this is a post i made in one of the facebook forums... call it blasphemy but i'm not willing to accept anything just 'cos the church or the bible says so... and i got a good enough answer from Ariel Castromayor... because whenever i asked someone they'd go... "ah... let me get back to you on that"... or "'cos it says so in the bible"...
Ariel Castromayor (Toronto, ON) wrote:
To answer that question is no easy task.
We need to look at it Theologically (which doesn't relaly apply if you don't believe that Jesus was actually God Incarnate or if you don't believe in the Creation account in Genesis):
You see, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God (God created them to be perfect and live forever, like HIM), until they disobeyed HIM. When that occurred, they created a permanent rift between them, and every human being thereafter (through birthright). That is called the "sin nature" and occurs in every person. Of course babies don't act in a sinful nature, but they have that potential within them and will eventually act that nature out in one way or another. Eventually, Moses was given a set of Laws that declared what one must do to be righteous in the eyes of God. Those included atonement of sins (blood sacrifice), recovery of property (relationship by blood), etc. Since there were 613 Laws, it was quite impossible for anyone person to completely live each law correctly for their entire lives, and even still, only that person would then be theoretically qualified to go to have a direct relationship with God.
Then along comes Jesus.
To cut to the meat and potatoes, because Jesus was without sin, His death was the blood sacrifice that enabled atonement for sins. Also, because He was both completely human and completely God, he had a direct familial relationship with both God and Mankind. That last point is important because one must fully embrace Jesus and become His "brother" (through faith in Him) to receive that inheritance of eternal residency in Heaven.
That's why believing that Christ died isn't enough. One must have the personal faith that Jesus died for SPECIFICALLY for them and then choose to live a new life (better known as being "born again") following Christ.
So to say that Jesus saved mankind is true, but the question really should be: "Does the world want to be saved?"
