If I am God and omnipotent why would I send my son to die? Couldn't I just say the world's sins are forgiven?

Question

Please do not be offended at the phraseology, I did not mean to imply I was God, it was just a way to pose the question. I have children myself and I DO understand the immense sacrifice to allow your Son to be born knowing He was to be ridiculed and finally crucified by the exact people he was sent to save. My question was WHY. A lot of the answers revolve around the need for sacrifice as the only way for the forgiveness of sins. As a result of Jesus' sacrifice our sins ARE forgiven, but we continue to sin (despite our efforts to the contrary) after his death and ressurection and we continue to be forgiven (after asking). I only ask this question because it seems very difficult at this time of the year to celebrate the birth of our Savior, knowing that in several months we will be remembering his death and ressurection. Is man so shallow as to require the death and resurrection of God to believe that our sins are forgiven or is it the sacrifice of God that we should focus on?

Answer 1

As usual, the bull gets thick as a brick around here, even with such interesting questions like this one!

Sure God COULD just forgive sin, but then that creates another set of problems. First off, in doing so, God would essentially be saying, “Well, I don’t like sin, so I’ll tell you that, but every time you do it, I’ll forgive you. I won’t punish you, though, because I love you.” Given the human propensity for sinning, imagine what kind of behavior that would allow. We could just sin our little hearts out, and never really have to worry about paying any consequences for it. After all, God isn’t really going to punish us for it, now is He? I don’t know about you, but I kind of look forward to a day when I’ll live in a place where there will be no more sin whatsoever. And if heaven is just as full of sin as earth happens to be, then I want no part of it.

The truth is, God is perfect and heaven is perfect. This means there is no sin in heaven, not even any remembrance of it. Sin, among the many other things that can be said about it, is an awful violation of that perfect existence.

Sin, among other things, is a direct contradiction of the very nature of God Himself. Let me put it this way. I’m a man, and I’m quite secure in my identity as a man. But if you come along and try to make me wear a dress, we’re gonna have problems. I’m going to do anything and everything necessary to prevent you from your attempts to make me wear a dress because, as a man, I just don’t wear them. And the harder you persist, the harder I will resist. Ultimately, I will do whatever is necessary not only to prevent you from making me wear that stupid dress, but also will take whatever steps necessary to remove even the idea of me wearing a dress from the hearts and minds of everyone around me, even if that means you get destroyed (killed) in the process.

Same thing with God. He’s absolutely perfect in being Who and What He is, and sin tries to make Him something He is not. To condone or tolerate sin and not try to utterly annihilate it would mean that God is somebody and something other than what He has revealed to us about Himself.

Keep in mind that this is God’s creation, not yours or mine. He decided what would be and what would not be allowed. That which would not be allowed would be destroyed. Not just shoved off into a corner somewhere, but utterly destroyed.

So, when it comes to people who ally themselves with sin, guess what? They face utter destruction as well. We are told by Paul the apostle that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. No matter how good a life we may lead, we have that inheritance of sin because we are all descended from Adam. The only way we can really, fully, make things right between us and God is by being destroyed ourselves. The Psalmist asked, “What profit [is there] in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?” Psalm 30:9. He’s got a point there, doesn’t he?

And God recognized that, which is why He sent His Son to die in our place. On the one hand, the price for our sin has been paid, and on the other, we get to live before God.

Answer 2

I hate to be the one to tell you, but it is not about us. It is about Him. Check out Ephesians chapter 3. The grand purpose of all of this is to show how much wiser He is over the other principalities and powers in spiritual places using His own son as the all in all point of His wisdom.

I find it truly amazing to be used in a good way in such a great plan developed before time began.

Having read your detail, I see the question you have more fully. The focus of New Testament scripture is that of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. Christians would do well to have the same.

The blood sacrifice portion of your question can be found in two areas of scripture. In the law it is pointed out that the life is in the blood. In the NT we find that there is no cleansing with out a blood sacrifice. It is a God requirement, not our desire.

I too have found this to be interesting to ponder. Maybe, God in His infinite wisdom, knew that we would not appreciate anything but His own sacrifice over say an acknowledgment that He exists. We needed something substantial - Himself.

Answer 3

i am sure God could forgive all sin if He chose to. God sent his Son to be the ultimate sacrifice for the sin of all mankind. I believe the reason He did things this way was to give man a free will choice to either believe in the sacrifice of His Son and therefore receive salvation through faith or not to believe. It's as simple as that. God will not take your free will from you or force you to believe in Him. That is up to you. I choose to believe and respect your right not to.

Answer 4

First of all, i am glad you are not God. Second of all, no. God is a Just God, every crime deserves a punishment. God has to punish for sin. If He just let us get by with everything without consequence then He would not be a loving God, just as a father with a child. But He loved us so much that He gave the one thing in the world that could help us out. He sent His son to the earth to live a perfect life, being the one person on earth who didn't deserve Hell. So Jesus agreed to go and take all of the Hell that we so deserve, He took our Hell so we could Have His Heaven. Now we can ask the Father to forgive because our punishment has been taken, but if we don't ask then we can't be forgiven can we? So No, He couldn't have just forgotten about it. He loves us too much

Answer 5

~If you were a god and you were all powerful and omnipotent, I would hope you'd have been competent enough not to have created such a FUBAR mess in the first place so you wouldn't have to sacrifice your or son, or even your neighbor's pet goat, to fix it.

Ah, but Man in his infinite wisdom created a fallible infallible deity. Keeps you on your toes and tends to let the BMFWIC get away with earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, wars and all manner of like natural disasters. (Yeah, wars are natural disasters. God's wondrous creation just naturally has to fight 'em. The big fella's cool with that though. Read his book. He even takes sides and helps out in the slaughter. Remember that when you're thinking about making change from the collection plate.) PTL

Speaking of the collection plate, if you simply forgave, or in your omnipotence decided to prevent rather than forgive, what would be the need of the collection or the house they beg for it in?

Answer 6

But if you are God you are also all-knowing. Maybe you would know things in the world would be worse if all the message was don't worry, I will forgive you anyway. Maybe allowing Jesus to die is showing that there is an ultimate good to strive for, one that is so great it would include allowing your own heart to break if it meant saving one person. If everyone loved like that, it would be hard to ever justify murder or war. And maybe it is also a way to get people's attention away from the illusions of Satan and get them to see the amount of love God has for people.

Answer 7

it extremely is a perception held by utilising a extensive fraction of the humanity and could be respected. the different fractions have faith in another varieties of god. needless to say, none are extremely authentic or fake of their ideals, even though it shows that there is an suitable certainty, on which no unanimous understanding has been reached so a ways.

Answer 8

Sure.
But that has nothing to do with Christianity. God was already willing to forgive sins. Ezekiel chapter 18 emphasizes God's forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist baptized people for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus forgave sins - if he could do that, why would he need to die? The writings of Paul talk about the death of Christ serving a very different purpose, and had nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins. Paul talks about how no sin was imputed from Adam to Moses, and no sin was ever imputed to the Gentiles. Guilt is not the problem that Jesus died to solve.

Answer 9

God is omnipotent - He is also just. To forgive the world's sins without any sort of consequence would not be a just act; therefore, He sent His son in place of all mankind to bear the consequences of our sins.

Answer 10

With out the sacrifice there was no atonement. There had to be blood to forgive and cover the sins he had to die to cover our sins. And further, to sacrifice your child is an awesome act of love for us, and to willingly go the the slaughter also proves that is love is boundless.