Why Did Jesus Die?

So why do Christians make such a big deal of the cross? There’s no denying that the cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith. But why?

On the surface, Jesus’ death should have been an embarrassment to the early church. Outsiders viewed it as such. The apostle Paul acknowledges this when he says:

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (1 Corinthians 1:20-25).

"A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." Even Jews who knew the Hebrew Scriptures like the back of their hand were offended by the idea of a crucified Messiah. Non-Jews viewed Jesus’ crucifixion as lacking any sense or wisdom. Why would anyone choose to go through something so horrifying and shaming? Any attempted explanation was viewed as a rationalization for the fact that Jesus lost the battle against Rome and the powers of darkness. For the vast majority of Jews and Gentiles, Jesus was an impostor and a loser.

Of course, without Jesus’ resurrection, I wouldn’t be writing this post, and Christians wouldn’t be celebrating Holy Week. So, again, why did Jesus die?

When summarizing the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, there’s a line where Paul says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” Paul doesn’t spell out what Jesus’ death has to do with our sins. Some reduce the cross to the idea that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. Sometimes this is called “penal atonement.” Properly understood, there is a biblical basis for this perspective. However, given how God usually works and how Jesus normally taught, it would be surprising if Jesus’ death wasn’t an incredibly rich, multidimensional, paradoxical, parabolic event with a variety of meanings and implications. I believe the New Testament confirms this.

So here are my seven ways to understand the cross, which are in no way meant to be exhaustive. Actually, these are broad categories under which any number of specific understandings, metaphors, and analogies can be placed. These categories all start with the letter “F”, which has frankly been helpful for me in remembering them over the years. Each of the seven contains a deep pool of meaning, so I will only be scratching the surface in this post.

1. Mucked Up

I hope you’ll excuse my language, but there’s no use beating around the bush. The cross reveals just how mucked up we are as a race. I mean the human race. No person or group gets a pass. Unfortunately, some Christians have focused almost exclusively on the role of Jews, fueling anti-Semitism that produced countless pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust. Jesus’ death was itself a kind of holocaust on behalf of all people, including his enemies. Both Jews and non-Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. Even Judas, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, betrayed him to the authorities. As Jesus was being interrogated, Peter, when pressed, denied he even knew Jesus. All Jesus’ disciples abandoned him before the end.

As a race, we’re a hot mess, and this includes the church. The support of so many Christians for the insanity and inhumanity of the Trump administration is itself aberrant and bizarre. I’m reminded of the second of the 12 steps: “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” and of the prophet Jeremiah’s analysis: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). The need for the cross is universal. As the apostle Paul wrote: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

I’m not saying that we are only mucked up. There is also so much good in the world, even in those who turn a blind eye to evil or try to justify it. Naomi Shulman writes:

My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on ‘politics,’ instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.

In case you’re wondering, I absolutely include myself in this appraisal of the human condition.

2. Mucked

I'm sorry if it sounds like I’m repeating myself. Here, I’m not just talking about our general condition but the specific thing we did to Jesus and what should have been the consequence. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Peter addressed a Pentecost festival crowd and revealed to them that they had crucified their own Messiah, the object of their centuries-long hope:

Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36).

Peter's indictment had to be devastating for those who dared to believe him. If Peter was right, all hope was lost; they had committed the most heinous and unpardonable of sins. Some frantically cried out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” They knew they were mucked.

And they didn’t realize the half of it. Jesus wasn’t just their promised Messiah, but the Son of God, God the Son, God himself.

3. Forgiveness

Peter responded to the crowd by saying:

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:38-39).

While hanging on the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” During Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, Jesus spoke the following words over the cup of blessing: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). There isn’t space here to explore how it was that Jesus’ death accomplished this forgiveness. But virtually everyone agrees that forgiveness is one of the central biblical ways to understand the cross.

What’s not always noted is the connection between God’s forgiving us and our forgiving one another. The apostle Paul wrote:

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 4:32-5:2).

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you (Colossians 3:13).

To my knowledge, forgiveness between people is never discussed in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Now it becomes a requirement – for the sake of Christ’s mission and the world's healing, even prompting the radical prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” What is forgiveness? It’s saying, “I will no longer hold this against you.” Note the word “hold.” The Greek word for forgiveness wasn’t originally used for forgiveness. It simply meant to release or surrender. That God has done this with our sins, and that we should do this with each other’s sins, is central to the gospel story and message.

When Jesus forgave, he broke the cycle of retribution and violence.

