Jesus Ransom Sacrifice Explained

Mark 10:45: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

1 Timothy 2:5-6: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.”

The Ransom that was Taught for the First 1,000 Years of Christianity

Due to Adamic sin, humans were captive to Satan. Satan had acquired “ownership” over them, and God “had” to somehow, buy them back from Satan! It’s pretty hard to imagine the Creator of the Universe and everything in it, getting over his head in debt to one of his own kids, but that’s what some Christians believe. God, being that he is, well “God”, would look pretty bad if his credit rating ever dropped below 607, therefore he must have felt obligated to pay that debt and clear things up. In effect, God made a deal with the Devil, his kid.

He made this deal with Satan by buying his human kids back from him by killing his first-born kid, Jesus. But God was clever. He “tricked” Satan with a “bait and switch” tactic by resurrecting Jesus!

When Satan complained that he got screwed on the deal, God said, “I said I would kill Jesus, but I never promised not to resurrect him almost immediately after. Now give me back my human kids.” Satan got Punk’d.

This doctrine is what was actually taught for about the first 1,000 years of the Christian era.

Modern Religions Which Teach a Ransom Doctrine Similar to Jehovah’s Witnesses

Today, besides Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are very few religions who believe in the Jesus Ransom Sacrifice Theory.

Here are two major ones who do:

1) The Eastern Orthodox churches: their leaders are the ones with the big scraggly beards and look like they haven’t washed their hair in several months. That is because they haven’t washed their hair in several months. When it comes to their dress codes and grooming, think “Pharisee.”

They also have those big garish churches with the domes, spires and goofy colours and are found in cities where the sun never shines through the thick black fog. You know, the kind of buildings you saw in old vampire movies as a kid and that gave you so many nightmares. Think “Red Square” in Moscow and you’ll get the picture. If history is any indication, I guess people probably preferred to live under Stalin’s Communism rather than have to attend those scary churches and listen to guys with scraggly beards and dirty hair tell them what to do.

2) The Protestant world-faith movement is a very conservative branch of Christianity, which among other things love tent-revivals, whacking crippled people on their heads to make them walk again, lots of screaming, crying and talking in strange languages. But mostly they worship a God who is always (I mean ALWAYS) short on cash and needs more of it. LOTS more of it. But they are REALLY good at doing “the wave” together!

To summarize, when it comes to groups who believe in the “ransom” doctrine, Jehovah’s Witnesses keep pretty good company.

The Common Christian Teaching on the Purpose of Jesus’ Death

Most Christians believe that because of Adam, all other humans were born in sin and pretty much, sin is what humans do best. They believe that to get out of this mess, Jesus came along and died to wash away those sins and take the burden of them upon himself. This was voluntary on the part of Jesus. He didn’t have to do it, unless God had yet another “or else” clause in the deal.

Jesus comes to earth, does a few magic tricks, tells some good stories and pisses off almost everyone. So they hanged him on a giant popsicle stick. A few days later, he’s home again except now he’s drenched in the sins of everyone alive and everyone who was ever alive. The Bible doesn’t quite explain whether he has to be burdened with carrying around all that sin for eternity or not, or whether he can just “wash” it off, but for the moment, everyone was able to dump their sins onto him.

What about the “new” sins, though? What happens to those? I guess they just keep piling on top of Jesus or something. If Jesus only had to carry just my personal sins, that alone would make him a cripple. I shudder to think what he would be like with everyone’s sins, especially those of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, not to mention those of your average politician or real estate agent.

Anyway, for most Christians, that’s sort of how it works. You can see the Jehovah’s Witnesses take on Jesus ransom sacrifice in this article.