Christians on Facebook Part II

 Another response from Christine of Christians on Facebook and, of course, my reply. Do you think she's provided proper and satisfactory evidence?

Christians on Facebook

Anthony, there is much historical evidence that Jesus was real and was indeed crucifed  - however the Bible tells us why this happened - which seems to be your question - what is the biblical proof that He died for my sin using biblical evidence? (which you will discount anyway seeing as you do not believe it but despite that - here goes.....)

1Cor 15:1-4 The gospel is that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and then He was resurrected on the third day.

Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

Romans 4:25-5:2 He was delivered over to death for our sins and then was raised to life to put us right with God. By faith in this, then, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

Romans 10:9-11 If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are put right with God, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame."

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

I believe the Bible makes it very clear who Jesus is and why He died - I believe what the Bible says about Jesus dying for my sin. There may not been historical evidence that this is the reason why He died - and that is where faith comes in - I believe the Biblical account. 

Thanks, 

Christine.

My Response

 

I must say, without intending to insult your intelligence, that the logic behind what you’re saying is something along these lines:

I recently read a book. It’s called The Lord of the Rings. In it, there is a supreme evil called Sauron and he is trying to destroy the whole world. He keeps sending his army of Orcs (they exist by the way, and the reason I know is because it says so in the book) against all of the peoples of the world. But that’s ok because there is this guy who would be king and he’s coming to save us from these terrors. His name is Aragorn and he’s the rightful ruler. He will rise to the throne and there will be peace.

Now I could take that for complete truth, but I know better, even though Tolkien refers to his work as a history for England. But at least I’ve seen evidence of the existence of the creator of this story. There are many people alive today who have literally shaken the hand of Tolkien and have heard him speak (not just in their heads) and have spoken to his face. I know where he is buried and if we dug up his grave, his bones would still be there; he’s not conveniently disappeared from any evidence of existence. I find it hard to think of faith as nothing more than ignorance when the basis for belief is simply a book written centuries ago by many different people who tend to contradict each other on a number of important particulars. 

You start your response by saying that there is much historical evidence for the reality and crucifixion of Jesus and then finish by saying that there may not be historical evidence to support why he was crucified. I’m interested in your non-biblical evidence. I know you can look in the bible and find anything to back your belief. It makes sense since what you believe is the bible. I'm not discounting your biblical evidence simply because it's the bible, but because it has thus far served as your only source of evidence. If we took everything from only one source of evidence the Earth would still be flat.

What I would love to see is some non-biblical evidence in support of these biblical ‘truths’. Must there not be more reason for faith than being told that if you have faith, the bible is true? If you have faith, the Koran could be true, or the Talmud, or The Lord of the Rings. It could be, or it could be that the infancy of our species needed an explanation before science, and then a number of greedy men took advantage of those explanations and our species' gullibility and played many of us for fools.

Peace&Love