Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Over the past few weeks, we have been asking the question “Why?” We first tackled the little question of the meaning of life: we were made to bring God glory.  Everything about us is meant for that purpose, to extend to God the central position in everything.  We revolve around God, not the other way around.  So last week, when we asked the question, “Why the church?” we have to remember that the church’s purpose is to bring God glory.  Everything we do should bring God glory.  Anything else is missing the mark.

This comes in handy when we consider this week’s question: Why did Jesus have to die? 

This is a very good question, and it gets to the heart of our entire belief system.  One way of putting this question is this: If God is so good, why doesn’t he just forgive?  To ask God to simply look the other way, like a kindly grandfather tsking “boys will be boys” would be to ask God to be someone who he is not.  God is just. 

As humans, we’re hard-wired to desire justice.  Imagine you’re driving down the road and some guy in a speedy convertible comes zooming up, tailgates you for a few miles, then finally passed you in a no-passing zone, cuts you off, and waves dismissively at you.  If you’re like me, your blood pressure is probably through the roof!  Now imagine that you drive on down the road and you’re distracted by red and blue lights up ahead.  You approach and you see… that same convertible, pulled over by the road with a state trooper handcuffing the driver.  You’re probably thinking “He got what was coming to him!”

Or you’ve done the hard work of studying for an exam while you know your classmate has a plan to cheat and get an A… and then that classmate gets caught and gets a 0. 

Or the Buckeyes finally beat an SEC team in a BCS bowl game.

We desire justice!  This is part of God’s image in us; He made us to desire justice, because to desire justice is to desire God.  God is completely holy, without the slightest impurity.  He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.  A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. (Deuteronomy 32:4) To be anything less would render him less than God.  And to allow anything less than perfection into heaven, into God’s presence, would diminish heaven to something lesser as well.

If you’ve got a problem with that, how would you like to drink a glass of water with only a little bit of poison in it?  Or eat brownies with only a little bit of dog waste in them? 

Likewise God demands perfection.  Jesus tells his followers to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

God’s holiness requires perfection from anyone who would approach him.  Without perfection, we cannot approach God. As we recognize from scripture and from our own experience, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23).  So something has to give.  God will not just forget that we sinned, because that would allow something less than perfection in his presence.  God’s justice requires sacrifice.   In his book The Passion of Jesus Christ, John Piper puts it this way: “If God were not just, there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die. And if God were not loving, there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die.  But God is both just and loving.  Therefore his love is willing to meet the demands of his justice.” 

The Apostle Paul expressed it this way: If righteousness could be gained by the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2:21)  In other words, if we could gain perfection on our own, then the answer to today’s question would be that Jesus’ death doesn’t mean anything.  But to us who were stuck in our sin, Jesus’ death means everything.

Sin requires sacrifice.  If you’ve ever read the book of Leviticus, you’ll see that God put great stock in purity and prescribed sacrifices to regain that purity.  It is clear that it is the blood is the important part of the sacrifice; the life of every creature is its blood. (Leviticus 17:14b)  So the Levitical law required blood sacrifice on the altar (just as an aside, I am not on an altar; this is a stage. We have a Communion Table, but not an altar.  We have a kneeling rail, but not an altar.  The altar is where sacrifice was made, and to call another piece of furniture an altar is to change the meaning of words).  As God’s people, chosen and called out, blessed to be a blessing to the nations, Israel failed.  And we have failed as well. And the animal sacrifice we see in Leviticus was never sufficient for God’s plan, for our perfection. 

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1-4)

The Old Testament symbols of the sacrificial system don’t help us in our quest for godly perfection. Solomon built the Temple as a dwelling place for God’s glory, but the glory left the Temple (Ezekiel 10:18a). Then the Temple was destroyed and later rebuilt by Herod, a mockery of itself, to be destroyed once more by Rome.  Now a mosque sits where God’s Temple used to be.  The kings, priests and prophets, those who God sent with promises that He would deal with the world’s evil, are themselves “overwhelmed by the weight and force of evil itself.” (N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God).

We need a pure sacrifice, which only comes in the Person of Jesus Christ.  So Jesus took Israel’s calling upon himself, taking on himself the direct consequences of Israel’s sin and failure, “literally dying for their sins.” (N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God).Jesus’ death fulfilled God’s plan perfectly.  We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10) He has set us apart and made us perfect.  Forever.  Not only did Jesus death take away the guilt and punishment of sin, but it actually makes us perfect, taking away the actual sin itself!  By his death, Jesus completely defeated evil.

According to N.T. Wright, “Evil is the force of anti-creation, anti-life, the force which opposes and seeks to deface and destroy God’s good world of space, time, and matter, and above all, God’s image-bearing human creatures.  That is why death, as Paul saw so graphically in 1 Corinthians 15:26, is the final great enemy.” Evil and the Justice of God

“To be released from sin is to be released from death, and since Jesus died in a representative capacity for Israel, and hence for the whole human race, and hence for the whole cosmos, his death under the weight of sin results immediately in release for all those held captive by its guilt and power.”

When Jesus returned to Galilee in Luke 4, we see him reading from Isaiah’s prophecy, saying ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ … Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke 4:18-19, 21b)  I have always seen Jesus preaching good news to the poor, healing the blind and releasing the oppressed and proclaiming Jubilee, but I wondered about the freedom part.  But deliverance was what Jesus was all about. Again, from N.T. Wright: “This is what it looks like when YHWH says, as in Exodus 3:7-8, “I have heard the cry of my people, and I have come to set them free.”   Jesus’ death was all about freedom.  No longer would humanity be held captive by sin and death.  No longer would Satan have power over us to hold us in captivity!  Satan attacks by inciting us to sin and accusing us before God.  Satan’s very name means “accuser.”  When Satan comes and makes accusations, he is tricky.  He looks at our history, reminding us of our sins, of how bad we’ve been, of where we’ve fallen short.  Then he tells us we’ll never be anything different… His power over us is through his accusations, but Jesus, in taking our place, satisfied God’s requirement for justice. 

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. (Colossians 1:21) This is where Satan wants to leave us.  As enemies of God.  Yes, we sinned and could not even stand in God’s holy presence.

But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation (Colossians 1:22)

We who are in Jesus Christ are holy.  We are set apart.  Satan doesn’t have a leg to stand on.  He has no basis for accusation. Don’t allow Satan to distract you from Jesus’ redemption. As I reminded you last week, the Gates of Hell will not prevail against Jesus’ Church, namely because of our status before God, based on Jesus’ sacrifice.

Jesus died to bring God glory. It brings God glory when his creation is reconciled to him and when we thus continue in our faith, free from the guilt, reality, and punishment of sin.