Why Did Jesus Die?

Here is a much longer take on the same subject. I first preached this sermon in 1972 as a young pastor, but have revised and updated it since that time. It was adapted from one by a theologian whose work over the years has influenced me greatly. 

Why Did Jesus Die? 

Background Texts: John 10:17-18; 12:23-32 

Sermon Text: John 19:17-18, 28-30 

So they took Jesus, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them . . . After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.” A bowl of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on a reed and held it to His mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, He said, “It is finished”; and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. 

What is the meaning of this scene? Through twenty centuries the Christian Church has proclaimed the crucifixion as the decisive event in human history. But why? William Hull has suggested that as Jesus hung there on that central cross, it probably seemed to the onlookers like a mighty question mark standing against the sky. Once even Jesus Himself seemed to cry out against what was happening, saying, “My God, My God, why . . . ?” But there was only silence in answer. It was as if His fists were beating against the gate of Heaven. But then a last cry came from His lips, and it was all over. 

One of Dostoevski’s characters, gazing on a painting of this scene, was moved to exclaim, “Don't you know, a man might lose his faith by looking at that picture?” And well he might, because behind that cross for a time there lurked the sinister suggestion that at the center of the universe there was not a loving Father, but just a heartless indifference. His death seemed to be positive proof of the ultimate senselessness of the universe. And yet, in this Fourth Gospel His final cry was “It is finished!” And this was not merely the last defeated sigh of a martyr, but rather the victorious cry of a conqueror. This cry means that in the view of the Gospel writer Jesus had accomplished precisely what He had set out to do. 

For all who looked on the scene, the cross would have appeared to be an absurd way to save anybody. The Jewish leaders, the Roman Prefect, the milling crowds, even the closest disciples—none of them could see any sense in it. As the Gospels all make dramatically clear, only one Person knew exactly what was going on, and that was the Prisoner Himself, Who seemed to take complete command of the entire situation. 

Any search for the significance of the cross must begin by seeking His understanding of that event, insofar as the Biblical records reveal it. It is probably impossible to arrive at a total understanding of His convictions about His death, and in just one sermon we can only scratch the surface. But when we examine the Biblical evidence, several convictions of Jesus about His mission become quite clear. 

1. Divine necessity: When He began to teach about His death, the conviction of its Divine necessity was uppermost in His mind: 

The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected . . . and be killed, and after three days rise again. (Mark 8:31). 

This unswerving certainty that His cross was in the mind and heart of God reached its climax for Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And apparently even He at first hesitated, saying, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” But once its necessity became unmistakably clear to Him, then absolute commitment to it, “Not My will, but Yours be done,” was His response. 

Our Gospel writer asserts that the most deliberate thing Jesus ever did was to die: 

I lay down My life . . . No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord (John 10:17-18). 

Here was no misguided martyr, abandoned momentarily by His God. Here, rather, was the obedient Son, striding purposefully to His death in the confidence that God, far from being absent, would be right there in the middle of it all. And because God was in it, even the madness of human beings would somehow be used to serve God’s purposes. 

Once a little child, hearing the story of the crucifixion, was led to exclaim, “If God had been there, He would not have let them do it!” That response is understandable, of course. And yet, the whole witness of the New Testament is that God was there. Paul says it best: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:14). 

George Buttrick has told how this truth was illustrated for him when he saw a painting of the crucifixion in an Italian church. At first glance it appeared to be just another picture of the crucifixion; but a close inspection showed that there was a shadowy Figure behind that of Jesus. And the nail that pierced the hand of Jesus went right through to the hand of that Figure, God Himself. The spear thrust into the side of Jesus penetrated right into the side of God! Yes, God was involved in the cross. It was God’s will, and Jesus was absolutely committed to it. 

2. Inevitable conflict with evil: But why should absolute commitment to God’s will involve a cross? Jesus saw clearly that the ways of God clash sharply with the ways of sinful humanity. And the accomplishment of God’s will is often diametrically opposed to the designs of human beings. Commitment to God in an evil world meant commitment to a conflict. And so it was. Jesus challenged their superficial hypocrisy, He rode rough-shod through all of their precious regulations, He left deep tracks in the smooth surfaces of their formalisms, He laughed at their petty legalisms, He hung out their hatreds and prejudices on the line for all to see. 

Jesus’ life was one great challenge to sin’s power. He disturbed, He goaded, He denounced. Relentlessly He pressed the conflict. And it got Him a cross. Human beings could not abide the way in which Jesus’ life was a glaring contradiction to their littleness and ugliness. Nor could they make Him compromise. In the showdown, He never dodged an issue, He never rationalized His way out of difficulties, and He never sought the safety of an expedient solution. In a life-and-death conflict, He would die rather than sin. 

