Why the need for Jesus, can God not just forgive us instead of sacrificing his own Son taking a lot of pain and suffering upon Himself? As far as I know Scripture doesn't answer this question.
Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Heb. 9:22 But I don't think that is what you are asking......? I mean you know the scriptures that pertain to blood sacrifice of animals, the law etc.
But why not just forgive us, why the shedding of the blood of Jesus? I think God could just forgive us without Jesus, but since He didn't He must have had a very good resson. So what's the reason God took the hard way?
Sin must be judged to fulfil justice. God takes that justice upon Himself to fulfil love. Both standards, love and justice, are fulfilled at the cross.
Because God so hates sin that He requires the one sinning to die for their sins. However, because He loves us and doesn't want us to die, He decided to take death upon Himself through His Son. Jesus' sacrifice in our place allowed for both the penalty to be paid for our sin and we were spared spiritual death (some will also be spared physical death) and eternity in hell.
Allow me to play an annoying role for a while and ask pesky (almost ungodly) questions. Agree. And God could do it (have done it) without Jesus. But He decided not. There are thousands and thousands of other ways to show His love (fullfil love) to His creatures, but God decided not. It's almost if the choice He made (Jesus) was a necessity. If true, why? Excellent Protestantism, of course I agree. Still doesn't explain why per Hebr 9:22 (among other passages) there can be no forgiveness without the shedding of blood, notable His own blood. But maybe we can agree on that God gave (sacrificed) the most precious He had -- His Son Jesus -- to save His creation out of necessity? And if it was necessary, in the sense that (for example) just forgiveness couldn't save His creation, then why was it necessary?
Also, setting aside the other possible scenarios which He could have used. No other, that I know of, would have depicted just how deep His love is for us. That's one sacrifice I'm sure many of us would not be willing to make.
No punishment? Isa 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.
Absolutely and John 15:13-14 confirms it. Nevertheless the question remains about the necessity to proof how deep His love is for us. Was His love in doubt?
"That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:” Eph 1:10 I think the essential element is the person of Christ, who not only tastes death for men but in His ressurrection brings them into a new creation wherein He reigns forever. Buried with Him, risen in Him.
Of course God can forgive us without Christ's sacrifice, and He always has. I think the idea that Jesus needed to die so we could become acceptable to God and that we could be forgiven holds a very inferior view of a God who seems very petty and powerless to me, honestly. Like, He couldn't come up with a better plan than that, seriously? So then the supposed enormity and power of sin gets played up inevitably, in order to justify such a low view of God. Like sin becomes this extreme power and man becomes this extreme evil to which God needed to respond with this extreme sort of behavior; when in reality nothing like that is the case at all as far as I can tell. Jesus on the cross speaks to me of unconditional acceptance and a beautiful exchange and this precious gift of life for life, humanity for humanity, and ultimately, complete healing, redemption and restoration of everything we are in relation to our Creator. It speaks to me of a God who took a mere few hours to utterly and finally deal with the supposed "extreme" problem of evil, forever and ever. Who made a public spectacle of all the powers of evil and darkness, who showed us "this is the worst they can do; and then death ... but I have the resurrection so you need never fear them again." It's a beautiful object lesson of an amazing mystery that holds us all bound but that finds its most basic solution in simply looking at Jesus there and understanding that evil will in fact not win, sin is in fact not a super power, and God is in fact so incredibly mindful of us that He would identify with us to such a depth and do such a thing for us, in order to bridge the gap and bring us on home. The miracle of Jesus on the cross is not that man became God, but that God became a man. What kind of God have you ever heard of that identifies with His own creation to such a degree that He would become one of us? The Old Testament writers marveled at the fact that God would even show kindness to us and pay attention to us and interact with us at all; they couldn't conceive of the idea of God actually becoming one of us. Unbelievable. It has always been our highest ambition to "become like God" if not actually become a god, or become God and be worshiped and hold all God's power at our disposal. I mean let's face it; it's the stuff man's dreams are made of. Every time we get a little power, we abuse it and expose our silly ambition for what it really is. Every religion has at its core the ascendance of man to God status, or at least becoming one with the divine, somehow. We can't help it; it's in us. Even the goal of atheistic/agnostic humanism is for us to ever-evolve into a higher version of ourselves. To improve ourselves. To set our lowest and base selves aside and somehow manage to transcend it all and become a better version of ourselves, all the time. Christianity is actually the opposite of that. It's not about man having the ambition to become a god; but about God becoming man. Which is the exact opposite of our human ambition. It reveals the absurdity of our own ambitions and aspirations. Because an actual God set aside His own God status and power and loftiness and stooped down as much as possible and made Himself as low as possible to put on a man suit and walk around like one of us; even being born as one of us, going through the entire human experience from literally start to finish. In some tiny random desert country that would have been utterly forgotten, had it not been for this singular event. There He came, born into abject poverty, to live out an existence about as basic and modest and nondescript as you can think of. We speak of Christ's life and death and of the crucifixion and resurrection in theological and rational and sort of "scientific" terms as we examine it all with our minds and basically are forced to invent all these words to try to explain it --- but let's get real for a minute; I doubt very much that any of us actually understand it at all. I know I don't. I'm dumbfounded by the whole thing.
For God to be just, He has to judge sin. These are not just words on a page. For example. Adam and Eve were the first two humans. If Eve asked Adam, "Adam, do you love me?" and if Adam answered, "Who else?" What does it mean. Unless sin is involved and unless there are other people that we aren't involved with to prove our love, there is no wait or measure to the claim.