Jesus Says He's The Reason We Are Sinners

[Miles]

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John 15:21-22
21  The world will do all these things to you on account of my name, because it doesn’t know the one who sent me.
22 If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

Which means humanity would have been far better off if god had never dropped Jesus on the world. Right?


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[Purple Knight]

If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

Which means humanity would have been far better off if god had never dropped Jesus on the world. Right?

Better off yes. But I don't want to be better off. If I'm really doing something wrong I want to be told.

The reality of this question you're asking is a nasty one: That ignorance is a completely valid excuse, and both you and Jesus acknowledge it.

If we take disagreement aside (I mean, I do disagree with Christianity but that's not really the question) and acknowledge for the purposes of the question that everything Jesus says is absolutely morally correct, then it's been whittled down to a matter of, well, do you want to know if you're doing something horribly wrong? Do you want to keep doing it and be happy, or do you want the realisation that you're wrong and you have to change to come crashing down on your head? I'll take the latter.

[Miles]

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John 15:21-22
21  The world will do all these things to you on account of my name, because it doesn’t know the one who sent me.
22 If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

Which means humanity would have been far better off if god had never dropped Jesus on the world. Right?


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Jesus was talking about the sinners being the unfortunate ones, obviously. And, as Jesus states, they were sinners even before Jesus was born, but now, they have no excuse for their sin. As sinners, they were condemned either way, they just refused to accept the grace that God offered through Christ.
Again, Jesus was talking about those who rejected him as being worse off. But, as far as those who accepted him are concerned, never has a greater gift been given to any of them.

You entirely missed the point of the passage, which is invariable when one simply takes a few verses to make a doctrinal assertion.

Excuse me! But If Jesus was talking about the sinners being the unfortunate ones he would have said so, or at least qualified his remark to indicate them, but he doesn't. So his unqualified "the people of the world" stands as written, and can only be read as including everyone.


John 15:22
22If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.


That this may conflict with something else he said is too bad, but John 15:21-22 can't be taken on an apologetic carnival ride to get rid of it.

In no uncertain terms Jesus Says He's The Reason We Are Sinners.

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Do you not know what 'people of this world' means? Have you failed to recognize the dichotomy that Jesus portrayed in your selected passages?
He was talking to those 'not of this world', as to what 'those of this world' will do to them.

Gee, of the 61 versions of the Bible I checked there wasn't a single, "those not of this world" in John 15:21-22. Apologetic desperation, while amusing, is usually fraught with danger. You do know, don't you, that Jesus doesn't take kindly to those who purposely mess with his word and change his message. In any case, in your reconstruction of His message just who were the "people" who were made sinners because Jesus had spoken to them?

Relevant verse:

John 15:22
22If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

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[Miles]

If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

Which means humanity would have been far better off if god had never dropped Jesus on the world. Right?

Better off yes. But I don't want to be better off. If I'm really doing something wrong I want to be told.

Thing is, if Jesus never saddled you with sin you wouldn't be really doing something wrong. Well, at least not sin-wise anyway. You would still be aware that it was wrong to have turned left when you should have turned right, and might even be told so by our friends in the back seat.

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[Purple Knight]

Thing is, if Jesus never saddled you with sin you wouldn't be really doing something wrong.

It depends on what sin means. If it's something that offends God, well then it offends someone and if I'm in my right mind I don't do it. It's hurting someone, even if only emotionally. I shouldn't care if that person is despicable. I don't want to be despicable. It's like the dreadlocks thing. Nobody is saying you shouldn't have the legal right to wear your hair however, but if it's bothering somebody, the right way to handle that is not to do it. It doesn't matter if they have a good reason. It doesn't matter if they're correct that they invented it. It bothers somebody, don't do it, that's the end of it.

In the context of the question, Christianity is true and God exists, so somebody is bothered by this action. He tells me about it, I will try not to do it. Sending me to Hell for it is merely despicable on his part, but I don't think I should care. I don't think me being decent has too much to do with the decency of the person I'm being decent to. If the restriction is crippling, I may deeply wish that I lived among people who weren't always so bothered by everything. I may even resent them. Hate them, even. I'll even realise that I could have that thing I want if he just stopped using omniscience to peep at me, and he could not be bothered. But I can't control what others do. I can only control what I do.

