When Jesus sacrificed himself and died on the cross, is it really a sacrifice if he could heal himself since he had the power to heal? Basically he died and then healed himself. Is that really a sacrifice? Or did he even heal himself?
Answer
The answer is really based on the meaning of “sacrifice.” Modern English has developed a meaning of sacrifice as giving up something. The original meaning of the word, though, did not have to do with losing something. It comes from the same root word which gives us “sacred” and “sacrament.” The biblical meaning of sacrifice is “that which makes holy.”
Once that is understood, it doesn’t matter whether Jesus raised himself from the dead or whether God raised him. He knew in advance that he would rise from the dead. “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” (Matthew 16:51) But that had nothing to do with his status as a sacrifice.
Without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9: 2-28)
The sacrifice was the offering of blood to God, for the purpose of taking away sin. Unlike the sacrifices of the Law of Moses, this one only had to be offered once.