For believeing Christians only: How crucial is it to Christianity that Jesus was killed?

Great question. I don’t have a whole lot of time to answer like I would want to, but I’ll give it my best.

Jesus’ death on the cross is core to Christianity and without his death and resurrection there is no Christianity. His death on the cross is the sacrificial offering that bore God’s wrath for the sins of all who would believe.

The reason it was specifically a cross, was to fulfill the prophecies in the Old Testament. Zech 12:10 Psalm 22:16

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Galatians 3:13 Deut. 21:23

John MacArthur explains it well here (About half way down)

Christ on the cross took on all the sins of the world, even those of non-believers. When He died on the cross, all those sins were forgiven. He was then pierced with a spear, to prove his death. His rising from the dead proved He was God, and more powerful than death. This proved life after death.
So, if He took on all the sins of the world, even non-believers die without sin, right? Why don’t they go to Heaven then? Because entry into Heaven isn’t based on being without sin. Entry is based on belief in Jesus Christ.
Someone who was good and kind all his life will be denied Heaven if he denies Jesus.

@filmfann Christ paid the debt for all who would believe, not every person in the world. Link

Also, “all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” Romans 3:23

Can you narrow your link down?

@filmfann sorry ;) about 10 paragraphs down John 1:12 although the entire link would be a good read for someone who is interested.

@se_ven
You say:
Jesus’ death on the cross is core to Christianity and without his death and resurrection there is no Christianity. His death on the cross is the sacrificial offering that bore God’s wrath for the sins of all who would believe.

Wouldn’t all of this still be true if Jesus died of old age? It may not have been as dramatic, but still could be interpreted as a sacrificial offering.

@LostInParadise, fellow unbeliever here I think your question assumes, or at least allows the possibility, that Christianity simply entails following the teachings of Jesus. In this view, believing in Christianity would be like believing in Socrates or Immanuel Kant; you’re a “Christian” if you like what the dude says.

There are several problems with this view of Christianity. First of all, what Jesus says, repeatedly, is that you must believe in and be obedient to Yahweh, the god of the Hebrew religion, or he is going to kill and/or torture you. Many of Jesus’ sayings in the gospels involve the end of the world and the need for salvation, and explicitly identifies himself as the means to this salvation in some way. Simply cherry-picking a few of his philosophical or moral points and calling yourself a “Christian,” then, would be disingenuous.

Secondly, Paul—whose writings actually predate the gospels—makes it clear that the salvation Jesus talks about is intimately tied into his suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus is meant to take the place of the sacrifices the Hebrews made to their god Yahweh to avoid getting punished by him. Nevermind that this makes no sense (either the initial concept of sacrificing to gods or the idea that Jesus getting killed somehow acts as a switcheroo), that’s central to the theology of Paul’s writings and also jives with several parts of the gospels.

So basically, Christianity is not simply a moral philosophy. It is a worldview in which the central problem that humanity faces is that there is this angry Hebrew god who wants to torture and kill you (despite the fact that he loves you), and the way out of this is through Jesus’ sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection.

Jesus dying in the prime of life makes him forever young. I think it would have been more meaningful if Jesus declined in health and died of natural causes. In this way his life would be a miror of that of the common person. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection would be a model for the life, death and salvation of believers.

@LostInParadise, your most recent comment makes it seem like Christianity’s theology could just be written (or rewritten) from scratch. I don’t think this is the case, since Jesus almost certainly existed and almost certainly really did get crucified at a young age.

Allow me to take this opportunity to address a common atheist argument that pops up a lot—the idea that Jesus never really existed and was an invention from thin air by Paul and Peter. In my view, this violates Occam’s razor—it creates more holes than it explains.

First of all, the idea that there was a Jewish cult leader named Joshua around 30 A.D. who got crucified by the Roman government is not an extraordinary claim. We know for a fact that there were many such cult leaders in late-antique Rome and Judea. Yes, Jesus did not leave any physical evidence that “proves” his existence. But neither did lots of historical figures, including Siddharta Guatema, Johnny Appleseed, and Sargon of Akkad. (All of these historical figures, like Jesus, have associated legends surrounding them, but surely you wouldn’t say they are all imaginary figments?) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence—for example, Sargon or Jesus being the sons of various deities—but ordinary claims can easily enough be inferred, especially if they fit into the historical record we have.

