Do we sin against man or God?

[Wootah]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

[onewithhim]

[Replying to Wootah in post #1]

We sin against God every day, as we inherited sin from Adam, and sin is always falling short of God's requirements, requirements for our own benefit. We sin against other humans as well, but hopefully we do not do it willfully.....and the greatest sinning is against God. Why would we deliberately do things against God? He is our Creator and has given us knowledge of his laws and principles that keep us on the right path to life and make us happy.

[Wootah]

[Replying to onewithhim in post #2]

How does Jesus dying on a cross help to pay for sins against God?

[1213]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

I have understood sin is to reject God, or to be apart from God. When one rejects God, it means one rejects God's commandments, for example love your neighbor. Adam and Eve basically cut the connection to God by rejecting Him, which is why all people after them are born in separation from God. Jesus came to restore the connection and people didn't like that and killed him.

[Wootah]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

I have understood sin is to reject God, or to be apart from God. When one rejects God, it means one rejects God's commandments, for example love your neighbor. Adam and Eve basically cut the connection to God by rejecting Him, which is why all people after them are born in separation from God. Jesus came to restore the connection and people didn't like that and killed him.

How can Jesus pay for sins against God?

[1213]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

I have understood sin is to reject God, or to be apart from God. When one rejects God, it means one rejects God's commandments, for example love your neighbor. Adam and Eve basically cut the connection to God by rejecting Him, which is why all people after them are born in separation from God. Jesus came to restore the connection and people didn't like that and killed him.

How can Jesus pay for sins against God?

Why do you think he must pay something?

[Eddie Ramos]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

The Bible teaches that we can sin against one or the other (man or God).

1 Samuel 2:25 (KJV 1900)
If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him: but if a man sin against the LORD, who shall intreat for him? Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay them.

But all sin, is a transgression of God's law.

1 John 3:4 (KJV 1900)
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

Since all men (meaning mankind) have sinned, then all were required to pay the penalty the law of God required. It was death.

Romans 6:23 (KJV 1900)
For the wages (the payment) of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But God, in his mercy and rather than letting all of mankind die in their sins, decided to redeem some from the curse of the law which condemned them to death. The Bible refers to these as the "elect".

Romans 8:31–35 (KJV 1900)
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

But in order for God to forgive the sins of the elect, He couldn't just turn a blind eye to their sins. That's because God has bound himself to the Words of His own law.

Psalm 138:2 (KJV 1900)
I will worship toward thy holy temple,
And praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth:
For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.

This means that the death which His own law demanded for sin, must still have been satisfied on behalf of all those he chose to redeem. And since God is the only one who has power over death, He decided to make the payment himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in order to satisfy the demands of His own law.

Acts 20:28 (KJV 1900)
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.


Once God died and made payment for sins from the foundation of the world, He could then apply his atonement to each and every elect after mankind fell into sin. The first one we know for sure who was an elect was Abel. This means that God had to apply his atonement (which he accomplished before the world began, not at the cross) before Abel physically died in order to raise his dead soul back to life, but this time to life eternal. So that when Abel's body of flesh died, his soul went to be with God in heaven.

Matthew 23:35 (KJV 1900)
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

2 Corinthians 5:6–8 (KJV 1900)
Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

Job 1:6 (KJV 1900)
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

By the way, the sons of God are never angels, just in case anyone was wondering.

Hebrews 1:5 (KJV 1900)
For unto which of the angels said he AT ANY TIME, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?

[theophile]

Do we sin against man or God and how does Jesus dying and resurrecting on a cross help us?

Sin is against man and God because sin is that which goes against life. As such, sin naturally leads to the diminishment of life, or life not at its full potential, and ultimately to death. Which means, sin is against man because man, generally speaking, wants to live. So sin is not in man's interest. And sin is against God because God's end is life, so sin means we do not share God's principle and end. That we are not true to God.

Jesus dying on the cross helps us in one way: it shows us that man is capable of staying true to God, and to the cause of life, despite how sinful man has become.

Look at it this way: Imagine an all-powerful God was looking down on the earth, and all God saw was sin, including all the death and emptiness that sin brings. Wouldn't God rightly be inclined to destroy man for making this his rule? But now imagine one like Jesus among all the sinful... Staying true to God and life despite such an unimaginable test like the crucifixion... Wouldn't such a one incline God to spare the rest? In this way the crucifixion helps us because it has this sparing effect. It saves us from being destroyed in such a scenario, like Sodom was, who had no such redeeming one.

The resurrection, on the other hand, is just the fulfillment of the promise, or the end that we all ought to seek. (Life.)