How does substitutionary atonement help anything? If we are sinners who deserve death and can never deserve heaven

@BibleData

And how does substitutional atonement get yes closer to that target?

@Pikachu [quote]And how does substitutional atonement get yes closer to that target?[/quote]

It liberates us from sin and death, it teaches us why we had sin and death in the first place, it selects those who are humble enough to learn that, who have faith in the solution, it serves justice, and eliminates the opposition.

The entire Bible is about simply this: the vindication of Jehovah God's name through the ransom sacrifice of Christ Jesus. It isn't just about our salvation.

So, the tree of knowledge of good and bad. What did it stand for? Jehovah's sovereignty. Man, under the influence of Satan (resistor, opposer) the devil (slanderer, deceiver) chose to decide for himself what was good and bad before he was able to make that call.

@BibleData

[quote]It liberates us from sin [/quote]

No it doesn't.
We keep sinning right up until we die. It pays for the sin...but that gets us no closer to the target of becoming sinless. It does not make us the kind of being worthy of being in god's presence.
Still not seeing a good reason for this. It seems rather that it's a big, dramatic gesture that the faithful can point to and rally around more than an action that is actually logically coherent with the theology.

@Pikachu [quote]No it doesn't.
We keep sinning right up until we die. It pays for the sin...but that gets us no closer to the target of becoming sinless. It does not make us the kind of being worthy of being in god's presence.[/quote]

Yes it does. I wouldn't use a term like "in god's presence" but yes it does liberate us (mankind) from sin after we die and the old system is replaced and the new set up. New heavens and earth. Satan, death and sin (along with all of those who oppose the new system) are destroyed. You can't have sin removed on an individual level if the system is the same.

[quote]Still not seeing a good reason for this. It seems rather that it's a big, dramatic gesture that the faithful can point to and rally around more than an action that is actually logically coherent with the theology.[/quote]

I suppose that is because most of it you have been introduced to is pretty much just that. A big dumb fake show.

@BibleData

[quote]yes it does liberate us (mankind) from sin after we die[/quote]

How? How does it liberate us from sin after we die in a way that we could not otherwise achieve?

@Pikachu Sin is no more when we are resurrected. When we no longer miss the target.

@BibleData

And we need the substitutional atonement for resurrection because...?

@Pikachu I thought we covered that. I keep thinking the reason it doesn't make sense to you is that you have the cartoonish religious version in your head and it won't get out. That version doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fit the Bible.

I can explain this further with first a short answer. The tree of the knowledge of good and bad represented, to Adam, Jehovah God's sovereignty. That is, his right, as our creator, to decide for us what was good and what was bad until we, like children, matured to the point where we could do that for ourselves within the parameters of that sovereignty. Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. The knowledge in this case is experience. Good and bad had been defined by Jehovah and at that point was very simple. Fill the earth and subdue it, that was good. Don't touch or eat the fruit of the tree, that was bad. The knowledge Adam and Eve had acquired was the decision to decide for themselves what was good and what was bad. That's why they suddenly considered nudity to be bad. (Genesis 2:25; 3:6-11)

The footnote to Genesis 2:17 in the 1966 Jerusalem Bible explains it really well: "This knowledge is a privilege which God reserves to himself and which man, by sinning, is to lay hands on, Genesis 3:5, 22. Hence it does not mean omniscience, which fallen man does not possess; nor is it moral discrimination, for unfallen man already had it and God could not refuse it to a rational being. It is the power of deciding for himself what is good and what is evil and of acting accordingly, a claim to complete moral independence by which man refuses to recognize his status as a created being. The first sin was an attack on God’s sovereignty, a sin of pride."

So, this is where we missed the target.

The long answer explains it further by giving you a more accurate understanding of the Bible and so, hopefully, allowing you to more fully understand the meaning of the short answer.

God created Michael first. Then Michael, as Jehovah's master worker, created everything through Jehovah's Holy Spirit or active force. (Genesis 1:26; 3:22; Proverbs 8:22-31; Colossians 1:15-17; John 8:23; 17:5) The word Holy means sacred, or belonging to God. Spirit means an invisible active force, like wind, breath, mental inclination. Something that we can't see but that produces results that we can see. So, the holy spirit is God's active force, invisible to us. The first thing that Michael, through Jehovah's holy spirit, created was the spiritual heavens. This was followed by the spirit beings, often called angels. (Job 38:4-7) Then the physical heavens, or space as we know it, including Earth, the stars, sun and moon and finally everything on Earth eventually concluding with Adam and Eve.

