Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
I recently came across the story of Nathan Hale, a member of the Continental Army during the American Revolution in the late 18th century. As one of General George Washington’s troops, he was sent behind the British lines to act as a spy and note troop movements. He was caught, and taken to be hanged. Before he was hanged, he gave a speech, with words that have echoed down through history: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” And he was hanged. But did he have to die in order for the vision of American ideals to be realized?
No. He died, and I as an American am grateful. But he needn’t have died for the American ideals to be realized.
Then there are others, like Martin Luther King. He had a dream of racial equality, and went around the Southern United States advocating this equality. He was tragically assassinated at his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and it cut short his advocacy for these rights. His dream continues to fight for realization to this day, but was it necessary that Martin Luther King die for his dream?
No! Indeed, he may have been more effective alive, even though his legacy continues on through the ages in his speeches and sermons.
What about Christian martyrs? The Apostles—eleven of whom died for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Did they have to die in order to fulfill the mission of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
No!
But Jesus is different.
The death of Jesus had been foretold hundreds, and even thousands of years before His death was accomplished. Just for a couple examples:
Zechariah prophesied some 500 years before Jesus was crucified that “They will look upon Me whom they have pierced” (Zech 12:10).
And then the prophet Isaiah 800 years before the death of Jesus most graphically it in Isaiah 52-53, with words such as these: “Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through…[and] He was crushed for our iniquities…” (53:4-5).
And not only that but the very words of Jesus show that it was necessary for Him to die. When Peter made that great confession that Jesus was the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus explained what that meant: that He would go up to Jerusalem to be killed and raised up after three days. You will remember that Peter rebuked Jesus, and Jesus shot back, “Get behind me Satan! for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's” (Mark 8:33, cf. Matt. 16).
God’s interests were that Jesus Christ die. It was absolutely necessary that Jesus Christ die in order to fulfill His vision and His message. Indeed, anything less than His death would make His teaching utterly worthless. His ministry would have been a complete and utter failure.
The Problem
But why did Jesus have to die?
For Nathan Hale and Marin Luther King, there was a problem, and they died as a result of that problem and their attempt to fix the problem. But at the root of these is another problem that Jesus came to confront directly through His death.
To understand this problem, we must step back to the very beginning of creation in Genesis 1.
When the Lord created the earth and filled it and gave it form, after each day, the text says that He saw that it was “good.” Six times we are told that His creation was good. But when He created human-kind, He looked and saw that it was “very good.” Humanity is the crown jewel of His creation. Psalm 8 says that humanity has been “crowned with glory and majesty” (Psalm 8:5).
But immediately something went tragically wrong. The Lord had given Adam and Eve everything they could possibly want, and all the options were available to them. He made one single prohibition: that they stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we know the story. It didn’t take them long before they took and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Martin Luther gives them until noon before they disobeyed).
Something fundamentally changed in creation when Adam and Eve disobeyed the commands of the Lord. The creation that the Lord made “good” had now become corrupted. Scripture teaches us that because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, not only were they sinners in the experience, but their very natures had become sinful. And to add to this, their children would be born with sinful natures.
And so, as we read the book of Genesis, we see just how corrupted humanity had become by sin. Betrayals, murders, theft all became part of the reality of the new order. But the point is not that the world had become corrupted, but all of us. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 tells us. All of us are sinful by nature, and sinners by experience. We have all violated the goodness and glory of God.
So what does this mean?
In John 17, Jesus tells us, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” In contrast, sin separates us from have this intimate knowledge of God. Indeed, it is because of this that Romans 6:23 tells us, “the penalty of sin is death.” Sin separates us from a holy and righteous, life-giving God. The penalty of sin is eternal, spiritual death.
What Sin Does
How does sin cause this separation from God? In short, sin ruins us and makes us unworthy to enter into God’s presence.
When I was a boy, I used to collect baseball cards and was always aware of the most valuable baseball card in the world: a 1909 Honus Wagner card. Collectors clamor to get their hands on the rare card. Most recently, a mint condition, Honus Wagner card was sold for $2.8 million.
What would happen if we took that card, dipped it in water for a few days, took it out and crumpled it up? It would be an old, crumpled up piece of paper worth absolutely nothing. The $2.8 million card would be rendered worthless, and no collector would clamor to get his hands on it.
This is exactly what sin does to us. It spoils us and ruins us and makes us unfit to be in the collection of a perfect God. We are ruined.
But there is a solution to this problem.
What Jesus’ Death Does
Jesus’ death restores us to mint condition.
Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
We are washed of our filth. We are born again. We are made new. We are restored to mint condition in the blood of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
This truth can also be seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creature. The old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”
It is because of this renewal that we can then approach the presence of a perfect and holy God. What once kept us from His presence has been wiped away in the power of Christ. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
Jesus’ death restores us to mint condition and so makes us worthy to enter into the presence of God.
Why Jesus Had To Die
So why did Jesus have to die? Jesus had to die to pay the debt that we could never pay on our own.
Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” The payment had to be made. We can make it on our own in our own spiritual deaths, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
As a result of the death of Jesus, He made payment for our sins, and for those who would put their trust in Him, He has promised eternal life. This is why Jesus Christ had to die. So you don’t have to.