Secondly, if Jesus did not ever exist—if Paul and Peter invented him—then where did his cult come from? Paul started writing his letters in the 50’s A.D. By that time, there was already a well-formed cult centered on the figure of Jesus. In fact, this cult had already splintered into sects! (See, for example, Paul’s letter to Galatians, where he berates a rival sect of Christians for promoting circumcision). It seems far simpler to believe that Paul and Peter grafted themselves onto an existing cult than it does to say that they invented this cult out of thin air, when it seems to have been quite developed by the time they started.

Thirdly, it is actually quite rare for cult leaders to make up historical figures out of thin air. Far more common, cult leaders die and then later cult leaders co-opt their followers—often elevating or deifying the original cult leader in the process. For example, Jesus’ cult seems to have done just this with John the Baptist’s cult. This happens in modern times as well—look at what Stalin did with Lenin. Lenin became something like a god, who conveniently supported Stalin’s interpretation of the “scriptures.” Reading Paul’s letters, it seems patently obvious that he is an opportunistic demagogue who saw this cult centered around the now-dead Jesus as a ripe opportunity.

So, the long and the short of it, I don’t think it makes sense to speculate about how Christianity would “make more sense” if its theology made Jesus survive into old age. Christianity seems to have formed around Jesus’ untimely death.

His blood had to be shed thus the suffering, His death is not what saves us it’s His blood! When a believer becomes saved through the blood of Jesus Christ, God the Father doesn’t see us, because we are still sinners, He sees the blood of His beloved Son! He did die for ALL of us, believer and nonbeliever, the difference is if you choose to accept the gift of his dying for you!

Christ had to be sacrificed in order to be a sacrifice of atonement. Dying of natural causes is not a sacrifice.

The reason for this is set up in Old Testament law: if you act against God’s law, the way you get back in His good graces is by offering a sacrifice of atonement. God sent Christ to be a perfect sacrifice of atonement for all sins, past, present, and future, but for him to fulfill that role, he actually had to be sacrificed.

That makes sense. But wasn’t one of Jesus’ reforms to do away with animal sacrifice?

As a side note, there is a group of Orthodox Jews in Israel that wishes to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and open it up for what was its principal use – animal sacrifice. I hope this never happens.

As far as I know, Jesus never “reformed” animal sacrifice. It’s more that the fact that Jesus got killed and resurrected means it’s no longer necessary to sacrifice animals to appease Yahweh.

Sort of like how, if you have an electric dryer, you don’t have to hang out your wet clothes on lines in the backyard. You still could, but why go through the trouble?

@Qingu other than a difference in beliefs, I think you gave great answers and demonstrate a very good understanding of Christianity.

I haven’t read the other answers but the most important thing was the resurrection! He conquered death on our behalf.

Thank you all for your answers. It is nice for once to have a civil discussion of relgiion.

@Qingu , for a different interpretation of Jesus’ stand on animal sacrifice, see III and IV in http://www.compassionatespirit.com/was_jesus_a_vegetarian.htm I understand that this is just one person’s interpretation, but I think it is kind of interesting.

The emphasis upon the ordeal of Jesus on the cross obscures the original intention of Jesus, which was to act as a reformer of Judaism. As near as I can tell, Judaism as practiced by the majority of those who call themselves Jewish, is fairly close to what Jesus preached.

@LostInParadise, I’m extremely wary of people supporting modern idealistic ideas like abolitionism or vegetarianism by appealing to some obscure interpretation of the New Testament. There is simply no way we can know if Jesus was a pescatarian (presumably he wasn’t a vegetarian as, your source points out, he gave out fish).

It’s also impossible for us to say what the “original intention” of Jesus was. It is important to keep in mind that the gospels—the only documents we have that “quote” Jesus”—were all of them composed several decades after his death, probably starting as late as 80 A.D. We can comb through them to piece together earlier sources that the gospel writers probably had—such as what scholars call “Q” (Q is simply all of the parts identical in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark), but this doesn’t paint a coherent picture of the “real” Jesus either. The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that the real Jesus was probably against divorce.

Saying Jesus was a “Jewish reformer” is actually sort of vacuous when you consider that every religion worth its salt considers itself a reform of earlier religion. For example, Islam sees itself as version 1.2 of Judaism and Christianity. As I mentioned earlier, Jesus’ cult probably saw themselves as “reformers” of John the Baptist’s cult. Buddhism is a “reform” of Hindu traditions. Modern cults, from Scientology to Mormons to Jonestown, almost always present themselves as “updated versions” of previous religions, characterizing them as having only part of some essential truth. (The fancy religious-studies word for such co-opting is syncretism.)