The angels existed for a very long time before man was created, and they had time to mature, like children, so that they knew what was good and bad from their creator. It is important that you understand that being created perfect is much like being born a baby. Parents see their newborn children as perfect, but think about it. They can't walk, talk, feed themselves, go to the bathroom properly - they are bald, toothless, chubby, defenseless little creatures. Perfect in the sense that they have great potential and innocence.

By the time man was created the angels had already reached their potential.

On the seventh day, when the creation was complete, God "rested." This doesn't mean that God was tired or that he stopped working, it means he set aside a period of time in which we were allowed to mature, as the angels had done. When we would have accomplished this, we could, as the Bible says, enter into God's Day of rest. In other words, the seventh "day" or more accurately, period of creation, continues to this day. So, the knowledge of what is good and what is bad is the eventual possession of that maturity. The ability to decide for ourselves what was good and what was bad, predicated upon an acknowledgement of our own accord, of our creator, Jehovah's rightful sovereignty. (Psalm 95:11; Isaiah 40:28; John 5:17; Romans 8:22; Hebrews 4:1-5)

This is why, once Adam rejected that concept by deciding for himself what was good and bad before he had matured enough to best do that, Jehovah had to shorten his life from living forever to eventually dying. Because if he and his offspring, mankind, were allowed to live forever under those conditions, they would never reach that maturity and they would bring about an endless series of chaos and destruction.

So, in effect, Satan charged Jehovah with the crime of withholding some knowledge from mankind. He knew this wasn't true, but he wanted to try and seize control of the power that Jehovah's sovereignty represented even if it meant destroying all that it represented and everything else in the process. Even destroying himself. Like a jealous child breaking a toy so no one else can have it.

But to Jehovah justice is very important. You can't just wave away a crime due to the damage that has been incurred. So, he allowed the charges against him to be tried, as in a court of law. He allowed Satan's theory to be tested in a manner of speaking. With the stipulation that 1. he wasn't going to allow it to prevent his original purpose for the angels and mankind from being fulfilled beyond what was necessary to establish his defense. That they should live forever in peace, in heaven and on earth respectively. And 2. that justice would be done.

So immediately after Adam's sin Jehovah put in motion the plan for all of this to take place while Satan's theory was being tested. In a basic sense the steps were as follows.

1. Select a group of people.
2. Form a nation for those people.
3. Demonstrate to them what was going on by establishing a law which they couldn't keep due to their imperfection, or the incomplete nature of their lack of the aforementioned maturity.
4. Provide a way out through a Messiah or Christ, namely, Michael, who volunteered due to his love for mankind and his father, Jehovah's purpose. So, Michael came to earth as a man, Jesus the Christ.

One final point of consideration regarding mankind. From Jehovah's perspective the life he created, the life he gave us, is sacred. You may recall that sacred means belonging to God. According to the Bible our soul is our life, represented by our blood, so blood is sacred. To kill someone, or take their soul, requires the payment of the killer's own soul because it is taking something sacred to Jehovah. So, the blood sacrifices represented a respect for or acknowledgement of his created life granted to us. For example, if a person was found murdered and no one knew who did the killing then they had to sacrifice a bull and spill its blood on the ground as a symbolic acknowledgement of God's possession. Sacred life. A sort of gesture of justice. (Deuteronomy 21:1-9)

Since we inherited sin through Adam then the only man who could pay the price for the blood of Adam, which had been perfect and without sin from the start until he did sin - was the blood of a man who was without sin.

@BibleData

Thanks for the detailed account. I hadn't heard the idea before that Jesus was Michael which is neat.

So we need substitutional atonement because our own sinful blood is not enough to cover the debt of Adam who was also a sinner just like us?

@Pikachu Yes, the difference being that Adam hadn't started out that way.

@BibleData

So our blood is not good enough because another sinful human being was created with a perfect body? Obviously not a perfect mind or his choice would not have been to sin.