Christians...a question about Jesus' sacrifice...?

Question

As long as I've lived (26 years; long time, right?), I've never understood what was so special about Jesus' sacrifice. I understand the purpose: to offer hopelessly and inherently sinful humans a means by which they can be washed of sin and enter Heaven.

But what exactly did Jesus sacrifice? The flesh, according to Jehovah (YHVH), is weak...inherently sinful. And life is so finite as to be inconsequential, other than it being the determining factor for a person's ultimate destination (Heaven or Hell/death). Giving up his life seems to be no big deal.

I understand that Jesus, according to NT scripture, was perfect and sinless. Achieving perfection in the flesh according to Biblical law is obviously quite a feat, but still doesn't make his sacrifice any more compelling than a person (even an evil one) in infinite pain for all of eternity. It doesn't even come close to equalling the first centillionth percent of even on person's eternal suffering.

So here are the questions:

Do any eternal-torment-touting Christians have a plausible argument for how Jesus' sacrifice is still relevant in the light of the reality of eternal suffering?

What exactly did Jesus sacrifice that made him worthy of thanks? Is there any well-rounded religious perspective that still reveals his sacrifice to be extraordinary when weighed against the fate of even one who is condemned?

Thanks for your sincere answers.

~atheist~

Answer 1

i enjoy your questions-no it isnt relevant--just my thoughts---smile and enjoy the day--do you accept fans

Answer 2

Your right that wouldn't make any sense if it were true.
But there is no eternal suffering. God told Adam for dust you are and to dust you will return. So why would others received a much heavier judgement?
Even a pardon after say 80 years of misery.
Adam lost a perfect human life and that is what Jesus gave up. When you think well we all die and cancer is a painful death. But we were born into sin and we are dieing from Adam's sin.
He couldn't give us what he didn't have, eternal life.
Now, Jesus could have lived forever on earth, could have ruled the earth and received fame, power and all the stuff that goes with it. You say, "why would a spirit person want that?"
Satan was a powerful spirit person and carried a high position in heaven. Yet, he gave it all up to come to earth to live as a human. He was not alone in this, other spirit persons gave up possitions in heaven to come to the earth.
In heaven they do not have flesh and blood bodies, no need to reproduce, or feel anything, like pleasure, pain or even fear. No fleshly animals, no women, no children, Those who go to heaven Revelation 5:10 says they are kings and priests and will rule over the earth. Few people would actually like to go to heaven and leave all the things on the earth behind.
Before everything was spirit, direct creations, totally different from earth. Job 38:7 They all cried out joyfully when the earth was made. The bible also says we are a theaterial spectical to the angels. So they watch us like you watch TV.
Maybe instead of us being made wrong, maybe we were made to good and given to much and made us the envy of the Universe. Everyone wanted to be a human.
I have to wonder why anyone wants to go to heaven.
Jesus said the meek will inherit the earth and that is where I want to be.

Answer 3

Well, being LDS, I don't believe in the eternal torment that many other christian sects do. I don't think that God is a vindictive, sadistic parent that has set up a plan that will condemn the vast majority of His children to an eternity of suffering.

But to address your question about Jesus's sacrifice, you are only addressing part of it. Yes, Jesus gave his life for us, dying and being resurrected so that we also might be resurrected and overcome physical death. However, He also suffered the sins, pains, infirmities, sorrows, guilt, etc of every person who ever lived or who ever will live. His suffering was infinite, and caused Him, the greatest of all, to tremble in pain, bleed from every pore, and wish that he could avoid drinking from that bitter cup. Now put this infinite suffering, torture, and a painful death on the cross into perspective: He didn't deserve any of it. He lived a sinless, perfect life. He did it for us because He loves us and because that is what His Father asked Him to do for us. This is a sacrifice worthy of thanks.

Answer 4

Try looking at it this way...You are God. You have never known physical pain in any form. The only emotional pain you have ever felt is rejection. You leave your perfect realm, where there is no pain or suffering, to come to this earth. Rather than keeping your supernatural body, you take on a plain earthly one. For the first time, you feel discomfort, you feel the effects of evil, you feel hunger, thirst, exhaustion. You feel pain, some of the worst pain that could be inflicted, and you feel the pain of complete and total hatred from those that you not only love, but love so much that you would be willing to die for them. Then, you do die, but your pain does not end there. After your death, you descend into the depths of hell to pay for sins that you did not commit. You then rise from the dead, triumphantly defeating death and hell only to be rejected by millions/billions more people in the future. You do all of this with the knowledge that YOU DON"T HAVE TO. At any time you could say, "never mind, they aren't worth it". I would say that that qualifies as an incredible sacrifice and it is one that I am extremely greatful for. The suffering that people will do in hell will be by their own choice. They don't HAVE to suffer, they CHOOSE it, just like Christ CHOSE His suffering when He never had too do it.

