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Originally Posted by nezmot
This is the bit I don't get. God/Jesus tells us that Jesus is sent by God "that the world through him shall be saved" - Now I can understand this if it relates to the world listening to Jesus' fundamental message of love thy neighbour and all that.
BUT
What I don't understand is where the whole sacrificial business comes in. What was going to happen if Jesus hadn't appeared when he did? Was God going to smite us all for our sins unless he got blood? That seems wrong somehow.
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Jesus was a sacrifice (as I've previously pointed out), but he had to willingly offer himself. It was Jesus who had to decide that mankind was worth saving. It raises an interesting question assuming you believe full-faith in all this. What would have happened if Jesus Christ had simply walked away? Of course, that raises even more questions like....
could Jesus have simply walked away? As half-man/half-god, whole man, or whole god (depending on your point of view), did he possess free-will at all? Could he have simply decided humanity was a lemon and waltzed his way up to Heaven?
It's a noodler...I honestly don't know... Assuming there was no sacrifice, I guess God would have gone that way he did with Noah (Genesis 6, I believe?) and flooded the world to rid the earth of the unrighteous.
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So I'm trying to reconcile a number of issues here - all of which are declared as truth at one point or another, by some group or other.
Jesus' divinity.
Jesus' status as sacrifice
Jesus' status as saviour (a saviour from ourselves, from God, from who, or what?)
The trinity in general
God's inability to commune with us in person,
and God's professed love for us, his creation.
The best reconciliation I can (still) think of is that God manifested himself as one of us, and lived among us, grew even to love us, even though he was killed by us - but has forgiven us our sins, saving us from immediate peril (God's angry retribution) on the one hand, and showing us the power of Faith, Forgiveness and His message, thus saving us from ourselves on the other.
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That works as well as anything I can come up with.
Listen, if you're looking for definitive answers to these questions, you're not going to find them. I can argue the many sides of any of those statements. There is no "correct" answer. If you'd like to argue doctrine and dogma, then fire away, but that doesn't seem to be what you're asking for. You seem to be looking for absolute validation of your personal faith and that's...just not possible. I can certainly cite scripture that supports your argument, but understand that religious source material, for the most part, is incredibly schizophrenic... That is to say, I can certainly support your personal point of faith with validating material, but I could do the same for several 'opposing' schools of thought, in some cases using the same material.