Discipleship 101
a beginner's guide to
Christianity
Chapter 7
Why did Jesus
have to die?
Jesus had an amazingly
productive ministry, teaching and healing thousands. He attracted large crowds
and had potential for much more. He could have healed thousands more by
traveling to the Jews and gentiles who lived in other areas.
But Jesus
allowed this work to come to a sudden end. He could have avoided arrest, but
he chose to die instead of expanding his ministry. Although his teachings
were important, he had come not just to teach, but also to die — and he
accomplished more in his death than in his life.
Death was
Jesus’ most important ministry. This is the way we remember him, through the
cross as a symbol of Christianity or through the bread and wine of the
Lord’s Supper. Our Savior is a Savior who died.
Born to die
The Old Testament tells us that God appeared as a human being on several
occasions. If Jesus wanted only to heal and teach, he could have simply
appeared. But he did more: he became a human. Why? So he could die. To
understand Jesus, we need to understand his death. His death is a crucial
part of the gospel and something all Christians should know.
Jesus said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). He came to give his
life, to die, and his death would purchase salvation for others. This was
the primary reason he came to earth. His blood was poured out for others
(Matthew 26:28).
Jesus warned his disciples that he would suffer and die, but they didn’t
seem to believe it. “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go
to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief
priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third
day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never,
Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’” (Matthew 16:21-22).
Jesus knew that he must die, because the Scriptures said so. “Why then is it
written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected?” (Mark 9:12;
9:31; 10:33-34). “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to
them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself…. ‘This is what
is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day’”
(Luke 24:26-27, 46).
It had all been according to God’s plan: Herod and Pilate did only what God
“had decided beforehand should happen” (Acts 4:28). In the Garden of
Gethsemane, Jesus asked if there might be some other way, but there was none
(Luke 22:42). His death was necessary for our salvation.
The suffering servant
Where was it written? Isaiah 53 is the clearest prophecy. Jesus quoted
Isaiah 53:12 when he said: “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the
transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what
is written about me is reaching its fulfillment” (Luke 22:37). Jesus,
although without sin, was to be counted among sinners. Notice what else is
written in Isaiah 53:
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered
him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for
our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that
brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like
sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord
has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
For the transgression of my people he was stricken.... Though he had done no
violence ... it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer ...
the Lord makes his life a guilt offering.... He will bear their
iniquities.... He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the
transgressors (verses 4-12).
Isaiah describes a man who suffers not for his own sins, but for the sins of
others. And though this man would be “cut off from the land of the living”
(verse 8), that would not be the end of the story. “He will see the light of
life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify
many.... He will see his offspring and prolong his days” (verses 11, 10).
What Isaiah wrote, Jesus fulfilled. He laid down his life for his sheep
(John 10:15). In his death, he carried our sins and suffered for our
transgressions; he was punished so that we might have peace with God.
Through his suffering and death, our spiritual illness is healed; we are
justified—our sins are taken away.
These truths are developed in more detail in the New Testament.
Dying an accursed death
“Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse,” says Deuteronomy 21:23.
Because of this verse, Jews considered any crucified person to be condemned
by God. As Isaiah wrote, people would consider him “stricken by God.”
The Jewish leaders probably thought that Jesus’ disciples would give up
after their leader was killed. And it happened just as they hoped — the
crucifixion shattered the disciples’ hopes. They were dejected and said, “We
had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21).
But their hopes were dramatically restored when Jesus appeared to them after
his resurrection, and at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit filled them with new
conviction to proclaim salvation in Jesus Christ. They had unshakable faith
in the least likely hero: a crucified Messiah.
Peter told the Jewish leaders, “The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the
dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30). By using the
word tree, Peter reminded the leaders of the curse of crucifixion. But the
shame was not on Jesus, he said—it was on the people who crucified him. God
had blessed him because he did not deserve the curse he suffered. God had
reversed the stigma.
Paul referred to the same curse in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from
the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed
is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” Jesus became a curse on our behalf so
we could escape the curse of the law. He became something he was not, so
that we could become something we were not. “God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2
Corinthians 5:21).
He became sin for us, so that we might be declared righteous through him.
Because he suffered what we deserved, he redeemed us from the curse of the law. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.”
Because he suffered death, we can enjoy peace with God.
Message of the cross
The disciples never forgot the shameful way that Jesus died. Indeed,
sometimes that was the focus of the message: “We preach Christ crucified: a
stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor¬inthians 1:23).
Paul even called the gospel “the message of the cross” (verse 18). Paul
reminded the Galatians that “before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly
portrayed as crucified” (Galatians 3:1). That was how he summarized the
gospel.
Why is the cross good news? Because on the cross we were redeemed. Paul focused on the cross because
it is the key to Jesus being good news for us. We will not be raised into
glory unless our sins are removed from the record, unless in Christ we are
made “the righteousness of God.” Only then can we join Jesus in his glory.
