In my last article on sacrifice, I did some simple math to illustrate how incredibly minuscule was the inconvenience Jesus allegedly suffered on our behalf.
I am told that Jesus is immortal. Since there is no number I can represent that with, I decided to take a very large number instead. I picked a trillion trillion. (A trillion is one with twelve zeros after it.) Supposing that Jesus felt excruciating pain for twenty four hours, we can say that he “sacrificed” for 1/365 of a year. In decimals, that’s 0.0027, or 0.03% of a year. For a trillion, that’s 0.000000000003%. For another trillion, that’s 0.000000000000000000000003%. So, cutting the god Jesus’s life by a trillion trillion percent, he only sacrificed this infinitesimally small percentage of his time. And since he is a god, and can do anything he likes, he really wasn’t giving up anything else.
… In a nutshell, the god Jesus spent the merest speck of his existence experiencing pain sacrificing himself to himself. If I fail to respect that minuscule gesture, I will be tortured in the worst imaginable way for all of eternity. It’s akin to me saying to you, “Last night, I pinched myself on the thigh for one tenth of a second. I have sacrificed so much for you, you should give me a million dollars. If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
A friend and I were discussing this over meatballs and marinara the day before yesterday. She made a rather profound observation. “If Jesus really wanted to impress us with taking our punishment for us, he should have actually taken the punishment. He should stay in hell forever.”
That seems reasonable enough. In fact, it seems completely fair. Much more fair than enduring the equivalent of a pin-prick for a god and then sending literally BILLIONS of people to hell. And it would still leave Father and Holy Spirit to happily traipse around heaven and earth to their heart’s content.
Yep. If I had written the Bible, I’d have done it better.
Life Without a Net 
Hey Bill….it’s “Tom” again, Lara’s friend from the Apologetics Conference. Jesus did take a supernatural punishment on the cross. That’s why 1 Peter 2:24 says that he bore our sin in his body and Galatians 3 says that he “became a curse” and 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that he “became sin.” He had the full supernatural force of the punishment for sin laid on Him as He was dying. He didn’t just physically die. God weighed the cost for the sins of the people who would believe in Jesus and laid it on Him in 6 hours as he hung there and died. Hope this helps a little!
So…Jesus actually did take the punishment.
Love,
“Tom”
Posted by Tom Your Friend From Friday | October 20, 2010, 5:43 pmYes, but today is October 21, 2010. So Jesus suffered less or equally to everyone who went to hell on or before October 18th, 2010, and less than everybody else. If you believe God created the Earth 6,000 years ago then the first people, Adam and Eve’s unsaved children, or grandchildren have been in hell for….
6,000X365=2,190,000 days and nights.
I don’t know what horrible thing Adam Jr. or Adam III did to deserve hell but that is a very long time.
Posted by Redlady1979 | October 21, 2010, 12:27 amGod judged that six hours of suffering would balance out trillions upon trillions of years of suffering by billions and billions of people? Hmmm… I like that reasoning. So… next time I see you, would you mind please giving me ten million dollars? It seems ample compensation for the inconvenience I suffered having to walk to my car at one in the morning.
Posted by hambydammit | October 21, 2010, 4:23 pmSeriously. How does anyone have any frame of reference for how badly he suffered?
I’ll take anything for 6 hours before I take anything mildly painful for billions of trillions of years (eternity being annoyed would be worse than being tortured for 6 hours, even if the torture left me a senseless gibbering wreck).
Posted by Alex Hardman | October 22, 2010, 1:03 am