What is the short story about Jesus dying for our sins?

That’s what the myth claims.

Jesus was born, died and resurrected to pay for our sins.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

According to Mark, Jesus did not die for the sins of the world. The language of substitutionary sacrifice for sin is absent from his story. But in an important sense, he was killed because of the sin of the world.

Well, that’s what Christians believe. I never really quite understood how that worked or exactly what it meant. It just didn’t make much sense to me. Much of Christianity didn’t make sense to me.

In short, God made a covenant with Moses so that the Jews could be one with God. That was the Ten Commandments. But it excluded all non-Jews (Gentiles). Jesus was the sacrifice for the new covenant between man and God. God recognized that man was flawed, so he allowed Jesus to be punished for the sins of all mankind. The only kicker is that you have to believe in Him to be forgiven of your sins.

It still makes no sense to me. Why did the poor man have to die a horrible, painful, lingering death to found a religion that’s supposed to be peaceful? Couldn’t there have been a better way?

Would he really be remembered if he had dropped dead of a heart attack?

Many others have died natural deaths, or have been quickly assassinated, and they are still remembered because of their words and wisdom. I don’t get why the prolonged torture and absolute horror was necessary.

@seawulf575 . If God did that for the Jews, he really dropped the ball in the holocaust.

How would God “know” if you believed or not?

@MrGrimm888 Where does it say that if you believe, all will be great and no evil will enter your life? Evil does exist. People do have free will and sometimes use it to hurt others. And sometimes what might seem like a bad thing (and it is) at the time ends up being a good thing in the long run. I know I have had “bad things” happen in my life, but in the end things ended up better than if they hadn’t happened.

^Well. “Evil” is a subjective term, right? At least in regards to the entire human population.

I suppose (as you know, I am no theologian) there is a rather clear cut, if not vague definition of evil in Christian writings. Are the Ten Commandments, basically it? Or are there other mentioned behaviors?

From my limited knowledge of the story of Abraham, God asked him to kill/sacrifice his son. (Please correct me if I’m wrong. ) Is that not an “evil” request? Is God exempt from judgement? That seems hypocritical.
And for God to sacrifice his own son, regardless of the reason, seems evil as well. To me…

I agree that sometimes, good does come from bad things.

As far as evil deeds. Is evil not required to fight evil, sometimes? When I was a LEO, and a bouncer, I had to hurt people sometimes. Are/were those “sins,” in the eyes of God?

In your interpretation of the writings of the Christian faith, how does God view atheists?

Sorry for the long list of questions. I’m genuinely interested. Thanks for your previous responses…

The Bible contains a few verses where God requested human sacrifice, including his request to Abraham. Here is a list, courtesy of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Not just human sacrifice, but animal sacrifice in general, seems rather barbaric.

In the Christian view, atheists and all other non-Christians are condemned to damnation because, in order to be saved, you have to recognize Jesus as the savior. Seems rather egocentric on the part of Jesus.

Caravanfan’s grandfather thought the same thing about the holocaust. How could God let his “chosen” people be slaughtered like that? His answer was because there are no chosen people and there is no god.

@MrGrimm888 Evil is indeed a slippery term. The Ten Commandments are not all there are in the bible to be sure. There are many others mentioned throughout the bible. For instance, Jesus gave us this list: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. Now I don’t believe all these hold the same level of evil…Being a fool and killing someone don’t seem to have the same amount of evil associated. It seems to me that anything that takes your thoughts or deeds to the darkside is evil.
The story of Abraham is one of testing faith, not killing a son. Abraham was apparently a good man and was faithful to God. But God was going to do something with his family, so he wanted to make sure there wasn’t something hiding there. So he asked Abraham to kill his son, Isaac. Abraham was going to do it, but before he did, God stopped him and blessed him and out of his line of descendants we get Jesus.
Doing things like hurting or killing others can be sins, but it doesn’t seem like it always is. Throughout the Old Testament, we see wars being fought that seemed to be okay with God. David killed Goliath and that seemed okay. So the reason for violence may play a part. I’m not God, so I can’t tell you much more than that.
As for atheists, I believe God looks on them as non-believers. Not really different than, say, a Buddhist. We are all His children and he wants what’s best for us, but we aren’t his slaves. We get to make choices. And He lets us make those choices, even when it seems to go against him. And most importantly, at least in my mind, is that He doesn’t love you less than a believer, even if you don’t believe in Him.

The Urantia Book mentions that Christ Michael (a.k.a. Jesus) bestowed himself on Earth to experience human birth and death to build greater ties to us humans. In the context of the Lucifer rebellion and Satan’s alignment with Lucifer, Christ’s action in ‘death’ was also pivotal to correcting the prevailing corruption and restoring the vibrational connection to the rest of God’s creation. (Earth has been in quarantine since the Lucifer Rebellion.)
Ever since Christ’s ‘death’ the forces of Lucifer and Satan have been diminishing and many see the powerful thrashing of hyper-fascist politics today as the desperate death throes of reptile-minded Luciferians. Some would say the neo-feudalists are the “Illuminati” leftovers from errant Satanic followers.