3. Two things Jesus did: Complete commitment to God drew Jesus inevitably into conflict with evil, but precisely because God was in this struggle, victory was sure to come. It would be a defeat triumphant. In being lifted up, He would draw all people unto Himself (John 12:32). In His life, and even more in His death, Jesus did the two things which sinful people need most to be saved. 

a. First, He identified Himself completely with our human life situation. Just as a doctor does not heal a broken arm from across a street, so God does not heal humanity’s broken relationships with Himself from across the heavens. In Jesus God projected Himself into the very midst of human misery and misfortune. As George McLeod has put it, 

Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; on the crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . . at the place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. 

No longer could human beings say that the Almighty was indifferent to human degradation, for at Calvary God was at the raw, sore heart of it all. This meant that even people with the blood of Heaven on their hands could meet God—and not on some lofty spiritual summit to which in their weakness they could not attain, but rather on that hill called Calvary where God had stooped and laid bare His heart before the startled eyes of rebellious humanity. The words of the Psalmist now took on a deeper significance: “Even if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” (Psalm 139:8). 

b. Secondly, although Jesus joined in common cause with sinful humanity, He refused to be ensnared by human sin. He died in the midst of sinful people, yet He died because in it all He would not sin. This meant that He could stand like a physician in the middle of an epidemic to offer healing from a deadly disease that had never claimed Him as one of its victims. People could take hope from His victory, they could find guidance from His example, and they could find strength from His leadership. 

One of the earliest Christian writers, Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-200 CE) expressed it this way: 

Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . did through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself. (Against Heresies V, Preface). 

In other words, Jesus took upon Himself the burdens of shame, failure, and misery that all human beings bear, so that they might in return take upon themselves His victory, purity, and peace. Now humanity could be reconciled to God. 

4. A new understanding of sin as cosmic rebellion: The death of Jesus afforded the earliest Christians a new understanding of sin. To the Jew, humanity was misguided, needing a Torah ( = “law, instruction”) to lead him and a ritual to forgive him. To the Greek, humanity was undeveloped, needing the truth to correct his bad thinking, and beauty to correct his bad manners. To the Roman, humanity was undisciplined, needing the order of a power structure to save him from disintegration. 

But Jesus' death showed that the issue of sin lay at a much deeper level than that. With remorseless precision the Gospel writers exposed the sinister coalition of forces that conspired to put Christ on the cross. The record speaks for itself: these were not ignorant and ungovernable reprobates, nor were they drunks, murderers, thieves, or prostitutes, who marched Jesus up to Calvary. Rather, they were the religious respectables of Jerusalem! 

Somehow the pristine piety and legalism of the Pharisees and the other Jewish sects, the sophisticated culture of the Greeks, and the vaunted justice of the Romans all broke down and proved helpless to save human beings from their spiritual madness. 

The trouble lay elsewhere—in the determination of human beings to destroy God rather than have God ruling in their lives. Everything Jesus did pressed the claims of the living Lord upon people, and they would not have it! They were using their legalisms, their formalisms, their moralisms, their cultural mores, and their political intrigues to protect themselves from God. And there, in the name of religion, law, and order, they crucified Christ, because He had disturbed the evasive ways in which they were dodging the demands of God. 

Calvary forever exposed sin for what it is—not just the breaking a few petty rules and regulations, either governmental, ritual, or even moral ones. But rather, sin was now seen as a kind of cosmic rebellion, human unwillingness to let God be God in their lives. Sin was now seen as a retreat from the reality of God, the determination of human beings to be their own general manager of their lives, apart from God. 

5. The death of Jesus laid bare the heart of God: And now only two answers were possible. Human beings could break with those forces in rebellion against the Lordship of God, and thus be “crucified with Christ,” (Galatians 2:25), or they could continue to repudiate the living God and thus “crucify Christ afresh.” (Hebrews 6:6). This new diagnosis of sin demanded a new prescription for sinful human beings. If the ritual, the law, and the state were not enough, what could tame the stubborn and wayward hearts of human beings? To this the New Testament writers answer with the hymn-writer: Nothing but the blood of Jesus! 

No person ever died a more undeserved death than Jesus did. His only offense was to make people face God, and because of that they killed Him. Yet the New Testament testifies that He met their hostility with inexhaustible love. 

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins (I John 4:10). 

God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). 

In His death Jesus displayed the deepest compassion, the widest sympathy, the highest concern that people had ever seen. God’s love was the basis of that obedience that led Jesus to make the supreme sacrifice of life itself. And in laying bare the loving heart of God, Jesus acted directly at the point of humanity’s deepest need. Jesus showed that sin breaks more than laws—it also breaks God’s heart as well. 

