the real sins? That sounds a lot like me paying for a mansion with a giant novelty check that isn't actually worth any money.

Good question - I don't think this is a symbolic payment. What is the payment required? The payment required of Adam was physical death and estrangement from God.

This is exactly the payment that Jesus pays. He bears the estrangement from God and the physical death that humanity was required to pay. That's why when he dies his final words (It is finished) is actually one word in Greek and was a word used in business to mean your debts have been settled.

A human analogy might be: if you crashed my car rather than requiring you to pay the cost of fixing (which would be a just thing to do) I show you mercy and bear the cost myself. In one way I am just simply forgiving you for crashing my car - but in order to do that I'm paying the consequences your action deserved.

Well, except for the fact that there was no Adam. No garden. No original sin.

[Jenny A]

Alright, thanks for the answer.

If you assume there is no God, then it logically follows there is no sacrificial atonement of Christ. Based upon your assumption your conclusion follows. If there is no God, there is no sin (legal debt) against Him, therefore there is no atonement.

In the last two sentences you said that if you assume salvation to be true, and I fully understand that you don't, it is as nutty as a bag of hammers. If you assume that Bible is true (the biblical plan of salvation) then:

According to the Bible...
does God exist?
is sin a legal debt to God?
are you a sinner and thus legally in debt to God?
what is the punishment for the debt?
what is the payment for the debt?
if someone were to pay the debt for you, does that fit the definition of atonement? of sacrifice?
who has paid the debt for you?
is salvation the result of Christ's finished work on the cross to those who believe?
how nutty are hammers?

Where to begin? First of all I'm not sure why all crimes and misdemeanors would be a debt to god. There is an analogy in that in most countries all crimes are considered to be crimes against the state in that the state has an interest in maintaining the peace. But god appears to have taken an entirely hands off approach to peace keeping.

Assuming however that god is akin to the state for these purposes, the punishment of eternal suffering doesn't fit any crime any human could possibly commit. Eternal is a long, long time.

But that's mere quibble compared the idea that god would have to pay a debt owed to himself in order to excuse his debtors. That's simply nuts.-----You owe me twenty, but I'd like to forgive you so the only thing to do is burn one of my twenties, otherwise I can't let you off the hook. WTF?