How was the death of Jesus a sacrifice?

Good question. The Jesus story leaves a lot to be desired. You pointed out two enormous problems with it: the problem with God offering a sacrifice to himself, and the idea of vicarious redemption. The first is just a major plot hole not even worth expounding upon. To the second: how, physically, does a person's death do ANYTHING other than make that person dead, let alone something as nebulous as absolving another person's guilt for some moral shortcoming? Furthermore, if Jesus' death did, in fact absolve humans of their "sins", why would there still be a Hell? These are rhetorical questions. You should keep in mind that the Biblical God is not a real thing, and there's nothing after death.

The Jesus story is nothing but a tale of human sacrifice. A person was killed to appease an angry and capricious deity in an unstable, inscrutable world dominated by fear of the elements. We've moved WAY past that, even if a lot of people haven't gotten the memo yet.

We need some poetic artistic story-teller to universalize the beautiful message of selfless sacrifice coded in the Messiah's tragic life-and-death story.

As iconic as he was, Jesus remains a geo-historical example that illustrates a powerful universal principle. Part and counterpart are forever inseparable. Jesus only played his part, for our sake. Beyond the drama of the story, the moral of the story remains the reminder that we all must attain the selflessness to embrace disadvantage with a view to give advantage to others who coexist within the inter-dependent whole . In other words, we must all make our own painful sacrifices for the sake of our species, our planet, our universe. Of-course, our geo-historical scenarios will be as different as we are, but the underlying challenge remains the same. Whether its humanity, or earthlings, or matter, a cosmic entity has no other way of saving itself from the pitfalls of need and greed, other than the ultimate sacrifice as humanly exemplified in the the Jesus code of utter selflessness.

When God created mankind He told them that "for when you eat of it (the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:17) This death was spiritual as well as physical. But God loved His creation so much that He wanted to make a way for them to live in spite of their rebellion against Him.

What He said about their dying had to stand though because of His righteousness and holiness. The only way He could do that is to provide a substitute who was sinless and could take the punishment on himself that man could not. This substitute had to be sinless because only someone who didn't deserve the punishment could be a substitute for the person who did deserve it.

Only God is sinless so He Himself had to come to earth as a human in order to live a sinless life, die, take upon Himself the punishment we deserved, thereby being the sacrifice that took away sins from those who would believe in Him, accept what He had done for them, turn from their sins, and accept His free gift of forgiveness and acceptance.

Of course Jesus would come back to life. It is only through His resurrection that He conquers death which means that those who follow Him do not have to die eternally.

The physical pain was not what made the croas unbearable. God, being a just God, cannot let any sin go unpunished. Nonbelievers receive that punishment in hell, whereas Jesus took on Gods wrath for the sin of those who believe in him. Thats what was so brutal. God poured out his wrath on Him so that our sin does not go overlooked, yet we do not have to pay for it. Jesus literally experienced hell. and because of that sacrifice, we can receive him as our savior and he can forgive us of our sins because he already paid the price. Does that make sense? I can try and elaborate more of youd like.

It was not, Jesus did not die for our sins, apparently he was high. So everyone must cut off their what would Jesus do bracelets.

No. His sacrifice...read what all happened was for those believing, no more...it cost, we cost.

He never sinned, yet was put through immense pain for us.

Sinners die because death is the wage they earn for sinning. That's what it says in Romans 6:23. We all deserve to die. Nobody can offer a ransom to God for their sinful life. That's what it says in Psalm 49:7-9. We are utterly lost in sin and eternal alienation from the holy and just God unless God does something to save us. He has.

In order to meet His own perfect standards of justice, God provided the perfect, once-for-all-time substitutionary sacrifice for the sin of the world. As the blood of bulls and goats only reminds us of sin from year to year (Hebrews 9:7-22), the sinless blood of Christ had to be shed in order to be a match for all the sin of the world. That's why John the Baptist saw Jesus coming and proclaimed by the power of the Holy Spirit, "See! The lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) That is why Jesus had to suffer and die - He was the sin-bearer; He became sin as He died and that's why the Father had to forsake Him at that point (briefly). "Accursed is anyone hung on a tree" the Law proclaimed. Jesus became accursed so that we could be forgiven. Jesus suffered the Father's face being turned from Him so that we could behold the Father's face.

Jesus' death would have been pointless if we paid for our own sin by dying physically. But we cannot pay for our sin, as if to cancel a debt! We die and that debt of sin goes with us for eternity! That is why Jesus warned people who didn't understand that he was the lamb of God, "I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." (John 8:23-24) You see how their deaths would alter nothing regarding their state of sinfulness? It is only if we repentantly accept Christ as the lamb of God, who died for our sins, that we will not die in our sins.

Justice is incredibly important. Crimes must be dealt with fairly, otherwise criminals would take over this world and ruin the lives of billions of people. God deals fairly with our crimes. We all stand condemned before the Bar of Heaven and will be sent down. But we have an Advocate (if we have faith to have Him represent us.) This Advocate is the Son of God who pleads on our behalf. He stands up for those who trust in what He did, in history, to pay the penalty for human sin. The Son left heaven over 2,000 years ago, adding human nature to His divine nature in order to become one of us, yet without sin. He is "The Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" as the Bible states in John 1:29. God illustrates how grievous sin is by requiring the shed blood of a sacrifice to take sin away. That's what the Old Testament showed. But Jesus came to bring in a new covenant, based on His shed blood, so that no more sacrifices would be needed. He became sin in our stead, on the cross, which is why the Father forsook Him at that point, for God cannot look upon sin. But because Jesus died sinless, death could not hold Him and God resurrected Him, restoring Him back to heavenly glory.

So, in heaven, the risen Christ says to the Judge, "Yes, my client is guilty and deserves to be sent down. But I paid the penalty for his crimes on Calvary's hill, and he accepts that provision, by faith. I now apply the benefits of my punishment to this individual. I paid for his sins. You will not demand payment twice!" And God agrees. He will not demand payment twice.

That way, universal justice is upheld and thus we know that all of heaven's inhabitants will be utterly cleansed from all sin. There will be no evil or unholiness in heaven, for God cannot look upon sin. Jesus' death is the greatest manifestation of love the world has ever seen. Anybody who mocks it knows nothing of the love of God in Christ. AiH

It could not have been true because he was not real.