Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

I love Easter season so much.

And I remember if even as a kid, and not really being raised in church, but it would come on the major networks every year, some version of the story of Jesus.

And I remember wanting to see it and just really being very emotional about watching this really, really good man be put to death on a cross.

But it wasn't until I was 15 years old till something clicked and that changed my life.

Years after that happened, though, there's a question I asked, and maybe you've asked it too.

And the question is, why did Jesus have to die?

Now I would honestly say that I don't know that I really asked that.

Maybe I asked it as a little kid watching that the movie version, if you will, of the crucifixion.

You know, it didn't make sense.

This man's so good.

He's doing so many good things.

He's he's healing people, he's doing great things, and yet these people put him to death.

Maybe I asked it in some form then, but at some point, a few years after putting my faith in Christ, I started trying to understand the cross.

Like God could do anything, right?

He could do anything he wants to do.

I believe that with all my heart.

And apparently, this was the way that resulted in salvation, this thing we call salvation, this thing we sang about earlier called amazing grace.

That it happened because of the cross.

I don't know if you've ever asked that before.

Maybe you're like, thanks a lot, Bill.

Now I am asking that question.

I don't want to ask these questions.

I just want to just be okay with it and move on.

But I think it is good to ask that.

I think there's something healthy and worshipful about leaning into how did this happen?

How did my salvation occur?

Why did it have to happen this way?

In order to really understand this thing that we call salvation, amazing grace, the love of God.

Uh, many years ago, oh I say many, I mean I was 15.

Yeah, I guess it was many years ago.

Um, this was an image that I saw on a screen at a Bible camp that I went to as a kid starting in fourth grade.

I saw this image the summer after my sophomore year of high school.

And this was the image that God used to awaken my heart and my mind to what the cross was all about.

This is often referred to as the bridge presentation of the gospel.

Uh, it's not one I see commonly used, if I'm being honest, but man, God used it big time in my life.

And fun fact, this was put on a screen at a camp by use of a transparency.

You remember those things?

A little clear sheet of paper, you could put anything on and put it on that little thing and it shines on.

We could do anything with those things, you know.

Um, all we needed was just a little electricity, no Wi-Fi.

Um, but this image was preceded by images showing little stick man me trying to build that bridge to God by doing good things, you know, even good things that I heard you gotta do, like, you know, go to church and you know, give to others and be kind and obey the Ten Commandments and things like that.

That bridge, we could never be perfect enough and good enough to build a bridge to reconcile ourselves to God, to get to God, because God was so holy, so just, so perfect.

And even on our best day, we are imperfect.

And when I saw this image on the screen to see that Jesus' death on the cross created this bridge to where all I had to do was admit that I'm a sinner and believe that he died on the cross for me, that in essence, when I do that, I'm stepping across that bridge into the very presence of God forever, receiving the free gift of eternal life.

It changed me.

I mean, my life has never been the same since that week.

It was actually two days after seeing this image that I prayed the best way I knew how and asked Jesus to save my life.

But like I said, years later, I'm trying to wrap my mind around well, why the cross?

Could there have been another way?

I mean, God spoke the universe into existence.

Was there a way to dodge the cross and do it differently?

Like, why?

Just trying to understand it all.

If I were to give you a one-word um answer to the question, why did Jesus have to die?

It would be the word atonement.

And what we're gonna do a little bit today, don't, don't, don't take a nap on me.

Uh, but what we're gonna do a little bit today is to see what are called theories of atonement.

And over the course of the history of the church, there have been several that have been formed, theories, explaining how did Jesus' death on the cross result in our salvation?

How did that make salvation happen by this wonderful, perfect man, God in the flesh, dying on the cross?

How did that work?

And we'll talk about it in a moment, but I want to lay down a couple of foundational verses to help us all understand that it really comes down to this answer of atonement.

