Do you think that Jesus thought that what was happening to him was fair?

It wasn't "fair" or "just" that it should happen, but it was good that it did,and he accepted it. No Christian seems justice,honor, or fairness for ourselves because of it. Jesus knew all of this, so did the essence of God from eternity. In fact, the question can be answered simply: mercy overrules strict justice out of love of desire for the betterment of the person (all mankind in this case, and creation as a whole) it is given to. God (Jesus) gave up claims to fairness and justice out of love.

Really? It says that the righteous man shall live (implying a moral obligation for him to keep living), compared to the sinner who is to be put to death (verses 10-13). How is Jesus’ death therefore not a direct violation of God’s law?

Bold claim, to say the least. But not completely without warrant, given verses like 2 Cor 5.21 (God making Himself sin). What tradition do you belong to, by the way?

If God were merely just and fair, we would all burn in hell deservedly. But it is through His Divine Mercy that we are saved, and He exercised Divine Mercy through the Cross for our sake out of Love. It wasn't fair or just, but merciful and loving. That is why when Christ saw the violence, He knew what must be done.

What tradition do you belong to? Protestants love to go on and on about how God is so perfectly just that he is actually incapable of violating the rules of justice, and they have a point. If God can violate justice out of love and mercy, then he can forgive people in the absence of a crucifixion or an atonement (as Muslims believe). How does what you’re saying not make the work of Jesus on the cross of no effect?

Exactly. To sin is human, to forgive is divine. God is not just, He's compassionate. We'll never be perfect and, if it weren't for His grace, no one would go to heaven, since none of us deserves it. Practically every denomination places some emphasis on God's grace, and admits there's no salvation without it. Jesus knew getting crucified was not fair. Turning the other cheek is not fair. Forgiveness, by definition, is not fair. We Christians should not strive for justice. We should seek a just society, yes, but have to be willing to forgive our debtors.

This user got it right too.

Justice is for humans, to create a society that's viable and operable. It's a social virtue. As a personal virtue, mercy supersedes justice.
If God is incapable of something, then there can be something that can do everything He can and also do what He can't; a being superior to God. Negating omnipotence means negating God as the supreme being. That's not heretic, that's plainly not christian.
Jesus did not just come to forgive our sins, he came to give us the example, the idea of the perfect man, a path to follow. And that's a real idea, one with physical existence; since being human involves living in this world, the ideal of human perfection has to become incarnate, or it wouldn't be perfect. Jesus came not only to forgive, but to give you a path to salvation, and that path wouldn't have been opened if He hadn't come to Earth.

Catholic. An a-dogmatic Catholic? I rather be labelled a heretic than to defend dogmas I don't agree with or I don't understand, but I'm catholic at my core.

It seems like you're asking "can God create a stone He could not move?" If we confess that God is All-Knowing, All-Powerful, and All-Present. In the Orthodox Church, this concept could be understood as a Divine Mystery, something that can never be fully understood. God was fully contained in the Ark of the Covenant as in the Womb of Mary. How can a being who is All-Present be at once fully contained in a space? We will never have definitive answer, this is a matter of Faith.

I would suggest as an answer that God chooses to do something and that becomes a rule to us. For He is the creator of all and in all, and everything exists by His Grace. Therefore, whatever He chooses to do becomes law to us, something He respects but is not fully law to Him. God can save whosoever He wills to save, but because He respects free-will He allows us to sin. He has shone the way to Him, the Law laid down to us and for us (that being the Cross). He COULD save anyone, but he would not save those who reject the Cross. But that is between the individual and God, who know the heart of the individual, to decide and not us.

Christ, being fully human and fully God, was tempted by satan for forty days. This shows that He had free will. He could disobey God the Father, but He being God the Son chose not to and would always choose not to. Him showing reluctance to die is a demonstration of His true free will as fully man and fully God. God is Life, so for Him to truly die (and Christ truly died) is another impossibility. Yet, being God, He chose to for our sake to suffer. The only time Christ wept was over the death of Lazarus. His final admission before being Crucified was to pray to God the Father for another way but ultimately that His will be done. So Christ truly died, trampled down death by death (and saved those who were in Sheol who had not known Him fully before) and ascended into Heaven and is seated at the Right Hand of the Father.

