How did Jesus save us?

N

nds1

Registered Senior Member
Often in Christianity we hear the phrase "Jesus died for our sins" or "Jesus saved us." How did Jesus save us? I am very confused by this. There were many people who died for God and sacrificed their life just like Jesus did. Also, if we can only be saved through Jesus, what happened to all the holy men of the Old Testament such as Abraham, Moses, etc. They had no way of knowing who Jesus was because there was no bible, and these men never mentioned him in the bible. If men before Jesus could be saved from hell such as Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Naomi, etc. then is Jesus really needed in the equation of saving? Did Jesus save us because God was at the end of his rope with humanity and if Jesus sinned even one time God would have gotten exremely angry and wiped everyone out like he did with the Noah generation? Any thoughts?
 
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From my understanding, the orthodox Christian doctrine is this:

Jesus was a perfect being, begat, born, and never committed a sin.
Only the sacrifice of a perfect being could atone for sin in the world.
Jesus was sacrificed.
Therefore, sin is defeated.

If Jesus had sinned even once, salvation would've bee impossible.
 
Prince_James said:
Jesus was sacrificed. Therefore, sin is defeated.
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Hmm, you forgot the most important part ....the resurrection! Yeah, he was sacrificed, but because he was without sin, he was resurrected from the dead. Without that little part, Jesus would have been nothing but a good man who died ...like many others. The resurrection is the most important part of Christianity.

Baron Max
 
God "overshadowed" the virgin Mary, Joseph "got it," they went to Egypt to avoid Herod's dictate to kill all Jewish males under two years old (shades of Egypt), back they came, and the rest is REAL history.
 
Jesus dying for everyone's sins, means--there must have been knowledge of everyone's sins before they sinned.

Jesus dies approximately 28-30 AD (give or take some time depending on when you think he was born)

generations upon generations of "God's Children" lived before that time and have lived after the time that Jesus "died for us".

Therefore the sacrifice, must have encapsulated all sin, within this framework of "Creation". All sin committed, and sin yet to be comitted. The beginning, and the ending fixed. The purposes and possibilites evaluated before there was a place for our experiences, in the flesh.

If there was knowledge then, of the sum of human sin. Then there was knowledge of what it would take to potentially erase all of it. Before anything was even created.

Really you can't simplify this if it really happened. Anything someone says to help you get the "idea" is just and idea still. It doesn't capture the knowledge, it just puts the concept into a box or place where you can observe it more easily and think about it.
 
nds1 said:
Often in Christianity we hear the phrase "Jesus died for our sins" or "Jesus saved us." How did Jesus save us? I am very confused by this. There were many people who died for God and sacrificed their life just like Jesus did. Also, if we can only be saved through Jesus, what happened to all the holy men of the Old Testament such as Abraham, Moses, etc. They had no way of knowing who Jesus was because there was no bible, and these men never mentioned him in the bible. If men before Jesus could be saved from hell such as Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Naomi, etc. then is Jesus really needed in the equation of saving? Did Jesus save us because God was at the end of his rope with humanity and if Jesus sinned even one time God would have gotten exremely angry and wiped everyone out like he did with the Noah generation? Any thoughts?
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There are several questions here, but to start, I will answer the question: "Why Jesus?"

There are actually a few reasons that it had to be Jesus, and His death freely accepted for our sake, rather than just anyone else. The first reason is that Jesus was sinless. He was born without the stain of Original Sin, and He did not sin throughout His life. The damnation of humanity was wrought by a sinless father, our salvation was wrought by a sinless brother.

Adam, as our father, was connected to each and every one of us in a unique and special way. That is, he is our genetic father, all of us come from him. Jesus, as our brother, didn't have this kind of connection with the rest of humanity. However, He was not merely our brother, but He was/is also our God. In Him was both a full human nature and the full Divine Nature. As such, He is also our creative Father. He is the author of truth, and He created us. In this way, He has an even more unique and special connection with all of us, since though Adam gave us our human nature through natural biological processes (except what he passed on was a fallen nature), Christ, who originally gave us perfect natures through creative processes, offers us this gift again through unitive processes.

His sacrifice, as a perfect human being, atoned for the sin of a perfect human being. His sacrifice was not merely His death, but also His life. He surrendered His whole life to the Will of the Father, God's Will, and even when He was facing death, He never strayed from that surrender. His death, as an isolated event, wasn't the sacrifice that saved humanity. It was the culmination, the final proof, of His fidelity to the Father, His full sacrifice, and it was a sacrifice for the sake of the salvation of Mankind. Why was Christ's obedience to God's Will the act of salvation? Because it was Adam's disobedience, His denial of the authority of God, the Will of God, the Truth of God, which damned us.

So, to answer the next question, "How did Jesus save us?" the answer is that it was a punitive measure. However, this doesn't say it all. For, though as an act on behalf of mankind, the original offense was forgiven, we each are still capable and guilty of sin against God, and the nature He created in us, and truth. Therefore, it isn't precisely correct to say "Jesus saved us," for in truth, His universally-applied action of sacrifice was Mankind's redemption, rather than salvation. The difference is that salvation refers to our final destination (ie, Heaven or Hell), whereas redemption refers to humanity's sin forgiven.