1 John 2.2 says, He, talking about Jesus, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And then in 2 Corinthians 5 21, it says this for God made Christ who never sinned to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

Now, just parking on atonement, you I've heard the phrase even before I had faith in Christ, the phrase atoning for your sins.

And we still sometimes use that today in just common language, not often, but we use we usually use that phrase to describe one of these two things, where maybe I do something really, really good to make up for the really, really bad thing I did, or something somewhat good to make up for the somewhat bad thing I did.

We would call that I atone for my sins.

I uh was really unkind here and I felt bad about it, so I was kind here and that atoned for my sins.

We kind of throw that phrase around to describe that.

Another way we sometimes use the phrase atoning for your sins is when you know what uh what I did was bad, and then this really bad thing happened to me.

I deserved that.

I uh I that's atonement for my sins right there.

I got I got what I deserved because I did that bad thing.

We often use those phrases, that that phrase, atoning for your sins, in those ways.

And none of those ways really involve what we're talking about today.

That's what real atonement is involves Jesus and what he actually did for us, not us experiencing something bad so that, okay, now I'm even.

Or I did something better to make up for something bad and now I'm good.

It's not that at all.

It's actually the person of Jesus doing atonement for us.

Many years ago, I was kind of helped in my brain by other preachers to understand the concept of atonement by just adding a little couple of dashes to that word.

When you do it, you can almost re-pronounce the word at one moment, to be at one with God.

And you're gonna see that in scriptures that we read that what's really happening is that what Jesus did on the cross and rising from the dead allows us to be one with God.

It allows us to be present with Him, it allows us to experience His presence now and forever.

Well, let's get into these theories of atonement.

I hope that it will help you kind of wrestle and think deeply upon what Jesus did on the cross.

Um, there, depending on what article, commentary, book, dissertation, essay that you read, there are as many as perhaps 10 or 12 nuances or theories of atonement, if you will.

But we're only going to look at five today, and I'm actually gonna use some language and a few little quotes from a very objective journalist, an investigative type journalist, historical journalist named Andrew Springer, who wrote an article on April 12th, in 2020, and it's for an organization called the Medium, and you can find their news articles online.

I was as I was reading up on that and reading different articles, I really liked his because it comes from this purely journalistic idea.

He has no dog in the fight.

He's not trying to convince anybody that one theory is better than the other.

He's just looking at the history of the church and saying, here's what happened, here's what was believed about what Jesus did on the cross and how it changed over time to bring us to where people are today.

So the first view that Andrew Springer talks about in his article is called the ancient view, and that is Christ as ransom.

Christ as ransom.

And historians would say to you today that probably the first thousand years of the existence of the church, from the time Jesus actually died and a thousand years afterwards, this was actually the most prevalent view that our very, very early church fathers, if you will, embraced this view that Christ was a ransom.

And to summarize it, it would be described like this Jesus' death was the payment to Satan to redeem humanity back to God after humanity was taken captive by Satan in the garden.

So, in other words, the death of Jesus Christ was a payment to Satan to bring us back to God.

There's probably really only one verse that comes close to being very direct in using terminology like this, and it's Matthew 20, 28, coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself, where he says, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Now, the biggest problem with this theory of atonement that was pointed out later on in history is that this theory of atonement almost raises Satan up to be equal with God.

That God was indebted somehow to Satan himself.

And that was a real struggle that our uh followers of Jesus churches over the years, like, I don't know if this fully explains in and of itself the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.

So over time, another view was formed called the medieval view or Christ as substitute.

We people don't actually call this the medieval view.

This is just around the time in history when this view occurred, when it was originated.

This one was originated by a person by the name of St.

Anselm of Canterbury, who wrote a work called Why God Became Man.

He wrote it in the year 1099.

And in summary, what he taught and what he said was that God was dishonored by the sin of humanity.

And the only way God's honor could be restored was by the death of a perfect God man.

So Jesus became our substitute because we are not perfect.

So he became the substitute, dying on the cross and therefore restoring honor to God.

