Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.

The big picture: fellowship with God, broken by sin

• The host's frame, carried from the verbatim layer: the question is a very basic, very important one, asked in the week of the death of Jesus and his resurrection — why did Jesus have to die? The story begins with the death of Jesus, and then his resurrection. To someone who does not know the story, it can seem strange: Jesus, who has to die.
• That's the theme of the entire Bible. Look at the big picture first, then at some scripture. God created humans to have fellowship with him; he's the source of life. And when humans sinned, they broke that fellowship — because God is holy, he cannot participate in sin. Sin is rebelling against God's plan; sin is contrary to God's nature. So that sin cut them off from God. And if God is the source of life — the Book of James says every good gift, every perfect gift comes from God — then everything we think of as good — grace, love, joy, peace — God is the source, God is the author. Even sinners, or atheists who do not know God, to the extent that they enjoy common grace — the blessing of God on this planet, goodness, morality, love, joy in relationships — that comes from God, although they don't know God is the source. When people sin, they cut themselves off from that, and the alternative is death, or separation from God: whatever existence it is, it's without God. That is not because God is trying to punish people, or send them to a hell, an eternity without him; it's the inherent nature of the choice. If God is holy and the source of life, and you break off the fellowship — I don't want to be holy, I don't want to have relation with God — now you've cut yourself off from life.
• God could have said: okay, that's your choice — you're obliterated, annihilated, shoved off into outer darkness forever. But God is also love, so he says: I want a relationship. And so he provided a plan of salvation. Now, God can do all things in the sense of being all-powerful, but he cannot contradict his own nature. He couldn't have fellowship with sin. And when he created us — and the angels before us — he created us with freedom of choice, because he wanted love, and love, to be love, has to be freely chosen and freely given. Even God, although he's omnipotent, cannot force you to love him: he could force you to have the right feelings, but that would be a puppet, or a robot. If he wants a freely chosen, mature relationship — mutuality — he can't force it, because that's a logical inconsistency.

Scriptures: James (book-only)

Justice required death — a sinless substitute could take our place

• So God's alternative is this: humans have gotten themselves in a predicament; by justice they deserve to be eternally separated; they deserve eternal death — that's what they've chosen. But because I love them, I'm going to offer them a way out. God's justice would not allow a sinful person to have fellowship with God — that's incompatible with his nature. So God did something that couldn't be done: God came in the flesh as a genuine human being, like us — like the ones who had sinned — and he said: I'm going to present, as a man, as a human — Jesus Christ, the son of God — live a holy, sinless life that restores fellowship with God. So as a man he restores fellowship with God, so that all those who would believe on him could be restored to fellowship. But because sin has consequences — separation from God — Jesus had to undergo that punishment, that separation. It was only temporary in nature, but it had to be real: so he had to die physically.
• In other words: Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. So the very nature of justice in the universe — the holiness and justice of God — required that sinful humans die. But the only alternative is: a sinless human, who did not deserve to die, could voluntarily take their place. So Jesus, as a human being, has paid the price for our sins: he took the punishment of our sins upon himself, he paid the penalty for us, he shed his blood for us. These are all different, inadequate ways of saying it — he won the victory for us. It's not just one-dimensional; there are multiple ways of looking at it, and I think all are true. When he rose from the dead, he conquered death, he conquered sin: he won the victory over sin, death, and the devil — and we can now, by faith, share in that same victory.

Scriptures: Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23

Three words for the one work: propitiation, redemption, justification

• Now the scripture. In Romans 3, after verse 23 — for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God — Romans 3:24, in the New King James as he reads it, says: being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation — that's a theological word, meaning a sacrifice of atonement — by his blood through faith. Here are various ways of trying to describe what Jesus Christ did for us. Propitiation is the language of the temple in the Old Testament, where a priest offers a sacrifice and that animal is slain, so that death becomes a substitute for human death. But, as he notes, an animal can't really take the place of a human — that was only symbolic, and by faith foreshadowing what would happen. Jesus is the true sacrifice of atonement: a true human being, equivalent to us, who can pay the price for us, who can take our place. In the language of the temple, he is our propitiation — the sacrifice of atonement that fulfills the requirements of God's justice.
• Then the word redemption: an analogy of a slave market. In the Old Testament — it was not the same as slavery in modern times — someone who owed a debt they couldn't pay could sell themselves into slavery, really indentured servitude, for a limited time; if not set free earlier, they could be set free in seven years. But in the meantime, if a close kinsman said: wait a minute, I'll pay the price — whatever they owed, that they sold themselves into slavery for — then they could immediately be delivered. That word is redemption: another way of looking at the death of Jesus is that it's like redeeming us — paying the price to set us free.
• And justified is the language of the courtroom: to justify means to be counted as righteous. Even though someone is convicted as a criminal, they could be given a pardon. A pardon doesn't mean they didn't do it; the pardon doesn't mean they didn't deserve it. The pardon says: I choose to remove the consequences, and treat you as if you'd never done it — even though you did it, I'm going to treat you as if you didn't. It's mercy. And so that's another thing Jesus has done for us. These are all not necessarily different works, but different ways of looking at the same work.

Scriptures: Romans 3:24

Where justice and love met: God himself paid the price

• So to summarize God's plan: we sinners, separated from God, deserved death. But Jesus wanted to set us free from that death, so he took our place; he died for us. And since he's the infinite God manifest in the flesh, his death could substitute for an infinite eternity, and for an infinite number of people. His one death — it's really God himself paying the price to satisfy the requirements of his own justice. The Psalms talk about mercy and justice met together — they kissed each other. What seemed irreconcilable: God's justice demanded death; God's love says, I don't want them to die. They seemingly could not be reconciled — but through the death of Christ those two qualities of God were reconciled, because Jesus, as God manifest in the flesh, paid the price. So God's justice could be met, but God's love could be fulfilled.
• And so the best way to explain the death of Jesus Christ: it's not an angry God punishing Jesus; it's not a father punishing a son; it's not the father hates us but the son loves us. From a oneness perspective, it's God providing the sacrifice for us himself — to set us free from the consequences of our own sins. But the death of Christ shows this could not be done by just making it go away — oh, pretend you never did this. No: sin is so serious that there have to be consequences. But it also shows the worth of each human being: that God loved us so much, he's willing to pay whatever it takes to redeem us. It's a beautiful depiction of both the justice of God and the love and mercy of God.
• It may seem strange to those not raised in a religious culture, not raised with a temple or anything like that — but if you look at the courtroom, the slave market, the temple, there are various ways probably everybody can relate to. In essence: when we say his death, we really mean his death, burial, and resurrection — or his blood, or the cross, or the atonement; we mean the whole thing, because it's through his resurrection that he's vindicated: he wins the victory. So the best way to look at it: Christ's death and resurrection has set us free from the consequences of our own sins, so we can be restored to fellowship with God.

Scriptures: Psalms (book-only)

Scripture index: James (book-only); Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; Romans 3:24; Psalms (book-only).