In other words, Heaven is again available to us, but we still have to be perfect to get there. Yet, it is also not false to say that Jesus saves us, except that "us" must refer to only those who are indeed saved. For, there are a great many who are not saved, but are damned in Hell. Salvation then comes through union to Christ, union to God, in conjunction with the perfect sacrificial act of Christ. This is where Christ's Divine Nature comes into a deeper play. Certainly, His Divinity was significant during His life, and also to certain theological tenets now understood, but what does it have to do with us, practically speaking? We could no more be one with Christ as man than you could with me. However, Christ as God is a different story. It was part of the original plan of our human nature that we be one with God, in union with Him. We can be one with Christ as God, and this union transcends time (trans - through, as opposed to separate or apart from). This means that, whether you lived before or after Christ, salvation was/is open to you, even if that salvation wasn't realized until after the actual temporal event of Christ's saving actions.

I hope this explanation helps a bit, though it wouldn't surprise me if it raises more questions. I'm not always the most clear person.
 
Anyone capable of talking sense can save you. His teaching, which few Christians seem to understand, describes a way of life in which we all contribute to the collective good, limiting conditions that make people suffer.
 
Baron Max:

The resurrection showed that Jesus was still alive and had conquered death - the wage of sin. So yes, it was a landmark aspect of the whole salvation process.

Thanks for pointing out my omission.
 
Nds1,

How did Jesus save us?
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He didn’t and can’t. The first consideration is to understand that Jesus is a mythical character only and has no historical authenticity. Outside of Christian literature there is no independent historical evidence that he ever existed. All the gospels were written decades after he was alleged to have died and cannot represent eye-witness testimony. The only near credible record was by the famous historian Josephus who lived in those times and who allegedly made an indirect remark in one of his journals. These references of course didn’t appear until some 300 years later when the church was trying to exert itself and needed some proof. The single offending paragraph in Josephus’s record was later found to have been forged.

The next major problem is with the Adam and Eve story and their apparent fall from grace that condemned all of us and led to the Jesus story and the need to be saved. The justification for Jesus coming to save us rests entirely on the literal truth of the A&E story as told in the bible. And it is here we have a fundamental paradox.

A&E are commanded not to eat from the tree that gives the knowledge of good and evil. It must therefore be assumed that because they have not eaten from the tree that they do not possess any knowledge of good and evil. They eat from the tree anyway and are condemned for it and so are all of us. The paradox is how were they expected to know it was a bad thing to eat from the tree and disobey God if they hadn’t eaten from the tree that would have provided them the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong? In essence they were tricked and the whole story of the fall from grace is a farce which consequently makes the need for a savior a farce together with the whole of Christianity that rests on this need for salvation.

The next major issue is where this idea of salvation came from. And no it is not original to Christianity. The mythmakers who wrote the gospels borrowed all those stories from many earlier myths, such as – well try this link as a starter. There are others if you need more.

http://home.earthlink.net/~pgwhacker/ChristianOrigins/

So in the end there is no salvation, there was no Jesus, and the entirety of Christianity is a rehash of older mythologies.
 
Cris said:
He didn’t and can’t. The first consideration is to understand that Jesus is a mythical character only and has no historical authenticity.
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Bull crap. Jesus saved us by dying on the cross.
I guess you skipped John 3:16.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
 
Yes... There is a sign on a dank looking building that I pass each day that says "Jesus died for YOU". It's just amazing how people systematically repeat this as though it actually means something. Our teachers repeated it in the classroom, and I guess some people just grow up with this delusion implanted in their minds and that phrase alone may evoke an emotional response which gives it it's power.

But does it fuck mean anything.
 
Lixluxe,

Bull crap. Jesus saved us by dying on the cross.
I guess you skipped John 3:16.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
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I remember weeping over that passage when I was a devout Christian until I started to look at it more closely.

The passage makes us relate to how we’d feel if we had to sacrifice our only son for someone else. Obviously a very noble and selfless and absolute action; and all done for us poor sinners, clearly God must love us so very much.

But there is a problem here. If we were to make such a sacrifice we would expect the loss to be permanent and it is that that makes it a real sacrifice and a real loss and it is that that goes to the real heart of a meaningful sacrifice. But with the Jesus story he is resurrected and goes and joins his dad after a couple of days. And of course God being omniscient knows full well what is going to happen.

So while we are meant to sympathize over J3:16, why should we? There is no loss, no permanent loss, merely a couple of days. So where is the strength of such a sacrifice? It is null since the guy came back and he knew it. So the sacrifice idea and the crucifixion is an empty gesture and a farce. Now, if he had not been resurrected and stayed dead and was lost forever, then that would have indeed been a magnificent gesture on behalf of god that we could truly relate to and would have definitely demonstrated true love for us.

The second part of J3.16 is the promise of everlasting life. Well obviously this is the key issue of Christianity and the fundamental common component of every religion – the promise of how to cheat death. This is the primary reason that people believe in religions. If religions didn’t promise this then no one would bother with religion. But given that that the sacrifice was a farce what then can we make of this false promise of cheating death? Highly dubious.
 
There will always be those who look for their evidence in their mythology. Their response will be "he saved us because the bible tells us." Of course, the bible tells us whatever its superstitious and political authors chose it to.

It won't matter if the mythical passages of John were skipped or read, they're still mythology. Nothing more.
 
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M*W: Jesus didn't live, and he didn't die for anyone! Those who believe he did are delusional.

Jesus is only a literaturical character. He never existed! For those of you who believe he did, are wrong.
 
Baron Max said:
Hmm, you forgot the most important part ....the resurrection! Yeah, he was sacrificed, but because he was without sin, he was resurrected from the dead. Without that little part, Jesus would have been nothing but a good man who died ...like many others. The resurrection is the most important part of Christianity.

Baron Max
Click to expand...

there was a man, and this was a proven fact. He died for three days then was ressurected back to life. this happened this century ''does that mean he was without sin'' and for the record there may have bin others
 
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