But if sin lay in a shattered relationship to God, only love could bridge that infinite gap, offering personal reconciliation and abiding fellowship with God. Jesus Himself was and still is that “bridge over troubled waters.” In the cross we hear the clear call: “Love so amazing, so Divine, demands my heart, my life, my all.” 

6. God’s  sacrificial offering: It is only at this point that we can use the analogy of sacrificial offering to speak of Jesus’ life and death for sinful human beings. The Scriptures often speak of Jesus’ death in these terms, and Gospel writers portray Jesus as suggesting that He saw Himself in the role of the Suffering Servant of God whose sacrifice is pictured in Isaiah 53. That concept can express some genuine truths, but we need to reconsider what it really was meant to portray. 

Most of us grew up thinking it was like the story in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, where one day Tom's girlfriend Becky Thatcher tore a page from the schoolmaster’s anatomy book, while he was out of the room. When he discovered the torn page and asked who was responsible, Tom jumped up to take the blame and the punishment in Becky’s place. 

Many of us grew up interpreting the cross in the same way. We concluded that because of human sins God’s justice and God’s honor have been offended. Therefore, we came to believe, before a person could be forgiven for sins, someone must come forward to be punished in order to satisfy God’s anger toward sin, and to restore God’s tarnished honor. We further concluded that because of this, Jesus volunteered to go to the cross to take the punishment we human beings were supposed to receive and only then could God accept our faith in Him and forgive us. 

Now that view appears logical on the surface, and many of us used to assume that it was the only view taught in the New Testament. It is even true that some isolated Scripture references could be taken out of context to support it. But it is not the teaching of the New Testament, and it is totally out of harmony with what the New Testament actually does teach. 

In fact, this view of the death of Christ did not become the predominant one in the teaching of the Christian Church until the Middle Ages. Anselm (1033 - 1098 CE), Archbishop of Canterbury, was the person who first brought this theory of a “penal-substitutionary atonement” to the forefront of Christian thought. And this concept was not fully taught in its present form until the time of the reformer John Calvin (1509 - 1564 CE). 

The problem with this view of Jesus’ death is that it divides the very nature of God, making God’s mercy and God’s love slaves to God’s justice, and pitting a wrathful and, angry God against His loving Son. It makes God into a kind of schizophrenic, split personality. Hearing the story the way Anselm taught it, many a child in Sunday School, and many an adult as well, has been inclined to think: “If that's the case, then I’ll love Jesus, but fear or even hate God.” Maybe that’s why we hear so many people in our time praying directly to Jesus rather than to God in some circles. For those are the very circles in which that doctrine is most predominant. 

Again, it would be strange indeed if God required human beings to have a higher standard of morality than God Himself has. Yet God Himself continually expects us to act mercifully, to forgive our enemy seventy-times-seven times, without regard to whether that enemy has repented, requested forgiveness, or has first been punished for his acts against us. We are told, 

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who despitefully use you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also. (Luke 6:27-29a). 

And only a God Who acts according to the same kind of standard can command in such a way. It may even be more correct to suggest that the cross was not so much God’s punishment inflicted on our sins as it was God’s way of turning the other cheek to the sinfulness of humanity. 

But perhaps the biggest drawback of Anselm’s theory is that it is totally unreasonable. How could the loving God described in the Bible ever feel that His honor was restored or that His justice and righteous anger were satisfied simply by punishing an innocent person for the sins of a guilty person? If such a thing happened in a human law court we would all be outraged! 

And yet—the Scriptures do portray Jesus’ death on the cross as a kind of “sacrifice” for sins. Why do they use this analogy? They do so primarily because in the Hebrew Scriptures, sacrifice was not considered a ritual of punishment, but rather one of offering. 

On the great Day of Atonement each year the individual Israelite would bring his sacrificial lamb to the altar. There he would cut the throat of the animal in order to release its blood, and as he did this he would place his hands on the head of the victim. The death of this animal was not a punishment, but an offering—an offering of the animal’s blood. This blood was then taken into the Most Holy Place in the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was located, and it was sprinkled on the top of the Ark, which was called the “Mercy Seat.” 

Why this sprinkling of blood? Because, the teaching of the Torah was that, 

. . . the life of the flesh is in the blood . . . it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life. (Leviticus 17:11). 

To offer blood was to offer life—not death, and not punishment. And as the offerer placed his hands on the head of his victim, he was identifying himself with it, indicating that what was actually happening to the animal physically was at the same time happening inwardly and spiritually to himself. The animal was not merely his substitute, but his representative. In surrendering the animal’s life to God, the worshipper was actually surrendering his own life to God as well. And as the witness of the whole Bible makes plain, such a sacrifice was useless to the offerer unless he went with such an attitude of self-offering while he made his sacrifice. 