Answer 5

I'm not exactly an "eternal torment" kind of Christian, but here's how I see it:

Jesus had to lower Himself to come here as a human and live (think if you made yourself into a dog to show your dog how to behave responsibly lol). That was a big sacrifice to begin with.

Then He had to do the one thing that all of us must go through but which God (and Jesus) had never done .... die. And a horrible death it was eh? He did this to show us once and for all that death is NOT the end, there is something beyond.

His life shows us how to reach God. His fulfillment of the law was to show us that love is more important than the law, and it is love which God will judge, not obedience to the law.

His sacrifice was made so that no one else would have to suffer the eternal torment they say will happen if we die without God. But it still comes down to choice. You can choose to live with love, or die.

Answer 6

You're right and some pretty good answers over here too. It's kind of hard to argue this point since Jesus really got back whatever he sacrificed. He was never in real danger of losing anything. This is nowhere near the uncertainty that we humans face.

Answer 7

Suppose you are walking along with your child, and you come upon a big ant bed and your child stomps on it and destroys it. Suppose you like the ants and are very sorry for what happened and wish you could restore the ant bed to its original state.
Since you cannot communicate with the ants because you are, after all, a human, and they are ants, suppose you decide, if you could, that you would become an ant in order to show them the way to restore their home. But you knew that most of the ants would not accept a foreign ant into their midst and would torture and torment and kill you.
But you love the ants and want to help them. So you do it, knowing full well your fate.
But the few ants that recognize what you are trying to do, they will rebuild and restore their happy home by listening and following your instructions.
That's the best I can do to explain. Of course there is more to it and it is so complicated that the best theologians struggle with the concept.


Sending you a smile to help pick up your day!

Answer 8

If God is real. If sin is real. Could your death be sufficient to pay the total sin debt of the world? If you are really attempting to comprehend all this-then you must do it on God's terms-not yours. Do you fully understand the horror of sin? It corrupts completely-man, animal, plant life, weather, the universe.
Sin requires death. You have sinned. Your life is required of you for your sin. But your life is actually worthless, because of your sin. All you can ever hope for is death-and it will come, no doubt about that. You can not pay for my sin, nor I yours-for I have sinned also. But, Jesus is sinless. His life has worth. Sin took His life, even though He was sinless. When Jesus died He made an appeal before God because He was innocent, and His blood was clean. God released Him from death because the charge of sin could not be verified. God allowed Jesus to apply His clean innocent blood to the sin accounts of those who would believe in and follow Him. This is the great escape foe Christians (real ones). Those who died before Jesus, and those who never heard the gospel message, are dealt with differently. God is fair-but He is just. People like you and I get to accept or reject the gospel message because of the age we live in. You can accept it and receive a "get out of hell free" card. Or you can reject it and suffer for eternity. You may argue all day long whether or not this is fair-but its not up to you to decide.

Answer 9

Jesus was not the first, nor will he be the last person to give his life for another. Agree or disagree with the Iraq war, we have many soldiers make this choice every week, in fact. Is it a big deal? Every time. I think it disrespects all those kinds of sacrifices - firemen in the World Trade Center, for example - to say it's no big deal. Rather, let's re-parse it and say it isn;t a bigger deal than any of these other sacrifices.

You're right about that.

But the cosmically big deal here is not so much what Jesus said or did but what he accomplished, what it means in a metaphysical sense. No other death was symbolic and rent the veil between Heaven and Earth, natural and supernatural.

Additionally, it is imbibed with special meaning because we have given it special meaning - to the extent we invest in it all those significances we do, for example taht Jesus' death is the only religious story that subverts scapegoating violence, it takes on those significances.

Answer 10

Intriguing question.

In my humble opinion, the sacrifice Jesus made was not just His perfect flesh and blood. He was tasked with absorbing the infinite pain and agony of an eternity in hell that every living human being would have experienced if He had not done so.

The scope of His sacrifice is as incomprehensible as the eternal punishment that awaits those who do not at least acknowledge what was done for them.

Answer 11

Oh, contraire. No one but Christ has lived a perfect life in the flesh. It is this perfectly keeping of the law that gives Christ and Christ alone the only right to live by the law and be justified by His works. His perfect and willing sacrifice then is the penultimate event in history, since now those who do not have perfection can have perfection applied to them by faith through grace. Christ mediates for us at the Father's right hand since He alone has earned the right. It is the mystery of why and how God would save sinful man that is the glory of the good news.

Ath