On Psalm 109 and Faith

[Morrigoon]

Originally Posted by flippyshark

The idea of god being unable to dwell in the presence of sin seems odd to me because it puts an "unable" next to a presumably all powerful entity.

On the other hand, if phrased as "God is everywhere, but is angered by sin, and cannot (or will not) accept a sinful person into his eternal kingdom," that sounds more like the phrasing I was brought up with.

(If Jesus is co-equal with god and is of the same nature, he clearly was able to hang about with sinners during his earthly life. Did he have an ability that God the father did not? This is the sort of question that is often answered with the phrase "it's a divine mystery." Answers like that were like live bait to some in my Sunday school classes of yore.)

If you take "hell" to mean the complete absence of God, and if you accept hell as the punishment for sin, then in order for Jesus to take on the sins of the world, he had to take on their punishment too, which is the absence of God within him. Only then could he truly "suffer" for their sins, thus paying their spiritual debt so that everyone thereafter could be saved from hell themselves by accepting his sacrifice.

Or something.