bartdanr said:
How does Jesus' resurrection effect the forgiveness of sin? Was it the act of the shedding of blood that cleansed us from sin, or the act of the resurrection? Or was the resurrection the evidence that Jesus' words were true, and therefore we should believe him?
I believe that His death, burial, and resurrection
together make up the process by which we can have forgiveness of sins, thus allowing us to have a relationship with God. But if you want to break it down, I guess you could say that
technically, the blood of Jesus was needed for the cleansing of sins.
It goes back to the Olt Testament. The Hebrews would sacrifice bulls, and goats for the clensing of their sins. But as we read in the Bible, their blood was not enough...
Hebrews 9: 11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;
12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Also,
Hebrews 10: 1The law is only a shadow of the good things that are comingnot the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
2If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.
3But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins,
4because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
So I guess Jesus, blood technically is what save us, but it saves us through
the resurrection as we can see in the 1 Corinthians passage I quoted above.
Does that make sense?
bartdanr said:
And I still don't see how Jesus gave up anything that he didn't quickly regain. I still don't see how it was a significant sacrifice for him.
Time, maybe? He gave up three days of his life just to be beaten, whipped, nailed to a cross, left hanging there for a few hours, stabbed, and left for dead. I dunno that was just a guess. Though, I guess a few days are really nothing light of eternity.
It was a significant sacrifice for him because of how painful and humiliating cricifixion is. Jesus was physicaly abused by the Roman guards (slapped, hit on the head, etc.) he was whipped (scourged, which is painful enough as it is), had large nails driven through his hands and feet, left to hang, solely by those nails, from a cross, and stabbed in the side. Sounds pretty painful to me. And it probably isn't someting any of us would reasily go through. I would say
that is a sacrifice. While he may or may not have technically "lost" anything, he did do something that none of us would be ready to do. I hope that's right....