Legend,
It makes sense in the context of the whole thing. Let me try to sum it all up...God made a universe with a set of rules - he had to create it in that way because of his nature as God. Humans broke the rules, so God created a loophole (Jesus) which allowed him to prevent us from being punished.
The focus is on the fact that WE do not have to go to hell under the system. There is no appeasement - it's not like God is demanding blood or anything; his very nature demands that sin be destroyed.
How does this even make sense?
1)God must destroy sin.
2)God cannot be destroyed.
.: By becoming taking the punishment for our rule-breaking, God can prevent ANYONE from dieing.
How is it a cop-out if there's no suffering? This assumes that God is bloodthirsty, which can't be shown. But in this case there would have been suffering; you've forgotten that Jesus was fully human and simultaneously fully God. The human bit suffered.
If I implied that sin would instantly dissapear it was a mistake on my part.
quote:
So, the way I see it, the only point of the whole Jesus saga is that we don't get instantly killed by God when we sin (like in the O.T), but rather be denied a chance in the afterlife. It's only the method of punishment that's changed, nothing else.
You've lost me here. How would this deny us a chance in the afterlife? How did this change the method of punishment? However you're right on the spot about preventing "sudden death" (though God didn't "instantly kill" everyone in the OT for sinning); the doctrine called 'general grace' says that Jesus's death was enough to absorb (even retroactively) God's necessary destruction of sin.