But this is merely my interpretation and the Orthodox Church has no official teaching regarding the mechanics of Christ and God beyond the numerous "nots" sorted out between ecumenical councils. The Orthodox have very few strict teachings regarding these mechanics, like what specifically happens when we die. We know that we are judged and eventually resurrected, but how that happens is a mystery. I could only say that by reading closely to what Christ teaches and says, He never focuses on justice and fairness, but on Mercy and Love. I also pick up a little hint of resentment but that's probably not 100% Orthodox and is likely my own perspective. There are two similar ways to view the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

I hope this helpful. I'd also say too this is a bit like the Book of Job, where it's really not for us to fully know why God does what he does, or how He does it. But that we should have faith in good and bad times.

Not the question. The question was how what you’re saying doesn’t make the work of Jesus on the cross of no effect, not the earthly ministry. If God is so merciful as you say, and if
then why wasn’t God merciful to Jesus enough to bring him to Heaven without crucifixion?
You are a heretic. Your Jesus is indistinguishable from the Buddha.

Lol. Thanks for your answer.
What are they?

Forgive me, I have fallen into error here. Fr. Thomas Hopko explains this much better than I ever could: ancientfaith.com/specials/hopko_lectures/understanding_the_cross_of_christ
I've become too obsessed with the notion of Christs temptations and doubts that I've lost sight of the actual Cross. Thank you for challenging me, user.

That's a weird Buddah then. Buddah is not God incarnate, nor is he human perfection, nor is he the Son of God.
Fair, though for clarity's sake I did not write this post
Jesus died cause He had to triumph over death. The perfect human, who is reunited with God, can triumph over death (which us regular humans can't do without His grace cause we're sinners).

This post made me laugh, like I don't know why, just the combination of that wojak staring right at me, and that question just made my morning a lot better. No, I don't think Jesus thought it was fair, but people aren't too fair, so he certainly expected it.

OK heretic.
Jesus didn't change His mind about anything.

And the only way for God to triumph over death and to help others to do the same is by being tortured and humiliated? That’s the only way?

If Jesus didn’t think it was fair then the Father didn’t think it was fair either, and you remain dead in your sins.

No. He was the sole sinless one yet was counted among transgressors and was violently executed, and even executed hastily right before Passover just to avoid agitating the masses.
2 Corinthians 5:20-21:

Galatians 3:10-14:

Hebrews 2:14-18:

Hebrews 4:14-16:

And of course see the whole book of Job. Job prefigures Jesus, being a righteous man who suffers for seeminly no just reason. And at the end of the book, God agrees with Job that his suffering isn't divine punishment, and is angry at Job's friends for claiming so.
We don't like in a "just" world. We live in a fallen world, where sin and suffering and death have been introduced by men and by demons, disfiguring God's creation. Jesus willingly goes through these things to rescue us.

Jesus was tempted to change His mind, but He never did - that would have been a sin, or else, that would have made God incosistent and untrustworthy. Either way it means Jesus isn't actually God. As for Him telling the disciples to get swords, it is not that He was getting ready for a physical fight. Read the rest of the chapter.

That is absolutely wrong. God's justice and God's mercy are not separate, distinct things. What you misunderstand is the fact that God's justice is not our justice (see Ezekiel 18:25-29 and the whole Book of Habakkuk).

… Jesus is God. The kenosis of Jesus consists in the fact He willingly submits Himself to death, to rescue us from death. He is not led against His will by the Father, but the divine will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one.

Yes, it's the only way. To save our sins and be the incarnation of God in human form, Jesus had come to life and to face death, like we all do. Why? Because if He doesn't, then He's missing something essential to the human existence: being real. An idea of a perfect human is not a perfect human, it's an idea. Jesus had to become human, incorporate all the failings of humanity onto himself and them triumph over them.
Why is this needed? Think about this, how do you know if a bread is good or bad? Cause you can compare it to other breads, and see were it manages to be better or worse than the rest. If we all ate bread from the same factory, always the same, we'd have no idea of what constitutes a good bread (we wouldn't even have a concept of a "good bread", it'd be just bread, like how we hardly have a concept of how good tasting water is like). Jesus came to be the "perfect bread" for us, so we can strive to be better. Without Him human perfection simply does not exist. That's why he's the path to salvation ("No one comes to the Father if not through me" John 14:6) and also our judge, for he's the standard we're compared to.

So, Jesus had to be real, not just some platonic ideal. And while being real, he had to face the misery of being human and transcend it.

On a side note, this user's link was pretty good. Thanks for sharing it.

I wasn't thinking like that, I was more thinking along the lines of whether people were being fair to Jesus in crucifying him. In terms of fairness from a sacrificial perspective, then I agree.

