Jesus died for OUR sins and arose to instill hope that, in him, WE can survive sin’s lethal consequences, too.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he could not have died in the first place against his will.  No force on earth could have taken his life if he had not consented to it.  So why did he consent?  If he did not “have to” die, why did he do it?  Obviously, if he could rise from the dead after the fact, then he must have had the power to prevent that contingency in the first place.  The happy answer is that Christ died to give us hope beyond our own inevitable deaths due to sin.  Thus Jesus died FOR our SINS so that we could similarly be raised from the dead, i.e., BEYOND the FATAL CONSEQUENCE of sin.  [5/20/10]