I used to live in a place where up to 10 female chickens were legal and I wanted them. However, someone was bothered so I didn't have any. When I was younger, I saw her constant calling of the police and reporting and reporting and reporting (someone else who had a few hens) until this person got rid of the chickens, as being an insufferable busybody and power-tripper, and wrong, and someone who should just go away. Now I look at that behaviour equally sadly, but because I think, people shouldn't have to do that.

And if sin is something more real and means that I'm (even if indirectly) hurting other people, and that's why he is bothered, then the case is even better that I should want to know about it and shouldn't do it.

[Miles]

Thing is, if Jesus never saddled you with sin you wouldn't be really doing something wrong.

It depends on what sin means.

Then pick your meaning. Whatever it is, Jesus burden you with it. Not being a Christian or a theist of any kind, I don't really care how it's defined; however, as a matter of convenience in discussing sin I find the following definition from the Oxford Dictionary: Oxford University Press to be pretty workable, i. e., most Christians seem to go along with it.

sin
/sin/
noun
noun: sin; plural noun: sins
an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.

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[Purple Knight]

Personally, I go along with the following definition from the Oxford Dictionary: Oxford University Press.

sin
/sin/
noun
noun: sin; plural noun: sins
an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.

Sounds like it's both then. Sounds like you get both: It's immoral, and it violates divine law.

Some things may be immoral, but not violate divine law, like feeding the very possibly rotten/diseased meat of animals that dropped on their own to gentiles.

Some things may violate divine law but not be immoral. I know many people may say "homosexuality is a sin" but according to your definition I'd place it here.

A sin would be both. At least, according to this definition.

This is where it gets tricky because we don't know which of these criteria Jesus added. I see three possibilities.

1. If an act can't be immoral unknowingly, and all he did was remove the unknowingly, the act became a sin simply because people were told about it, but it was hurtful to others before, and also offended God before.

2. If God just recently started caring. In other words, Jesus is writing the divine law right now, as the statement is being uttered, but the acts in question were always harming other people, and the perpetrators may or may not have known about it.

3. The acts in question always bothered God but never hurt anyone else before, and somehow, by Jesus saying or doing something, the acts begin to hurt people. This is... extremely unlikely. The only even hypothetical way this could be valid is if Jesus started stirring people up to be offended by what did not bother them previously.

In every case but 3, which is a little ridiculous, and if we're still in the hypothetical Bible is all truth, these sins were always hurting people, and then I'm glad Jesus dropped the truth bomb because I do not want to go on hurting people, even if I could have stayed ignorant and been rewarded because I didn't know anything I was doing was wrong.

However, what I will say is that we're in the domain that breaks Christianity specifically because of the reward/punishment dynamic. Take a case like this where there are a lot of rules, and let's say for the purposes of the question that these are all true rules, meaning that doing the things they forbid actually hurt people, and in the reward/punishment dynamic, knowingly violating them brings punishment. (Some of them clearly aren't, but, let's say.)



This dynamic leads logical people to look away from the blackboard and pursue a case where they know as few of the rules as possible so as not to risk knowingly violating them and earning punishment. Even if we say, well, you can't just cover your eyes, that's wilful ignorance, people will, at very least, not go on personal journeys to seek more Mrs. Mutners, and more blackboards, with more rules. But if they're true rules, as in, they forbid things which are actually immoral - actually hurting people - we would want to find every last blackboard.

[Bobcat]

When Jesus spoke of himself he was not speaking personally but in his relationship to God as the servant of God. In so doing he was speaking of all of God’s servants, the prophets, who are the son of man and son of God.

John 16

Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:
9 about sin, because they do not believe in me;

[Miles]

When Jesus spoke of himself he was not speaking personally but in his relationship to God as the servant of God. In so doing he was speaking of all of God’s servants, the prophets, who are the son of man and son of God.

Good grief. Where do you get your information? Chapter and verse please.

John 16
Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:
9 about sin, because they do not believe in me;

Please note that Jesus is speaking to his disciples when he was talking about himself "Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away," and not in any relationship to God as the servant of God, but to his disciples as humans "the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. . . . ."

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