Why did Jesus have to die?

[Berserk]

I commend Deborah for posing the one question that prompts so many honest seekers to reject the Christian faith. For me, the OP's question needs to be reformulated as these 4 basic questions:

(1) How can anyone's death, even the death of God's Son, possibly have anything to do with my guilt?
(2) Why can't God simply forgive the penitent without Jesus's crucifixion and then transform them through the power of the Spirit?
(3) Why is God not unlovingly sadistic if His wrath needs to be assuaged by the death of an innocent human sacrifice?
(4) Why shouldn't the ancient (Jewish and Gentile) belief in appeasing sacrifice be dismissed as a primitive superstition based on absurd widespread concepts of a vindictive god or gods?

I will address these 4 questions in my next planned post.

 

[Enoch111]

I will address these 4 questions in my next planned post.

Since you identify yourself as a Christian you should not even be asking such questions. Which indicates that you do not believe the Gospel. So perhaps you should identify yourself correctly.

 

[Berserk]

Enoch: "Since you identify yourself as a Christian you should not even be asking such questions."

First, as my post makes clear, I am addressing the objections of many "honest seekers" to the intellectual merits of the Christian faith.
I care about their salvation, to which the closed-minded attitude of your ilk poses a major barrier.
Second, the 4 questions posed are the standard fare of Christian apologetics, which addresses the rational grounds of the Christian faith. A faith not worth defending is not worth believing. We expect seekers to be open-minded to the claims of the Gospel. We rightly lose all credibility if we ourselves close our minds to honest questions created by honest doubts.
a
Enoch: "Which indicates that you do not believe the Gospel. So perhaps you should identify yourself correctly."

A response so judgmental that it is only redeemed by its comic naivite. First, I am an ex-theology professor and evangelical pastor who has for years led a weekly prayer group that has witnessed many miraculous answers to prayer.
Second, I have spent months witnessing to the Gospel door-to-door and in the streets of various Canadian cities. Have you? You must learn not to pontificate about posters you do not know!

 

[Davy]

One will never understand this present world, nor the next, without first understanding the old world when Satan first rebelled in wanting to be God. In Ezekiel 28, God gives a parable about the king and prince of Tyrus, but He is really pointing to Satan whom He originally created perfect in his ways, until iniquity was found in him.

Just when was that, when Satan followed God perfectly?

We know it wasn't when Adam and Eve were in God's Garden, simply because Satan was already in his role as Tempter against God.

Without understanding this, one will never completely understand the Plan of God written in His Holy Writ.