If Jesus had been God, wouldn't the ransom price He paid have been infinitely higher than what God's own law required?


Email Received:

Like you, I believe that all humans are sinners and need a "supernatural savior" (as you put it) for their sins, and it's true that no ordinary mortal sacrifice would have sufficed. Jesus, though, was no ordinary mortal sacrifice; he was born perfect (Luke 1:35) and remained perfect (Heb. 4:15, 1 Pet. 2:22), as your own web site repeatedly states.

If Jesus had been God himself, though, wouldn't the ransom price He paid have been infinitely higher than what God's own law required (Deut. 19:21)? A perfect man, Adam, had been responsible for the condemnation of the human race; so another perfect man, Jesus, was needed to atone for Adam's loss (1 Tim. 2:5,6). Jesus wasn't God, nor was it necessary for him to be God to pay our ransom price.


Ted's Response:

Jesus was perfect because the perfect Holy Spirit of God came upon Mary, thereby imparting or transmitting the nature of God into the One to be born of Mary. In fact, He would be called "Immanuel" meaning "God with us" (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). Jesus was perfect because He was God; no mere mortal man is capable of being perfect.

Jesus remained perfect and sinless all the days He lived on earth because He was God in human form. No mere mortal ever has been or ever can be born perfect (including Adam) nor can remain sinless throughout life; it is impossible.

Deuteronomy 19:21, among other things, talks about paying with one's life for taking another life: a one-to-one correspondence. Jesus gave up His life as a ransom for the lives of all sinners who have believed in Him so that they will not have to experience the second (permanent) death (Revelation 20:14,15).

If He had been merely a mortal man, His death would have ransomed at most one other man from having to experience the second death. But since He was the infinite God, His death ransomed and paid the penalty for a virtually infinite number of sins carried out by countless numbers of people throughout human history.

I do not accept for a moment that Adam was perfect, nor that he became imperfect because he sinned. Adam sinned because he was imperfect; had he been perfect, he could not have sinned. More about my views on this can be found in my first and last Adam section.

It is absolutely true that a perfect man was needed to atone for and to be the ransom for the sin of Adam, as well as for the sins of billions of other human beings. That perfect man was Jesus, and Jesus was God. See also the following:


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