So yeah, Jesus was a Jewish reformer. To be more specific, he was probably a cult leader preaching a syncretistic combination of Judaism and the Greco-Roman mystery religions that influenced the Baptists.

Finally, I disagree that most Jews today practice the “real” preaching of Jesus. Partly because we don’t really know what that real teaching is, beyond being against divorce (and Jews have a high divorce rate). But also because, whatever Jesus preached, he certainly believed in a version of Yahweh that demanded obedience and required some form of salvation. Most Jews today don’t even believe that Yahweh exists (which is why I think they ought to stop calling themselves “Jews” and just start calling themselves “atheists”...)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

John 1

The word being Jesus.

I’m just going to echo everyone else here. It’s not his death that is important. In fact he could have been tickled to death and really wouldn’t have changed much. It’s the fact that he was killed and then rise from the grave. He was the ultimate sacarifice for mankind.

Interestingly, there was a sect of early Christians—later genocided by the “real” Christians—called the Docetics. They believed that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross. Rather, the person on the cross was a kind of illusion—since the real Jesus, being an immortal spirit, couldn’t die anyway.

Also interestingly, a version of this story found its way into the Quran. Islam’s Jesus also did not really die on the cross—it was an illusion. Jesus was taken straight up to heaven without dying (though, unlike the Docetic Jesus, he wasn’t made of spirit).

@Randy

When you write that “In fact he could have been tickled to death and really wouldn’t have changed much.” I’m unsure of whether you are offering that as your personal opinion or whether you think that’s what the tenets of Christianity would support.

If it’s your opinion, you are certainly entitled to it, but it is definitely not a viewpoint which could be a part of orthodox Christianity which I believe was the question originally asked.

The logical reason why the manner of death matters (as well as the fact of the resurrection) is because of the necessity of fulfilling all the requirements of O.T. prophecy which can be found all the way from Isaiah and clear through to Hebrews and other N.T. books.

The key idea that speaks to this particular point can be summed up briefly (and I’m paraphrasing)
The life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus) and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. (Hebrews) Christ is the perfect sacrifice (the lamb without spot or blemish) spoken of in prophecy. the Redeemer, so dying of old age or tickling wouldn’t get the job done. It’s that blood requirement.

Obviously that’s the Cliff Notes version and probably rather imperfectly described. A quick read through of the entire ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews would put in it’s proper context.

But, that’s the short answer to the basic question asked.

The links are to a site which has numerous translations of the same verses side by side and I personally like the clarity of some of the more modern translations.

http://bible.cc/hebrews/9-12.htm

http://bible.cc/hebrews/9-22.htm

@se_ven I read a lot of that, and I cannot say it was convincing.
I stand by my original post.

When did Jesus ever say that salvation was based upon believing in his resurrection?

@filmfann

I read the stuff on that link also and the reason it’s not convincing is because of the theological position of the person who wrote that page. John MacArthur states that he is approaching the question from the perspective of the Reformed Protestant tradition, ie:basic Calvinism.

One of the cornerstones of traditional Calvinism is “Limited Atonement” with heavy emphasis on the word limited. There are other branches of Christianity than Calvinism however and a lot depends upon ones translation of the Greek words commonly used for “eternal” and “everlasting”.

Not every Christian has such a harsh viewpoint as this.

But Calvinists are the Christians who are the most fun to argue with. :)

@Qingu

Yeah, I guess it depends upon what ones idea of “fun” is.

But, if you mean Fundy baiting, it’s fun at first but quickly becomes a bore due to the extreme rigidity and lack of imagination. They usually can’t recognize irony even if it’s two inches from their face. :)

It’s kind of like dealing with Ozzie and Harriet (if they were Christians).

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies
When did Jesus ever say that salvation was based upon believing in his resurrection?

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John 11:25–26 (King James Version)

25Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

The term “resurrection” refers to an act, not a person. It’s akin to saying that Martin Luther King Jr. IS freedom incarnate.

But King is not “freedom” any more that Jesus is “resurrection”. King represents freedom. Jesus represents power over death… spiritual death.

