Welcome back to Shemus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and I was recently asked by a friend of my brothers,

why it is Christians believed Jesus had to die for our sins. Wasn't there some other way God could have done things?

And the answer is actually, yes, there was another way God could have done things. So I want to address this in two parts.

Longtime viewers of the channel may know I've covered some of this ground before, but I wanted a sort of standalone episode, particularly for people who may

not be as familiar with all the ins and outs of Christian theology. And I want to address two

things. Number one, did Jesus have to die for our sins? And number two, if he didn't literally

have to, why in the world did he?

Now, on that first question, did Jesus have to die for our sins?

Many Christians will claim, in fact, that he did, and will usually cite to something like, well, God is a just judge.

And so the holiness or the justice of God, his hatred of sin meant that he needed to punish it.

You'll hear arguments like this.

The price of sin of separating ourselves from God is death.

Since God is perfectly just, he couldn't simply ignore or forgive humanity's sins.

God is holy and righteous. His uncompromising nature

means he must judge and punish sin. Now, if you've heard that, you might be reasonably wondering,

wait, God can't forgive. He wouldn't be holy if he was forgiving. That doesn't seem to match with

the biblical presentation of God at all.

And you're right, it doesn't.

This is applying a misunderstanding of the concept of justice to God in an inappropriate way.

Allow me to explain.

I'm going to be relying heavily on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, who think you're going

to see as, number one, rightly considered

...