It countered the ransom theory, removing any form of somehow God being indebted to the evil one.

Why would he have to pay Satan anything?

So it kind of removed that problem, if you will, with the theory of atonement that Christ was a ransom.

The real issue with this is there's just not a lot of scripture.

Like, I'm not even going to give you a verse to try to support this one because there's not verses we can find where God's honor was taken away so much.

And therefore his honor somehow must be restored.

So ultimately, there was a tweak to that theory of atonement.

And Andrew Springer calls it the reformed view, and he recalls he calls it that because it came to be during the Reformation movement.

And this theory is called Christ Receives Your Punishment.

It originated around 1600, as I said, during the Reformation movement.

And in summary, it's not that God's honor was offended by sin, it's that God is a just God.

And because God is a just God, not allowing sin to go unpunished, sin must be punished.

And so Jesus Christ took the punishment of our sin on the cross for us, appeasing that demand of perfect justice by God the Father.

Now, there's lots of scripture that really support this theory of atonement.

One of them is a great prophecy that we find in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, which says this but he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins, he was beaten so we could be whole, he was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God's paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

And then if you look into the New Testament, one of the most famous verses that explain the good news of Jesus Christ is Romans 3.23, where it says, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But in the context of that, we have this amazing message.

Romans 3.21.

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

For everyone has sinned.

We all fall short of God's glorious standard.

Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.

He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.

God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just.

And he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

I mean, it just pounds that home over and over again.

We are made right, not because we are right, but because Jesus, the only one who was right, took on our sins upon himself.

Now, if you were to, you could probably imagine already, spoiler, this is the theory of atonement that you will find taught, preached here, and really most churches around here, you'll hear this the substitution uh theory of atonement, um, the punishment of our sins, him taking upon himself the sins of all of us.

You'll find that be the one that is most taught.

But if someone were to question it, usually the most common question is this that it feels like God is unnecessarily demanding justice.

Like, and I think we sort of project upon God our own way of handling sins, if you will.

How we can just be like, we'll see something happens that's wrong, it might bother us, depending on what it is.

We may be like, it's all good, move on, don't even think about it, right?

And then sometimes somebody does something and it hurts us, and we may hold on to a grudge for a long time about that.

Everything's kind of a little different with us on a human perspective.

And so sometimes we project upon God, it's like, man, God is God, God is perfect.

Could he just like be like, all right, cool, I'm just gonna forgive it, you know, and that's it.

And and and not have to go through what he went through for this plan of salvation.

But we could spend the next hour explaining about how wrong that would be, how impersonal that is, how it leaves us empty of any type of relationship with God at all, that it can just be merely distantly canceled, that there could be this no love felt, no understanding of the depth of our need for God, if that's what God had done.

There's something about this plan of salvation that though I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make logical sense of it and never really getting there, that also somehow makes amazing sense because of how it changes your heart, because of how it transforms your life, because of how somehow, some way it causes this relationship to form between myself and an invisible God who I have no business having some kind of relationship with because I am such a sinner.

Somehow, though, that happens because of the cross and the empty tomb.

There are a couple more theories of atonement.

We could easily stop here and say, yeah, this one's the good one, right?

But I think it's valuable to see kind of the history of other theories.

One of them is called the Ethical View, Christ as example, and it actually originated centuries before the Reformation view.

It originated by a French philosopher and ethicist named Peter Abelard in the early 12th century.

And in summary, it's that Jesus died on the cross to show us the example of how to live a life of sacrificial love, goodness, and service.

And I would pause here to say what can be good about each of these theories of atonement is it there's probably a good nugget in all of them that you can pull out and say, you know what, that's good.

The problem is many of them fall short in some ways to explain atonement, to explain the cross and how that changes us.

And this was probably the one that's a little bit more egregious in that way.

That Jesus just being an example kind of gives you this take it or leave it.

It's an example, take it or leave it.

It could be awesome if you followed that example.