This analogy with sacrifice suggests that when I fully put my trust in Jesus, I am not accepting Him as a mere substitute for me. I do not get off the hook of being responsible to God simply because “Jesus paid it all.” As the rest of that hymn rightly emphasizes, “All to Him I owe.” I too, when I place my life under the Lordship of Christ, am offering myself totally to God. I am taking myself out of my own keeping and placing myself in God’s keeping. I am resigning as general manager of my own life and giving myself over completely to God, just as I am, warts and all. 

Thus we have the New Testament analogy of a sacrificial offering. In accepting the complete sacrifice of Christ, I am also offering myself. I am myself being spiritually “crucified.” Is this not what the New Testament teaches? Hear the words of Paul: 

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20). 

And again, Paul speaks of our identification with Him in our baptism: 

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life . . . Knowing this, that our old personhood is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin . . . Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. . . . (excerpts from I Corinthians 6). 

7. Summary: The witness of the New Testament is that Jesus’ death was the result of His dedication to the will of God. It was the inevitable conclusion of the sinless, obedient life He lived. And it was the result of human beings’ dedication to their sinful ways. Jesus’ life was poured out in complete self-denial and self-giving and thus expressed God’s own self-offering to humanity. 

The will of God is behind the giving of life, not the taking of it. Jesus gave His life; but Judas’ betrayal was his own guilty act, contrary to, and not expressive of God’s will. Redemption is in Jesus’ giving of His life, not in human taking of that life (Acts 2:23). In the New Testament, the taking of Jesus’ life is termed “rejection” (Mark 12:10; John 1:11); “betrayal” (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33; 14:4); and “murder” (I Thessalonians 2:14 f.; Acts 2:23, 36; 7:52; 13:28). How, then could it be God’s will? There is nothing magically redemptive in what evil human beings did to Jesus. But redemption belongs to God’s sacrificial offering in the Person of Jesus Christ, Who both lived and died for us. 

“Atonement” is not appeasement of God, but reconciliation, which human beings receive and accept through their trust in God. God does not begin to love us simply because Christ died for us. On the contrary, Christ lived and died for us because God has always loved us in spite of our sins. The cross of Christ was not provided by human beings in order to change the attitude of a supposedly angry and hostile God. Rather, God Himself, in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ, offered Himself on the cross in order to change human lives and reconcile them to Himself. 

It was the Father, Paul tells us, “Who spared not His only Son, but freely gave Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32)—that’s just how far God’s love was willing to go. It was God, John says, Who “loved us so much, that He gave His only Son” for us. Jesus’ death did not cause some change in the attitude of God toward sinful human beings, in the sense of turning God’s hostility into love, or making a friend out of an enemy. To the contrary, the cross of Christ gave expression to the love God has always had for His creation from the beginning of time. Jesus did not die so that God could forgive sins, but He gave His life precisely because God already was in the forgiving business. 

A little child once heard the story about the Hebrews who entered the Promised Land and slaughtered the Canaanites. Those people, of course, understood that to be God’s will. But the child remarked, “Of course, that was before God became a Christian!” Now whatever we may think of the slaughter of the Canaanites (and I don’t propose to open that can of worms now!) the witness of the New Testament is that God always was a Christian! 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14); 

That which was from the beginning . . . which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you. (1 John 1:1-4). 

The love of God is no new thing with the coming of Jesus into the world. But the life and death of Jesus made it so clear that no one would ever have any doubts about it again. 

Suppose you saw down a tree. If you look closely, you’ll see a lot of tree rings. Those rings go up the tree from the roots to the top. But you see the rings only at the place where the tree was cut. The cross of Jesus Christ is something like that. It was the supreme event of human history. It happened at one particular time and place, in the life of a very special Person. Indeed, all of God that could be contained within the limitations of a human body, spirit, mind, and personality, was contained within the life and personality of the man Jesus of Nazareth. 

The cross happened at one particular time in that Person’s life. But at the same time the cross is something eternal. For it had its origin in the eternal purpose of God. God always is and always has been like that, offering Himself, and even suffering on our behalf. Our sins break more than laws—they break God’s heart as well. As C. A. Dinsmore well stated, 

There was a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted on that green hill outside Jerusalem. 

“It is finished!” Such was the invincible faith of Jesus: that history’s darkest moment could become eternity’s finest hour. And with that faith Jesus seized His cross and bent that mighty question mark against the sky into an exclamation point of triumph! 

Adapted from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. William Hull, formerly Dean of the School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.