Sheep in the big city

I don't quite get that whole thing. So Jesus took the punishment for all xtians upon himself. He was 3 days on the cross, died but was later resurrected. Even if those nails in his hands really hurt this is still not more than the equivalent of living 3 days with arthritis.
If that amount of punishment is divided over all sinners and I had to chose to take my part of it (a few milliseconds of arthritis) or be annoyed all my life by religious nonsense I'd say 'bring it on, God!.
If Jesus really took the punishment for all sinners should he not still have a few billion eternities left to serve in hell instead of just doing 3 days on a cross?

Bible Humper

Hehe, the deity needed to sacrifice himself to himself as a bribe to himself in order to convince himself to forgive his creations for violating his own taboos.

The three days might not seem like much, but this deity is a real suck. Just consider how he threw such a temper tantrum over the eating of an apple by creatures who didn't know any better.

Don't forget either how he works himself into such an indignant rage when someone doesn't believe in him, despite allegedly having decided that he prefers it like that so that we can choose to believe or not, that he will toss you into hell for it.

sakrilege

Except it wasn't even 3 days. On the cross for about 3 hours Friday afternoon. Buried Friday before evening and risen sometime early Sunday morning. That's not even 48 hours.

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babelfish

I've noticed that many apologists like to stress what a HORRIBLE, PAINFUL form of torture crucifixion is. They often go into loving detail about just how excrutiating this particular form of execution was back in Roman times.

Every time I hear about another little child being kidnapped and tortured and killed by some sadistic pervert, I think about Christ's suffering and death. I think about the contrast between what he went through and what these innocent little children go through. He knew whatever was happening to him was temporary. Sure he was in pain, and frightened, but he knew that it would all be over soon. Not only would the suffering be over, but he would be alive again in three days.

What about what those little children go through? They don't know what's going on. You and I probably can't even fathom how frightened they are. They may even realize there is no way they're ever going to live through this. It's almost too horrible for me to think about - as a parent it's my worst nightmare.

So please, I just can't buy the suffering of some fully grown "all-knowing, all-powerfull" man as the worst imaginable sacrifice, worthy of substituting for all our sins.

scombrid

Does an eternal being even notice a couple hours of pain? On the time scale of infinity, a couple hours is pretty short.

john_v_h

Early Christianity was influenced by contemporaneous religions which featured dying and rising gods who symbolized eternal life (e.g. Dionysus) and "savior" gods who miraculously healed their followers, sometimes even rescuing them from death (e.g. Asclepius). Pauline Christians synthesized these models and infused them with the mystical insight that their god was sacrificed in order to save them from spiritual, rather than physical, suffering.

K

That's another thing I don't understand. Why would an omniscient and omnipontent be be frightened? Why would He beg Himself to spare Himself. Why would he speak of having a diffent will than Himself?

kingjames1

In response to babelfish(?) - your questions are very good ones. However, I think it is wrong to focus on the physicality of Christ's sufferings in 'weighing' the depth or breadth of the atonement of Christ. Though crucifixion was certainly one of the most horrible and agonizing forms of execution ever devised (see, for example, William Edwards' vivid article on crucifixion in the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 21, 1986), it is not necessary nor even biblical to claim that Jesus suffered more physical pain than any human being has ever endured.

Theologians have always argued that more awful than the physical pain of slowly suffocating to death while nailed to a wooden post (rubbing against your back, which had been split open from previous floggings) was the psychological pain endured by Christ in bearing the guilt of the sins of many (enduring even the moral filth of sexual perverts). This is incomprehensible pain that we cannot fully understand - we know the pain of our own guilt, shame, and can emphathize with those who have been sexually molested (especially if we ourselves have been victims of sexual crimes), but we can't really comprehend all of this. Jesus actually did - and as the only truly holy man to walk this fallen earth, his soul felt more profoundly the revulsion we feel toward the depraved acts of evil people. Jesus, without the 'benefit' of a hardened conscience, felt fully the terrible guilt and shameful 'filth' of sexaul molestation, abuse, murder, etc. (not to mention the less horrific crimes people commit against each other everyday). This is truly a mystery: "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all," Isaiah 53:6 and "he bore the sins of many," 53:12; "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God," 2Cor5:21, "he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree," 1Pet.2:24. The guilt of our sins (that is, liability to punishment) was imputed by God to Christ. It is this that makes the death of Christ so terrible.
Moreover, as the bearer of sin and moral filth, Christ for the first time is separated from his Father in judgment. This too is difficult for us to comprehend. Christ not only bore our guilt, he bore our punishment, that is, the wrath of a just God against sin. Systematic theologian Wayne Grudem writes, "As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins alone, God the Father, the mighty Creator, the Lord of the universe, poured out on Jesus the fury of his wrath: Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world."

See Romans 3:25-26. Jesus was presented as a "propitiation," that is, a sacrifice that bears God's wrath to the end and in so doing changes God's wrath toward those He forordained in love for salvation, to divine favor (i.e. a personal relationship with the holy God is thus established). BTW, some people think it is impossible for God to be both angry and loving toward the same object, however, you as a parent can understand why that is not in fact a contradiction. In punishing sin in Christ, God is both just (in punishing sin) and merciful towards those who have faith in Christ (i.e. those for whom the propitiation is efficacious through "faith in his blood"). Hence, when we understand that Jesus bore the wrath of God, all the more painful becomes his cry of dereliction, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46b). The Father with whom he had always enjoyed perfect fellowship and love has now abandoned him to His infinite wrath and hatred against sin. Jesus endured in one afternoon the incomphrenesible guilt and divine wrath that burned against "the sins of many." How could this be? It required an infinite God to absorb infinite wrath - hence the necessity of the incarnation of the Son. But that gets us into christology...

I shall leave it at that...sorry for rambling on for so long.

J.

braces_for_impact

Unsubstantiated claptrap.

scombrid

Again the infinity problem. Would an infinitely powerful being even notice the weight of a mortal burden such as sin?