It kind of takes away this desperate need for our sins to be uh paid for and for uh for us to be justified before God.

I mean, that there's not so much amazing grace needed.

We just want to try to follow this good example of Jesus.

However, I would say it is an example still, right?

And even Peter thought so.

1 Peter 2, 21, for God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you.

He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

Now, the reason Andrew Springer brings up this theory of atonement after the Reformation one is because though it originated in the 12th century, there was a resurgence of this theory in the 19th century.

There was a kind of a social justice movement happening in the world.

That's what it really means to be a follower and believer of Jesus is to correct the injustices in the world, which isn't a bad thing.

That's not necessarily probably we are too weak in that area today.

And also, I remember even in the uh 80s, late 80s, maybe early 90s, there was a real big trend going on where you would wear a bracelet that said WWJD.

Did anybody in here have a WWJD bracelet?

Let me see you, Gen Xers.

Oh, even millennials.

I love that.

What would Jesus do?

And that comes from a classical book written named In His Steps.

Um, and it's good.

We should ask, what would Jesus do and try to do that?

But once again, you can almost see how the problem of that theory is it almost leaves out our need for him to pay for our sins.

We just try to be like him as best we can and hope for the best in the end.

It doesn't fully explain atonement.

One last theory of atonement is called the battlefield view: Christ as victor.

And once again, I think there's nuggets you can glean from each one of these.

This one was kind of authored in 1930 by a Swedish theologian named Gustav Alang.

He published a work called Christus Victor.

And in summary, it's that the earth and heaven are locked in a cosmic struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan.

And so Christ was sent to battle with.

And triumph over the elements of darkness in his kingdom.

And all of us are standing in the middle of a cosmic war zone.

Jesus' death and resurrection conquered death, hell, and the grave.

And the ultimate defeat of Satan will come in the future as attributed in the book of Revelation.

That's kind of a big summary of this view of atonement.

And to support this view, there's a little subtle thing that Jesus said when he was about to heal a woman on the Sabbath day who had a medical issue.

And of course, every time he was about to heal on the Sabbath, the Jewish religious leaders would say, You can't do that.

That's against the law of Moses.

And Jesus would always put them in their place.

Here's one thing he says in a moment when he was about to heal this lady on the Sabbath day, Luke 13, 16, it says, This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for 18 years.

Isn't it right that she be released even on the Sabbath?

It's kind of a powerful moment.

This disease that had held her in bondage for so long, Jesus attributed it to the evil one winning.

He said, I want to bring victory here.

Are you saying I shouldn't bring victory over the evil one on the Sabbath day?

It was a pretty big mic drop moment for Jesus.

And so I think once again, that's an awesome nugget that you can pull out of this theory of atonement.

But it doesn't fully explain how the death on the cross and the empty tomb that happened results in my transformation as a person in Christ.

In fact, some people who have tried to embrace this theory of atonement would ask questions like, How come I keep sinning if Jesus defeated sin when he came and died on the cross?

What was it about the cross that defeated all the elements of evil throughout the universe?

These are great questions.

And the honest truth is, once again, you start reading all these theories of atonement, it gets a little bit academic, and you're trying to wrap your mind around it.

At the end of the day, we have the word of God that is trying to pierce our hearts and souls and tell us something really, really big.

And if we're not careful, you can get too academic and get in the weeds and kind of walk away from even thinking about it.

That's not what I want us to do today.

I want us to go back to the concept of at one moment.

Don't ever miss this truth.

God wants to be with you.

He wants to walk with you all the days of your life.

As he inspired David, who wrote that song, the 23rd Psalm, he wants to be your shepherd and to meet all your needs.

He wants to make you lie down in green pastures, lead you beside still waters.

He wants to heal your wounds with his anointing oil.

He wants to walk with you through all your valleys, sometimes even carrying you through them.

And he wants his goodness and mercy to follow you all the days of your life.

And absolutely, his plan is for you to dwell in his house forever.