And it’s hard. Forgiveness is one of the ways we take up our cross. Then again, Jesus wouldn’t have required it unless he intended to help us. It’s for this specific purpose that Jesus breathed his Spirit on his disciples:

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (John 20:21-23).

4. Freedom

Many Christians equate the word “redemption” with forgiveness. But that’s not entirely right. The word “redemption” means "liberation." The first time the word is used in the Bible is to describe God’s liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt. Yes, Jesus wants to set us free from the guilt and shame of sin, but even more importantly, he died to set us free from sin itself. A forgiven alcoholic is still an alcoholic. In fact, forgiveness can even be part of the cycle of addiction, as is the case with many of our cycles of selfish, addictive, self-destructive behavior. Real freedom involves being liberated not only from the guilt of our sin but also from the power of sin itself.

During his ministry, Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The word “ransom” refers to the price paid to free a slave. The old Oxford group folks used to say that sin is “binding, blinding, deadening, and propagating.” It’s incredibly addictive, oppressive, and contagious.

Let’s take this a step further. Yes, Jesus wants to set us free from particular sins, but it’s sin as a power that he most wants to help us with. For example, in his letter to the Romans, Paul’s magnum opus on salvation, Paul uses the word “sins” four times, but uses the singular “sin” over 45 times. Before Paul became a Christian, he’d been a Pharisee, fiercely fastidious about obeying the law and avoiding sin at all costs. Looking back, he realized that it wasn’t just a particular sin but the power of sin or the “sin power” that led him to persecute the followers of Jesus. Like I said, this sin power is binding and blinding. It certainly was for Paul.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul brings together the forgiving and liberating power of the cross:

God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:13b-15).

Jesus disarmed both earthly and spiritual powers and authorities. Specifically, he defeated the dark powers of sin, death, and the devil. In this theologically dense passage, Paul writes:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:1-3).

Before his death, Jesus said:

Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out (John 12:31).

Our pastor, Rebecca Bell, recently compared what happened on the cross to the Big Bang. It set a quiet revolution of forgiveness and freedom in motion, slowly liberating and healing all creation.

Yes, healing. The freedom the cross sets in motion is not just freedom from guilt, freedom from sins, and freedom from sin, but from the consequences of our sin and sins – namely, the suffering. Suffering takes a toll and wields an enormous amount of power over our lives – physical suffering, emotional suffering, and spiritual suffering; mental illness, poverty, oppression, trauma, and every form of violence. The prophet Isaiah predicted this connection between the cross and healing:

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.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

    each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4-6).

Even though Jesus defeated the dark powers of sin and suffering, death and the devil, this doesn’t mean they are out of the picture. In other words, to be free of them doesn’t mean we are rid of them. That won’t happen until Jesus returns. But we no longer have to let them rule over our lives. Jesus said:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

Paul writes:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you will be its desires.... For sin will have no mastery over you, because you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:12, 14).

As the body of Christ on earth, we do whatever we can to relieve people's suffering, just as Jesus did. But until all suffering is eliminated, we rely on Christ and his Spirit as we navigate through the suffering in our lives and learn and grow from it:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Romans 5:1-5).

5. Future

Hope. The last meal Jesus shared with his disciples was a Passover Seder, in which Jesus connected his death and resurrection with Israel’s redemption story. This story included not only freedom from slavery in Egypt but also eventual entry into the promised land of Canaan. As we apply this redemption story to Jesus’ death, there are implications for both our ultimate and immediate futures.

Our “Promised Land” is the New Creation. Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning and guarantee of that ultimate restoration in the coming age. But what if we die before then?

Jesus was crucified next to two bandits, likely revolutionaries. While one of the bandits hurled insults at Jesus, the other rebuked the first bandit, saying, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).

Jesus promised the bandit that he would be with Jesus that day in a place called Paradise. The Bible says very little about life after death before Jesus’ return because it primarily emphasizes the coming age.

The gospel writer John connects Jesus’ death with eternal life in one of the most familiar verses of the New Testament:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The apostle Paul writes:

Now if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him (Romans 6:8).

So the cross of Jesus covers not only our sins but our future.

6. Fellowship

We were made for deep connection – for love. The cross of Christ tells us the one thing that is most important to know about God: "God is love" (1 John 4:16). Sin, by definition, hurts relationships. It distances us from God and one another. Jesus experienced this distance profoundly on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The apostle Paul said that Jesus “became sin” for us, fully subjecting himself to its isolating, alienating power. He felt rejected by both God and man.

