WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO DIE?

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.”  (1 Peter 3:18 NIV)

To understand why Jesus had to die it is important to remember both the Result of the Cross (costly forgiveness of sins) and the Pattern of the Cross (reversal of the world’s values). On the cross neither justice nor mercy loses out -- both are fulfilled at once. Jesus’ death was necessary if God was going to take justice seriously and still love us. This same concern for both love and justice should mark all our relationships. We should never acquiesce in injustice. Jesus identified with the oppressed. Yet we should not try to overcome evil with evil. Jesus forgave His enemies and died for them.

Why then, did Jesus have to die? Even Jesus asked that question. In the Garden of Gethsemane He asked if there was any other way. There wasn’t. There isn’t. On the cross, in agony, He cried out the question, “Why!?” Why was He being forsaken? Why was it all necessary? The answer of the Bible is -- for us! 

-- Timothy Keller in “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism” 

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JESUS CAME TO GIVE HIMSELF

“Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”  (Isaiah 53:4-5 NIV)

Jesus did not come merely to disclose God’s character. He came to make it possible to be remade in the likeness of that character. He came to redeem us from what we are and remake us in the likeness of what He is. He is not merely a teacher, a doer – He is a redeemer.

He came not merely to give His word, His example. He came to give Himself. He became like us that we might become like Him. He was baptized into the world’s toil for thirty years, baptized into our temptations for these years, and baptized into our sin at the end. He became sin for us at the cross. He died between two malefactors like one of them and cried the cry of dereliction that you and I cry when we sin: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” If “life is sensitivity,” then there was infinite life, for here was infinite sensitivity – every [person’s] hunger His hunger; every [person’s] bondage His bondage; and every [person’s] sin His sin. “He bore in His own body our sins upon a tree.” (1 Peter 2:24)

Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t explain it; I bow in humility and repentance at the cross, at the wonder of it, that God should give Himself for me. I bow and I am redeemed! 

-- E. Stanley Jones in “A Song of Ascents”

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A WONDERFUL EXCHANGE

“For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”  (2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT)

This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners; for by a wonderful exchange, our sins are now not ours but Christ’s, and Christ’s righteousness is not Christ’s but ours.

-- Martin Luther

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JESUS’ HUMBLE ACT

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross.”  (Philippians 2:5-8 NRSV)

When we look again at Jesus' humble act of foot washing [at the Last Supper], we see why the disciples were unable to immediately grasp the significance of the act. Jesus lowered Himself into the position of a lowly slave, He served like a slave, He washed the disciples' feet like a lowest-of-the-low slave, because ultimately He was preparing to die the dehumanizing death of a slave. In essence this is the connection made in Philippians 2:5-8.

As He washed out dirt from between the disciples' toes, Jesus performed a parable of the cross. The disciples could not see the symbolic anticipation, not here, not now. The full explanation for why Jesus washed their feet would only become clear after the substitutionary atonement of the Savior on Good Friday. Then they would look back and understand the act of deep humility in the cross that brought us a once-for-all, head-to-toe, cleansing from our sin.

-- Tony Reinke in an article entitled “The Creator On His Knees”

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CHRIST’S SUBSTITUTIONARY SACRIFICE

^“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 6:23 NRSV) We are the guilty parties who should have hung on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. And indeed, our deaths would have satisfied the need for justice -- the guilty would have been punished. But God’s love also needed to be satisfied. His love was compelled to extend forgiveness and make possible an eternal relationship between humans and their Creator. Only a sinless substitute, Jesus the Son of God, could accomplish that.

The Apostle Paul explains it this way: “God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT)

Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice fulfills a prophecy that Isaiah uttered some 800 years earlier: “The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6b NKJV)

Theologians have often referred to this as Jesus’ “vicarious” suffering; that is, He suffered in our place. As our substitute, He took the punishment that we deserved.

-- Clinton E. Arnold in an article entitled “The Ultimate Sacrifice” in Discipleship Journal, Sep/Oct 2006

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