He just wants to be with you.

And that's what we can miss if we just sort of get too in the weeds of academia.

Although I love that, I love nerding out.

As you can tell by the sermon today, I enjoy a little nerd out, but don't miss what's really happening in a very intimate level in your life.

And I think that's what hit me when I was 15.

Because no one had to convince me that Jesus died on the cross.

I accepted that in my head.

But in that moment at the age of 15, it was as if I could hear the whisper of God in my heart saying, I did that for you, Bill.

I did that just for you.

And just for everybody else, too.

It was intimate, it was personal.

It was God saying, I want you.

I want you in relationship with me today and forever and ever and ever.

And that's why He did it.

I will summarize atonement or at one moment in this way.

Our sins, past, present, and future, were placed upon Jesus on that cross, removing them completely so that nothing can separate us from him now and forever.

Man, if you start reading the scripture through the lens of God wanting to be with you, it changes everything.

Every command he gave, every battle he won, everything he did through Jesus Christ, everything taught in Scripture post the resurrection of Jesus is all about bringing us into and keeping us in relationship with Him.

And the gospel's radical, y'all.

I think that's why these theories of atonement are battling in our minds over the history of humanity, because it's really hard to accept that that's actually how it could happen.

And that that's enough.

And that some guy I never saw, I never met who is completely perfect down on the cross, and somehow that should affect me today, and somehow that can actually transform my life today.

Sounds kind of crazy for those who haven't experienced it.

But for those of you who have experienced it, you're like, Amen, amen, amen.

Let's sing songs about it.

Let's write more songs about it.

I want to be in Bible study about it.

I'm gonna come back every Sunday and praise God for it.

Because you know how transformative it is, because you've walked with him, you've heard his still small voice.

I'm gonna spoil a little bit.

Man, I hope you come back next Sunday because on Palm Sunday, we're going to observe the Lord's Supper together, but you're gonna just see as we talk about an ancient passage in the Bible, how radical the grace of God is.

How what Jesus did in shedding his blood is actually enough.

I think sometimes we still struggle believing that that really is enough, that what Jesus did on the cross was enough, that when he said it is finished, that it really, really is finished.

We struggle with that, I think.

And I think sometimes that keeps us kind of a little bit distant from Christ because of that, the inability to embrace that amazing grace that was made possible through the cross.

I want to read to you the context of 2 Corinthians 5.21.

We read it earlier, but I want to read to you a few of the verses before that.

And as I read this out loud, think about how all God wants is to be with you.

Put your name in that blank.

That all he wants is to be with you.

Here's what it says: 2 Corinthians 5 15.

He died for everyone, so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves.

Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.

And I will say, then that sounds like I gotta earn something there.

I feel that.

I used to be very illegalistic in the way I follow Jesus too.

But what I read there now, after years and years and years of really praying for the Lord to help me understand better, is this is freedom.

It is so freeing that what Jesus did on the cross and by stepping out of his grave, that you are freed from living for yourself.

That is a bondage, living for yourself.

But to live for him by his power and strength within you, that is a real amazing, awesome, adventurous, life-giving, joy-bringing, peace-giving life.

And it's made possible through his death and burial and resurrection.

It says in verse 16, so we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view.

At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view.

How differently we know him now.

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, a new life has begun.

And all of this is a gift from God who brought us back to himself through Christ.

And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.

For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them.

And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

So we are Christ's ambassadors.

God is making his appeal through us.

We speak for Christ when we plead, come back to God.

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

We're ambassadors.

If you've placed your faith in Jesus Christ, your divine purpose from this point on, wherever you work, wherever you live, wherever you play, is that you represent the megaphone of God saying, Can you believe this?

Sins are forgiven.

All you have to do is believe, and he will be with you forever.

Just put your faith in him, and your old life will be gone and you will become new.

This is the gospel.