The crucifixion makes it possible.
Paul says that Jesus died “for us” (Romans 5:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:14; 1
Thessalonians 5:10); he also says that he died “for our sins” (1 Corinthians
15:3; Gal. 1:4). “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter
2:24; 3:18). Paul also says that we died with Christ (Romans 6:3-8). Through
faith in him, we participate in his death.
It is as if we were on the cross,
receiving the curse that our sins deserved. But he did it for us, and
because he did it, we can be justified, or counted as righteous. He takes
our sin and death; he gives us righteousness and life. The prince became a
pauper, so that we paupers might become princes.
Although Jesus used the word ransom to describe our rescue, the ransom
wasn’t paid to anyone in particular—this is a figure of speech to indicate
that it cost Jesus an enormous amount to set us free. In the same way, Paul
talks about Jesus redeeming us, buying our freedom, but he didn’t pay
anyone.
Some have said that Jesus died to pay
the legal demands of his Father—but it can also be said that the Father
himself is the one who paid the price, by sending his Son for this very
purpose (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). “By the grace of
God he might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9).
God loves people—but he hates sin, because sin hurts people. God wants everyone to repent (2 Peter 3:9), but those who don’t will
suffer the result of their sin.
In the death of Jesus, our sins are forgiven. But this does not mean that
a loving Jesus appeased or “paid off” an angry God. The Father is just as
merciful as Jesus is, and Jesus is just as angry about sin as the Father is.
He is angry at sin because sin hurts the people he loves. Jesus is the Judge
who condemns (Matthew 25:31-46), as well as the Judge who loves sinners so
much that he dies for them.
When God forgives us, he does not
simply wipe away sin and pretend it never existed. He teaches us throughout
the New Testament that sins are taken care of through the death of Jesus.
Sins have serious consequences—consequences we can see in the cross of
Christ. It cost Jesus pain and shame and death.
The gospel reveals that God acts righteously in forgiving us (Romans 1:17).
He does not ignore our sins, but takes care of them in Jesus Christ. God
presented Jesus as a sacrifice for our forgiveness. “He did this to
demonstrate his justice” (Romans 3:25). The cross reveals that God is just;
it shows that sin is too serious to be ignored. Sin has consequences, and Jesus volunteered to suffer the
consequences on our behalf.
The cross demonstrates God’s love as well as his justice (Romans 5:8).
As Isaiah says, we have peace with God because
of what Christ did. We were
once enemies of God, but through Christ we have been brought near (Ephesians
2:13). In other words, we have been reconciled to God through the cross
(verse 16). It is a basic Christian belief that our relationship with God
depends on the death of Jesus Christ.
Christianity is not a list of things to do—it is faith that Christ has done
everything we need to be right with God—and he did it on the cross. “When we
were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son”
(Romans 5:10). God reconciled the universe through Christ, “making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20). If we are
reconciled through him, all our sins are forgiven (verse 22)—reconciliation,
forgiveness and justification all mean the same thing: peace with God.
Victory!
Paul uses an interesting image of salvation when he writes that Jesus
“disarmed the powers and authorities” by making “a public spectacle of them,
triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). He uses the word for a
military parade: the winning general brings captured enemy soldiers in a
victory parade at home. They are disarmed, humiliated, put on display.
Paul’s point here is that Jesus did this on the cross.
What looked like a shameful death for Jesus was actually a glorious triumph
for God’s plan, because it is through the cross that Jesus won victory over
enemy powers, including Satan, sin and death. Their claim on us has been
fully satisfied in the death of the innocent victim. They cannot demand any
more than what he has already paid. They have nothing further to threaten us
with.
“By his death,” we are told, Jesus was able to “destroy him who holds the
power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). “The reason the Son of
God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). Victory was won
on the cross.
Sacrifice
Jesus’ death is also described as a sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice draws
on the rich imagery of Old Testament sacrifices. Isaiah 53:10 calls our
Savior a “guilt offering.” John the Baptist calls him the Lamb “who takes
away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Paul calls him a “sacrifice of
atonement,” a “sin offering,” a “Passover lamb,” a “fragrant offering”
(Romans 3:25; 8:3; 1 Corinthians 5:7; Ephesians 5:2). Hebrews 10:12 calls
him a “sacrifice for sins.” John calls him “the atoning sacrifice for our
sins” (1 John 2:2; 4:10).
Several terms are used to describe what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
Different New Testament authors use different words or images to convey the
idea. The exact terminology or mechanism is not essential. What is important
is simply that we are saved through the death of Jesus. “By his wounds we
are healed.” He died to set us free, to remove our sins, to suffer our
punishment, to purchase our salvation. “Dear friends, since God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
Michael Morrison
To
the next article in this series:
Responding to the crucifixion |