Just to clarify: God's justice is deliverance for the poor. God's justice is not to avenge Himself but to avenge those who are persecuted, to rescue them from their sufferings. From a human perspective Jesus's death was absolutely not just - He was sinless, perfectly righteous, a scapegoat for us - yet from God's perspective it was perfectly just -because- He submitted Himself willingly to the injustice of this world, to rescue us from it. In God, justice and mercy are not opposed to one another.

Looking it over, I have a better answer. I am citing from the Orthodox Study Bible, relying mostly on the commentary. The first point comes from Matthew 4:3 ("Now when the tempter came to Him, he said "if You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.") the commentary goes on to explain "…in His divine Nature, Christ shares one will with the Father and the Holy Spirit; He can do nothing of Himself (John 5:30), apart from the Father. But in His humanity, He possesses free will and at all times must choose to remain obedient to the divine will of the Father."

Expanding on this, John 5:30 ("I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and my judgement is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.") the commentary goes on to explain "The divine will is common to the three Persons of the Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-for all fully share the same divine nature. When the Son is said to obey the Father, this refers to His human will, which Christ assumed at His Incarnation. Christ freely aligned His human will in every aspect with the divine will of the Father (see note at 6:38) and we are called to do likewise."

To expand further again, John 6:38 ("For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the Will of Him who sent Me.") the commentary goes on to explain " Since Christ has two natures, He has two wills-the divine will and a human will. The Sixth Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople (680-681), proclaims these two wills of Christ do not work contrary to one another, but rather 'His human will follows, not resisting nor reluctant, but subject to His divinity and to His omnipotent will.' See notes at 1:14 and 5:30."

To finish this explanation of the will of Christ, John 1:14 ("And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.") the relevant commentary focuses particularly on the line "The Word became flesh clarifies the manner in which the Son and Word of God came to His people … pointing specifically to His Incarnation. The Word became fully human without ceasing to be fully God. He assumed complete human nature: body, soul, will, emotion, and even mortality-everything that pertains to humanity except sin. As God and Man in one Person, Christ pours divinity into all of human nature, for anything not assumed by Christ would not have been healed."

To quickly surmise this point; Christ is fully God and fully Human, possessing two wills, the divine will and the human will, in one person to purify all of humanity. Let's move on to the question asked; "Do you think that Jesus thought that what was happening to Him was fair?"

First, I will again cite the talk by Fr. Thomas Hopko about the Cross as explanation of fairness, justice, and mercy. Quickly surmising it, Christ suffered crucifixion and deliver divine justice not because we strictly deserve it but that the divine justice is love. The concept of Christ being the scape-goat or the blood debt for us is true, but it is not that we are paid for that is just but the act in and of itself as an expression of divine love that is just. Hopko explains this far greater than I could, please read or listen to it.

(cont.)
So Christ, being of both Wills, knew that what He was doing is absolutely fair and just. What is alluring about this question is more in the spirit of it, "was Christ eager about this?" That is almost a resounding no.

Let's go to Matthew 26:39 ("He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying 'O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.") the commentary here says "This cup refers to Christ's impending death. According to His divine nature, Jesus willingly goes to His death. As a man, He wishes He could avoid it, for it is the mark of humanity to abhor death*. He prays if it is possible that it be taken from Him, thus giving abundant proof of His human nature. Nevertheless, Jesus is without sin and completely subjects and unites His human will to the Father's divine will." Christ proceeds to pray this a second time.

*This abhorration of death is found again in John 11:35 "Jesus wept." In which Christ weeps over dead Lazarus before ressurecting him.

This prayer is found again in Mark:41-44, preceded by Mark:35-38 ("And He said to them, 'When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything?' So they said, 'Nothing.' Then He said to them, 'But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: 'And He was numbered with the transgressors.' For the things concerning Me have an end.' So they said, 'Lord, look, here are two swords.' And He said to them, 'it is enough.'") The commentary says "The sword is not to be understood literally (compare to vv. 49-51 [in which Christ reprimands the violence used and heals the injured servant]), but refers to the living word of God in battle against sin … because the disciples were thinking of the swords literally, Jesus abruptly ends the discussion with the words "it is enough" or better translated "Enough of this!".

Because Christ is fully Divine, He knew it was just and that He must do this, but because He was also fully Human he too abhorred death and prayed that He might be able to avoid it, but still submitted His will to that of the Fathers.

Roman Catholic with protestant (esp. Lutheran/pentecostal/Anabaptist) influences