Sometimes I don't do this very often, I don't think this way very often, but sometimes, every now and then, God will give me this moment where I'm actually able to step back a little bit and look at my life.

And I don't know if you ever, for those of you who experienced this great salvation in Christ, have you ever tried to imagine where you would be now if you'd never put your faith in him?

If you would have never had that encounter, like, what would I be doing?

Where would I be?

How would I be treating others?

Like, I don't necessarily believe I'd be like in Kenton County Detention Center.

I mean, I was a pretty good dude, but I was a lost dude.

I still lived for myself.

I still desired pleasure.

I was addicted.

I wanted success and to be seen as success above everything.

And that was who I was, merely as a teenager.

And if I would have kept on that path, I don't know where I would be.

Part of me don't even want to imagine where I'd be.

But I could step back and look with all the times I've messed up and still mess up at times.

He's right there with me, guiding me, getting me through stuff, putting people in my life that I don't deserve having in my life.

They are such amazing friends.

The family of God is so cool.

And just getting to do anything in his name, whether it's something no one would ever see that you did, what a life that we get to live because of the cross and the empty tomb.

And here's what's great: that life is available to everybody.

Ten out of ten humans.

No matter how big of a varmint they are, no matter how completely godless you may think they are, or you may think you are, the invitation is open to all.

You know what I want to think of?

And yeah, I'll probably geek out about theories of atonement at some point again in my life, maybe even later today.

But you know what I hope that I'll think of when I think of atonement or at one-ment or the cross or the empty tomb?

What I hope I will remember is that God wanted this so bad.

God wanted this so bad.

He wanted you so bad.

He wanted you and him walking together so bad.

He wanted you being with him in heaven forever so bad that this is what he came up with.

His own son dying for people who pulled out his beard, who whipped him unrecognizably, spit on him.

People who claimed to believe in him run away, denying he even was the Christ.

He did it anyway.

He did it when he knew the times I would still mess up, even once I did believe in him.

He did it anyway.

He did it knowing how so many people would rebel and so many people would smear his name and use it as curses and jokes.

He did it anyway.

Because he wants you so bad.

He wants you so bad, he wants me so bad.

How could any of us stand before him and say, Of course you want me so bad?

No, there's no way I deserve the jealous love of God.

But if you ever doubt his love, if you ever doubt his grace, would you think upon the cross?

Would you think upon that terrible, terrible death he endured?

And believe this.

He loves you.

He wants you.

And you don't have to do a thing to earn it.

But you do have to believe in it.

Because if you don't believe in it, it's just a historical event that might have happened.

It's just a transaction from a distance that you hope is real.

But when you really believe in it and put your faith in him, and you take a step across that bridge of the cross, you will be made whole.

You will be made new.

And man, what a life that is.

And if you're here today, if you're watching, listening online today, and you've never taken that step of faith, the invitation is open right here, right now.

Call upon his name, ask him to forgive you of your sins.

And as it says in Romans 10:13, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10:13

As I pray, call upon him.

Will you bow with me?

Oh God, we will spend the rest of our days trying to comprehend what you did to save our souls.

But here in this moment, I believe you've boiled it down and you've made it simple for us that you just want to be with us, God.

And Father, if there's one here, one watching, one listening, anyone anywhere, no matter what they've done, no matter who they are, I hope that their heart and spirit and mind and soul has been awakened to understand that the cross and the empty tomb, you did that for them, to be with them.

And that all they have to do is call upon you in faith and say, God, save me.

God, forgive me of my sins.

I believe in you.

I believe you did this for me.

I believe that Jesus died, was buried, rose again.

And I want him to be my savior.

I want him to be my Lord.

I want him to be my friend forever and ever and ever.

I want to be with you too, God.

Make me new.

Take my old life and give me a new one.

Father, if anyone is praying anything like that right now, help them to know that today is the first day of the rest of their new eternal life, where they are never alone, where you are in them and with them for the rest of their days.

Oh Father, thank you for your amazing grace.

And we pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.