While pondering the biggest topic in all of Christendom (including in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), a new concept was revealed to me when this thought formed in my mind:

“An unjust act can never satisfy the demands of justice.”

And that’s when I realized one of the biggest problems with the crucifixion of Christ – that it’s an illogical and impossible attempt to justify unjust justice.

If Jesus Christ was perfect, he never sinned. If he never sinned, he did not deserve any penalties for any sins. If he suffered as a penalty for all sins even though he did not deserve to, then he paid a penalty for all sins unjustly.

If justice requires a penalty for sin, and if that penalty must be felt subjectively rather than paid for objectively, and if that penalty is the suffering that comes from committing sin, then only the sinner can suffer for their own sins, and not someone else. Especially not someone else who has never sinned, because the penalty is an effect of the commitment of sin on the sinner, and the effect of committing an act on the one who committed it is non-transferrable, for how can one who did not commit a sin feel the effect of one who did?

Or is God double-dipping on the penalty for sin? Is there a penalty on the sinner for the commission of sin as well as an additional penalty, and the additional penalty is what Jesus paid? But aren’t penalties for sins contingent on the commission of those sins? Or do the penalties and their corresponding payments exist independently of the sins that they penalize? For each lie told you can pay with an hour of twisty feelings in your guts, for example – suffer now, sin later, you can even prepay all future lies if you want, even if you never told one.

Mormonism has regularly taught some version of how Jesus “paid the price” for our sins, that he bought or ransomed us with his blood, and/or that his blood cleanses us. Blood itself often seems to be emphasized and mentioned much more than the specific suffering that led to that blood, or than suffering generally. This implies that apart from everything else, it was blood, specifically the blood of the innocent Christ, that paid the price for all sin. Innocent blood as payment for sin – turning the whole thing into some sort of financial transaction, with a perfect and innocent benefactor paying off an insolvent and guilty debtor’s debt – with blood…

Objectively speaking, blood doesn’t clean, it stains. And how can it be used as currency for payment without making the payee something of a sadomasochist, a fetishist, or a vampire? What does God do with this sacrifice of blood, what satisfaction does it bring him, what purpose does its spilling serve?

I don’t believe it’s right for an innocent person to be punished for sins they didn’t commit, regardless of who they are and whether they want to be punished or not. And if it’s not right, it’s wrong. Morally wrong. It’s morally wrong and it should be avoided at all costs. Especially when the people who sinned already suffer for those sins, and will continue to suffer for them more in the future if necessary. And if there is an additional “penalty” or “price” or “punishment” beyond those already naturally imposed, let it be paid by the sinner who deserves it and is capable of paying it, and not by a perfectly innocent “Savior.”

Some might say that although intentionally punishing an innocent for the sins of the guilty is normally wrong and sinful in our natural, mortal world, in God’s supernatural, immortal world it is a necessary, righteous act, even if it’s just that one time. But if we get our morals and our knowledge of good vs. evil from God, aren’t they also God’s morals and God’s knowledge of good vs. evil? If so, then by committing an unjust act against Jesus, inflicting the penalty for all sin upon he who was without sin, isn’t God sinning, or at a minimum acting unjustly, just this once, albeit to achieve a righteous purpose? Perhaps you could make some kind of case that it’s not unjust or sinful if he is punishing himself rather than being punished by someone else, which would necessitate a worthy debate over who is God the Father and who is Jesus the son and what role does each play. But isn’t injustice still injustice and isn’t sin still sin, regardless of its outcome or who committed it?

I’ve sometimes heard in the church, if not explicitly then implicitly, that we humans are not capable of paying the full penalty for our sins, which is why we need a Savior, as implied here in the Gospel Topics essay “The Atonement of Jesus Christ” at: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/atonement-of-jesus-christ?lang=eng, especially in this specific quote:

“The only way for us to be saved is for someone else to rescue us. We need someone who can satisfy the demands of justice—standing in our place to assume the burden of the Fall and to pay the price for our sins. Jesus Christ has always been the only one capable of making such a sacrifice.”

Or, alternately, we have the words of God himself (Jesus in this case), here below in Doctrine and Covenants 19:16-18, which seem to be telling us that actually we are capable of suffering the full penalty for our sins, and we will if we don’t repent. Yet curiously God also seems to be saying here that sinners must repent or they must suffer all that God suffered, not just for their own sins. Is this another case of the kind of unjust justice inflicted on Jesus? Jesus did not sin, but suffered the penalty for all sin. An unrepentant sinner sins his own sins, but suffers the penalty for all sin, even though Jesus already suffered the penalty for all sin. Here is what God/Jesus says about it in Doctrine and Covenants 19:16-19:

16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; 17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; 18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit – and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink –

In Mormonism, it seems, the same sin can be suffered for more than once by both the innocent and the guilty. Isn’t it unjust to inflict the same suffering as punishment/payment on both the innocent and the guilty for the same sin? Isn’t it doubly unjust for causing both the innocent to suffer and the guilty to pay a debt that was already paid? If God, whether it’s God the Father or God the Son, wants suffering as penalty for sin, why not simply accept the suffering of the one who committed the sin, suffering which surely is contingent upon being the sinner, and leave poor Jesus alone? And to paraphrase Richard Dawkins, if God wants to forgive people for their sins, why doesn’t he just forgive them? To that I add why not simply forgive them after they’ve suffered for their own sins and repented, and relieve Jesus of an infinite burden of unjust justice, because don’t you think he already had a hard enough time hanging up there on that cross like that?