I was just basically attempting to answer the question which you asked. Admittedly, there are many instances where the KJV tends to obscure with some of its archaic language or phraseology, but evidently this is not one of those. That was the way Jesus chose to phrase it. Even Young’s Literal Translation is not significantly different in essence.

Young’s Literal Translation
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the rising again, and the life; he who is believing in me, even if he may die, shall live;

Also in comparison with Martin Luther King, there is one essential difference. King never claimed to be God. Jesus Christ did. I’m not saying that you are required to believe that, but those are his words and the original question involved what Christianity believes and teaches and upon what is it based. You certainly have every right to dislike the way Christ chose to phrase things (or the original manuscripts, if you will) but the fact remains that this verse expresses one of the bedrock principles of orthodox Christianity.

Perhaps John Wesley’s phraseology may be preferable.

Wesley’s Notes

11:25 l am the resurrection – Of the dead. And the life – Of the living. He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live – In life everlasting.

@filmfann if you don’t believe all people go to heaven, then you believe in limited atonement. It is either limited in scope (who is saved) or limited in effect (the atonement is not sufficient for some). Then the discussion turns to is saving faith the act of man or the gift of God.

@Buttonstc
“King never claimed to be God. Jesus Christ did.”

Christ never claimed to be God. Everyone else did that for him.

As to “being” the resurrection… When will Christians cease to avoid one of the basic tenants of biblical teaching, that the medium is not the message. When Christ speaks of “I am…”, he always speaks as a medium representative of the message of truth… One that has given up the flesh altogether, becoming one with the meaning behind the Word, and not the flesh of the Word.

We are beings of pure information.

If we are not to look deeper into the actual essence of his words, then we must take everything at face value. So “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”... and me too? Two different Heavens? Billions of different individual Heavens? Each with their very own “Father who art in Heaven”? Billions of God the Fathers?

Look deeper.

” So “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”... and me too?”

Yes and we are all connected making us a “body”.

Where is Jim Jones in our body? Marshall Applewhite, David Koresh… Hitler? How am I the I am of a child molester, a rapist, a snake eyed banking executive?

How does a body naturally react to any cancer?

Life is about taking the good with the bad.

As horrific as these people are/were and the things that go on in our worldt. All are important.

In the BIG scheme of things, the universe and such, they are insignificant.

And, they are a product of an environment that you/I am a part of.

So the body’s natural reaction to cancer is to accept it?

Yes, we only see it as bad. The body does what it is going to do.
Accepting it is sort of like taking sides. The body does not take what is going on with it personal.

Does the body try to “correct” the problem? Yes.
Would it be able to, if it did not have these cancers? No. Sickness keeps the immune system strong.

As a Christian, in the end, all can be forgiven. Knowing that all things are done for a purpose.

Just like diving to work. You have to start the car. You drive down the road. You are creating pollutants.
Should we say you are responsible for killing people? No. But some will.
Action reaction to ALL things..

Interesting point of view. I have two comments to make.

Firstly, it is not necessary to think of everything as having a purpose or that this is the best of all worlds in order to adopt with an attitude of acceptance and appreciation of what is, although this is clearly one way of approaching it. Without even positing the existence of a Supreme Being, Buddhism takes a similar atttitude of acceptance.

Secondly, accepting things for what they are does not mean that we should not change them. Even without getting hung up over whether we are kililing people by creating pollutants, we can still take steps to reduce pollution.

To me actually, not that much. More important is what he said when he lived.

I am not concerned as much with his death or resurrection, but the message he taught. THAT to me is the real beauty of Christ and what most Christians in America are missing.

What would have happened if Jesus was not tortured on a cross?
Mankind would be doomed with no way to be redeemed.

Would you still folow his teachings?
If Christ was not crucified I am not sure there would have been any teachings to follow, so I really cannot answer that one.

If he died of natural causes, would you still feel that he had sacrificed his life for others?
That is self-evident, if He died of old age He would not have died for others or been any different than all the others who are dead and still in their graves.

Would there still be the idea of salvation?
If Christ had not died, there would be no salvation so I do not know what salvation would be preached as there would be nothing capable of doing it.

Why is there so much emphasis in Christianity on the suffering that Jesus went through?
Elucidate, I need more info on what suffering or aspects thereof.

Of all the major religions, I find Christianity to be the most confusing, particularly this aspect of it.
When you have people get away from the Bible, pure and unadulterated, and get mired in religion, people like you fall through the cracks or get confusion heaped upon you; my apologies for them.