Why did Jesus have to die?

I like this Orthodox priest's explanation. Starts at 18:45.

He didn't die for the original sin, but for every sin we have commited. Why? Because sin is an offense against God, doing something against the will of the one who has created us and given us everything. God is eternal and infinite, but humans are finite. Offenses against God have infinite consequence that we cannot repay because we are finite. This is just. But God is loving and merciful, so He himself became human, so He could suffer our penalty for us, and because of His infinite nature, this was sufficient to atone for all the sins humanity has commited and will commit.

He died so that all who believe in Him could have eternal life. Because we are too imperfect to be able to merit our own salvation. It's because of this sacrifice that no matter how grievously you sin, as long as you have a genuine will to repent, all you have to do is use the sacrament of Confession to be freed, and to be able to participate in the greatest joy and only true purpose a human can have - the eternal life.

The Watergate Seven cracked in less than a day. You expect me to believe that twelve people adamantly defended a hoax, and died for it?

The wage of sin is death. Under the Old Testament Law, all sins had to be paid for with some kind of death, either by the execution of the sinner or by the sacrifice of animals. When we say that Christ fulfilled the Old Testament Law, we mean that Christ took the place of all the religious executions and animal sacrifices that would ever have to be paid for sins in the future. Now our sins no longer have to be paid for with death, because they already have been paid for with the most important death in history. If Christ hadn't sacrificed Himself, the Old Law wouldn't have been fulfilled, and legally we'd still be obligated to stone each other and slaughter cattle at the Temple.

I dunno, man. There are people out there who believe all of NASA is hiding the "fact" that the Earth is flat. There are people out there who believe the entire US Government is hiding the "fact" that 9/11 was an inside job. There are people out there who believe tens of thousands of people are hiding the "fact" that the holocaust was fake.

Given that, is 12 people creating a hoax really all that difficult to believe?

Technically, only 4 wrote it down. The other 8 are only written about, but didn't write anything of their own.

I agree. Geeze, people, stop acting like I came up with this. Read what I wrote:

It ain't me.

Woul you be willing to die for a hoax?

Five, actually. John wrote one gospel, three epistles, as well as the book of Revelation. Peter wrote two epistles. James, son of Zebedee, wrote an epistle. James the Just wrote an epistle. Matthew wrote one gospel.

Me? No, but a lot of people would. Look how many people die for Islam. People love to die for hoaxes.