Hello, I’ve been thinking a lot about John 3:16, and…

Hello,

I’ve been thinking a lot about John 3:16, and I was hoping I could get some people to weigh in on the questions I have.

I don’t get it.

If He loves us and wants us to be in Heaven with Him, why have Himself killed? To save us from our sin, right, but why did He kill Himself? What does that do? I don’t get it at all.

And I can’t find any other real world example of someone hurting themselves like that as an expression of love. Do you know of any?

It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’m reminded of the time Doug Stanhope mocked the whole idea, saying “I don’t even understand the connection with ‘died for your sins’. He died for your sin, well, how does one affect the other? ‘I hit myself in the foot with a shovel for your mortgage’…”

If God is in charge of who He forgives and wants to forgive us, why not just do that? Why did He have to be tortured and executed, spend a day and a half in hell, then come back? If He so loves the world, why not send us a Valentines card or hug us or make us pancakes?

Is there any other situation where hurting oneself for the sake of hurting oneself is an acceptable demonstration of love?

I’ve asked around some other groups, and some of the as-of-yet unfulfilling responses I got are:

1. Because blood is the essence of life, and His needed to be spilled (presumably because He said so)
2. Because He was unable to just forgive us because then justice wouldn’t be satisfied, so killing Himself was kind of a loophole
3. Because He really wanted us to KNOW that He loves, so He couldn’t just make us pancakes and hug us; He had to die (which sort of implies that we WANTED Him to die, and… we… don’t?)
4. Because He had to go into hell to sort something out with Satan

Any thoughts?