That doesn’t mean he believed his Father had forsaken him. His words are a quote from Psalm 22. No doubt, Jesus had the entire Psalm memorized as it pointed to so many details surrounding his death. While this Psalm begins with the words Jesus spoke on the cross, later the psalmist affirms that God hadn’t abandoned him:

For he has not despised or scorned

            the suffering of the afflicted one;

he has not hidden his face from him

            but has listened to his cry for help.

And then, an even more hopeful note:

All the ends of the earth

            will remember and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations

            will bow down before him.

Jesus came not just to forgive our sins, free us from the power of sin, and heal the suffering connected to sin, but also to reconcile us to God and one another – to restore the fellowship God had in mind when he created the world.

In this respect, the cross is our teacher. It is the new gold standard for how we are to love one another in maintaining this fellowship:

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command (John 15:12-14).

7. Faithfulness

During the Last Supper, Jesus reflected on his death by saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood....” (Luke 22:20). So the concept of “covenant” is essential for understanding the meaning of Jesus’ death. What makes a covenant – like marriage, for example – a covenant is the promise to remain faithful to one another and to any specific commitments included in the covenant. One of the primary themes of the Bible is God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel, even though the Israelites repeatedly checked out and even rebelled. While many people associate the “Old Testament God” with judgment, his most defining characteristic is actually his remaining faithful in the face of his people’s unfaithfulness. No event epitomizes this tension more fully than the cross. The cross represents the ultimate act of human unfaithfulness to God as well as the supreme act of God’s faithfulness to us.

When Jesus told his disciples that they would need to take up their cross if they wanted to follow him (e.g. Mark 8:34), he used the cross as a symbol of faithfulness. The cross isn’t just an extreme example of God’s faithfulness; it also contains a call for us to remain faithful to him, even when it’s emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and physically challenging. Interestingly, the Greek word for faith also means faithfulness. Genuine faith is faithful.

This is how the NET Bible translates Galatians 2:16, in line with the thinking of many contemporary scholars:

We know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

So how can we remain faithful? If Israel couldn’t do it, what makes us think we can? There are countless examples strewn throughout Christian history of individuals, churches, and nations who claim the Christian label while being unfaithful to the person and teachings of Jesus. Sometimes we may think we're being faithful, when the opposite ends up being true.

This is another area where many Christians don't understand how the cross is supposed to work in our lives. This is often reflected in our misunderstanding of Christian baptism. For many believers, baptism is a way to be cleansed of our sins and receive a kind of barcode guaranteeing eternal life. Listen to what the apostle Paul says baptism means, especially in relation to the cross:

Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:3-4).

So we are to consider (Paul uses the word "reckon") ourselves as having died and risen again in Christ. At the heart of Paul’s theology and spirituality is the conviction that Christian living is life lived “in Christ.” Paul uses this phrase over 200 times in his letters in one form or another. The Christian life isn’t just lived because of Christ, or for Christ, but in Christ.

Now listen to this updated version of the familiar verse in Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (2:20).

Because Christ lives in me now, his faithfulness lives in me and enables me to be faithful. It’s Jesus’ death and resurrection that unites us with Christ and makes “a new life” possible (Romans 6:4) . So my faithfulness is actually his faithfulness working in me.

Interesting stuff, eh? I’d say, revolutionary.

Which is what the cross was and is, in all the ways I’ve mentioned in this post and in so many other ways as well. There are definitely risks to making a “list” of ways to understand Jesus’ death. Like I said, this is my attempt to name some broad categories under which specific biblical stories, analogies, and understandings could be placed. But Jesus’ death was an event, not a PowerPoint presentation. Summarizing these points in the kind of cursory manner a blog post requires inevitably removes us many steps from the mystery and majesty of what Jesus endured and accomplished. I’ve hoped to expand your thinking and imagination, not to limit them. What Christ has done for the world is astounding! And according to Scripture, one day everyone will bow in wonder when they realize what actually happened – beginning with Jesus’ birth, right through to his death and resurrection and beyond:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own

advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

        even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

    and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

    to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11).

Yes, we're mucked up, and because of what we did to Jesus, we were as good as mucked. But wonder of wonders, through the very deed that should have finished us, God forgave and freed us, saying with his final breath, "It is finished." His death conquered death and opened a way to a glorious future, reconciling and reconnecting us to God and one another, while proving to be the consummate covenant partner, promising to live with and in us, if we'll have him.

We just need to say, "Yes." No conditions. No excuses, Just yes. As we are.

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