Part 2: Why did Jesus die?

What if the defining moment of your life is actually someone else’s death?

The symbol of Christianity is a cross. It may look shiny and perfectly shaped on a necklace today, but two thousand years ago it was a symbol of execution, agony and shame. Nobody would ever choose to die exposed and humiliated on a Roman cross. But Jesus did. Why? 

The simple answer to that question would be that Jesus knew it was the mission given to him by his Father in heaven. But still the question remains, why did Jesus have to die?

If Jesus’ death was somehow significant, let’s begin by asking why is there death at all? Death was not part of God’s perfect design for this world. In the beginning God created everything as an overflow of that generous love and kindness that exists within the relationship of the Trinity. He created a world that was both diverse and unified, a world of abundance and colour and vibrant life. And the pinnacle of God’s creation was the creature made in his relational image—the humans. Male and female, diverse but unified, ruling everything as God’s representatives. It was so so good, but sadly that didn’t last long.

God did not force his creatures to love him. So when opportunity came, they desired to pull away from God’s good rule and try living as independent mini-gods, setting their own rules and living for their own desires. In that moment, as God had warned them, they discovered only the inadequacy of their own nakedness. Turns out humans separated from God are not the super-beings we would like to be. Curved in on ourselves we become black holes of selfishness, draining the life from everything around us as we ourselves have lost God’s life within us.

What did God do in the face of this rebellion and mess? He promised to send a human to rescue us and defeat the enemy who had led humanity into this living death. For centuries the Old Testament unfolds the story of God’s anticipated deliverer who finally arrived that first Christmas just over 2000 years ago.

Jesus was God’s rescuer, sent to stand in the gap between a good God and a rebellious humanity. He came to reveal God’s goodness to us, but more than that, he came to do what we could not do for ourselves and make a way for us to come back into relationship with God.

One time Jesus told the story of two men: a righteous religious man and a nasty traitorous tax collector for the occupying forces. Both of them went to pray. The righteous religious man prayed a prayer full of pride, describing how good he was in comparison to others. The traitor stood off at a distance, beat his breast in desperation and pleaded with God for mercy. Literally, he asked God to provide the kind of sacrifice that would cover for his sin, the kind of sacrifice that took place inside that temple every day. Jesus shocked his listeners by declaring that only one of these men went home justified, or declared righteous, in God’s eyes. And it wasn’t the “good” guy—it was the desperate sinner. (See Luke 18:9-14)

Fast forward a few stories and we find another tax collector (See Luke 19:1-10). This one is called Zacchaeus and he wanted to see Jesus, but couldn’t because he was short. He ended up climbing into a tree for a secret vantage point. To his shock Jesus stopped and spoke to him. The crowd hated Zac. But Jesus rescued him from their anger by showing kindness to him. Zac was blown away by Jesus’ kindness and his life was changed at the tree.

Later in Luke’s gospel we find that Jesus travelled to another tree, the cross outside Jerusalem. There he voluntarily died, taking the anger not only of the crowd, but also of God in heaven, against the sins of humanity. Jesus died hanging on a tree to set us all free from the righteous judgment of God against sin, to buy us out of our slavery to sin, to win a decisive victory over sin and death, and to reconcile us back to God.

Jesus offers us all a great exchange. He wants to give us all of his righteousness, goodness and life, in exchange for all our sin, wrong, death, shame and brokenness. He is willing to take our great debt on himself and die—in fact, he already did.

[This article was written for lookforhope.org]