One God Report 120) "Jesus had to be God to Atone for Sin" Really?
1. The claim is non-biblical, philosophical speculation. This claim is not something argued or presented in the Bible.
2. The Bible says exactly the opposite. The Bible says that Jesus had to be a man, a human being, not just a human nature, to bring about God’s plan of redemption for humanity. God was at work in and through the man Jesus of Nazareth. Who the man Jesus was and is, and what he did, was necessary, sufficient and acceptable to God.
Problems: The claim that Jesus had to be God to atone for
sins is not only non-biblical, but it also leads to other, non-biblical, philosophical dead ends.
What deity of Christ folks are claiming is a penal substitution theory of atonement: somebody, or something else, a substitute, had to bear the penalty
for my sin.
And that penalty is death. The claim is that instead of me, somebody else had to die for my sin. My sin is worthy of death, so, unless someone pays the death penalty, I will die. If someone else pays the penalty, then I don’t have to die. My sin is worthy of death, so that’s why a death is required for justice. Someone had to pay the death penalty – so instead of me, Jesus, who had to be God, paid that death penalty.
Now again, this is not a biblical claim. It is man’s philosophical speculation. And, I think that we can see that the Bible says something quite the opposite.
But even from a human or philosophical aspect, I think most people, if we think about it a little bit, can see the serious, non-biblical, theological, philosophical dead ends and inconsistencies with the claim.
Let’s say I murder someone. The biblical penalty for murder is death. I deserve death. I’ve been convicted in a court of law by jurors and a judge and sentenced to death. But my friend, Mike, right as the judge is about to strike the gavel down and send me off to execution, Mike stands up in the courtroom and shouts “Wait! Stop!”. I’ll pay the penalty for Bill. Kill me instead!”
So, the judge says, “OK, the penalty for this crime is death. If you are willing to pay the penalty, come on over here. Executioners, take the handcuffs off Bill and put them on Mike. Mike, off to the electric chair. Bill, you are free to go!” And everyone in the courtroom nods their head in agreement. That’s fair. The penalty was paid. The judge kept the ancient laws of justice.
Nope. People realize such a tactic is perversion of justice, not a maintenance of justice.
For the “Jesus must be God to pay for sin” folks there is another step in their philosophical, non-biblical speculation. They start thinking: well, maybe one person could give his life to pay the penalty for another (even though they know that biblically – “the person who sins, he shall die” Eze. 18:20, even a father can’t be penalized for the iniquity of his son).
But our situation is not just one person for one person. The deity of Christ philosopher thinks, “Whoa, to pay the penalty for all sinners, for millions and billions of sinners, Jesus would have to be eternal God to be enough to do that”.
God died (again, in direct contradiction to the Scriptures). In the Bible God is immortal and does not die. Well, not all of God died. Only one person of God died. So God did but God did not die.
“And death is only the separation of the soul from the body. One person of God, or the soul/spirit of that one person, had taken on a human nature. So the spirit didn’t die, just the human nature.”
Some comments:
1. A person-less human nature (whatever that is) was enough to redeem all the multitude, millions, billion from their sin?
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtQXFuOXBaA
"Jesus had to be God to atone for our sins." Really? Got a Scripture for that?
https://landandbible.blogspot.com/2019/01/jesus-had-to-be-god-to-atone-for-our.html
Book: Atonement and Reconciliation:
https://www.amazon.com/Atonement-Reconciliation-contrasted-Substitutionary-Atonement/dp/B0CHDKFWCC