If you ask different people, “Why did Jesus die on the cross?”
You will probably get lots of answers from “I don’t know” to “the forgiveness of our sins” to “Jesus victory over death, hell, and the grave”
The simple answer is Jesus chose to die because God loves us! After all, you are the one He loves the most!
This is simple and complex all at the same time….let’s look at something 1 Corinthians 15:1-4
Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. 2 It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. 3 I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. 4 He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said
“Christ died for our sins” what does that really mean? In the Greek the word “for” has multiple meanings….”for the benefit of,” “in place of/instead of,” “because of,” “as a representative of,” or “for the reason of.”
So what is Paul saying? Jesus died for the benefit of humankind, in place of humans, which suggests that he was a substitute for us! Or are we saying that He died for our benefit? Or is it because of what we have done or did to Him? Or maybe it’s just because He loves us? Or is it all of the above?
We need to understand why! Paul gives us a clue, a road map if you will, to finding the answer.
Paul said, “Just as the scriptures said,” Paul is pointing to the scriptures, he used what we would refer to as the Old Testament, what we know as the New Testament was in the process of being written. So can we go on a journey to build this story together?
Bear with me as we begin, in the beginning! If we don’t understand why we die then we will not understand why Christ died!
We grow old and die because the scripture tells us we will! God placed man in a place like heaven here on earth and man broke trust with God so the potential promise of eternal life on this earth was broken. Genesis 3:17-19
Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. 19 By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made.
For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
Broken relationship caused us to grow old and die!
When God created everything, he kept saying, “It is good!” but in these chapters, we see a difference between the world outside the garden and the bit of heaven on earth in the garden.
Inside the garden is life, the presence of God, and because God walks there, it is a place free of death. There is no death in his presence.
Outside of the garden there is beauty but living things come out of the dust of the earth and return to the dust of the earth
Genesis 2:7,8
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. 8 Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made.
Man came from the dust of the earth, God breathed His life into him and then he placed him in this garden of life.
In the garden, God gives man a choice: keep living in the garden forever or not. There were two trees in the garden: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man could choose to trust God and His wisdom, living with Him forever. This requires man to prove his trust in God by obeying His instructions, or he could choose to trust in his own wisdom- human wisdom- which violates God’s trust by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thereby rejecting God’s instructions and His life plan. God had warned them if they did this they would die.
Genesis 2:16,17
But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—17 except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”
Once again, rather than trusting the life-giving word of God, they chose to rely on their own human wisdom, listening to other voices instead of God.
The never-ending life God had planned for them in the garden was now broken. Rather than never aging, never growing old Adam was sent back to the place where he came. We die because Adam rejected God’s offer of the ultimate life.
God’s offer requires us to surrender what we think is life so that we can receive the true life God wants to give us. Sadly too often we make the choice to choose life defined by our wisdom rather than his….at times that can seem as innocent as eating some tasty looking fruit!
It is when those choices oppose God’s wise instructions, they bring death.
As the story continues God exiles humans from the garden and places Cherubim (more than one Cherub) with flaming sword to guard the garden so no one can reenter. Now that humans are corrupt it is “severe mercy” to protect them from living forever in a corrupted state.
This broke the Father’s heart. From the beginning He wanted intimate fellowship with us After all… we still made in his image. How can that happen if the only way to have eternal fellowship with God is by passing through two Cherubs with flaming swords and dying.
This would be a tragedy as it seems God has cut off ties with humanity because there is no return to that level of intimacy with God without dying. But God, being God always has a plan.
Let skip forward in history a bit. When God leads Israel out of Egypt and to Mt. Sinai he gives them instructions about building a tabernacle where God can bring his intimate presence home to his people. Later he will instruct them to build a temple in Jerusalem where God does the same thing. Then God will finally bring this intimacy as close as possible to the ones he loves by being 100% human and 100% God in Jesus of Nazareth.
Rather than God giving up on connecting with us, He joins us in the dust showing us the true life is a unity and intimacy with God and that death is not an end but a temporary condition not our ultimate end.
So, first, how did the Tabernacle and the temple help us better understand Jesus’ death?
As the narrative unfolds people learn to survive outside of the garden. They till the soil, fight enemies and suffer from the things of this world.
God instructs Moses to build a tabernacle, a place where he can dwell and He directs the people to fill it with the symbols of the garden. It is his way of saying you are outside of the garden now but I love you so I’m coming to where you live so you can experience small taste of the garden and intimacy with me and you will eventually be able to come back to the place I made you for!
Like the garden the tabernacle is a death-free zone. If you take the time to read the rituals and maintenance regarding the worship (Exodus 25-28) death is prohibited from entering into the tent. However, what you will find there are images of fruit and nut bearing trees all kinds of plants you would find in an orchard. If you are standing in the entrance to the court yard you will see two cherubs on either side with the fire of the altar in between them reminiscent of the cherubim guarding the entrance to the garden with the flaming sword. It has all been designed that the holy of holies is the place God dwells and entering it is like entering the garden.
Takes us back to how can you go back into the garden if you are dead by fiery sword. Leviticus 16-17 gives us the answer…it is truly a merciful mystery. (Exodus 25-40 describes the design of each item in the tabernacle)
God accepts the life of another in our place, a substitution for us. A blameless representative that surrenders its life for a less-than-blameless group of humans. We can not enter into this intimacy, God’s presence, the garden without dying so this blameless animal dies right outside of the Holy place so that the priest can carry its lifeblood and pass-through this dangerous boundary of cherubim and flaming sword into a symbolic garden and intimacy with God.
The animal dies on behalf of the humans, in place of the humans allowing the priest to “live through death” We need to understand humans don’t come to God hoping God might show mercy, God in his grace already made a way for us to experience it.
Leviticus 17:11
for the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the LORD. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.
God says he has given lifeblood on the altar to make us pure…through all of these instructions in Leviticus God is showing how real death happens because of our choice to oppose Him. The people experience and watch the consequences of the death, but they also begin to see how God wants to preserve human life through death. A representative, a substitution, goes through the flames on behalf of another. It a kind of death that does not destroy mankind but overcomes death!
Hopefully this is making sense to you. Next week we will finish the story but you need to understand sin causes death, but a way has been made to overcome that death not from the blood of animals but one sinless stood in our place.
We will get there next week!
God wants us back into the intimacy with him we can pass the cherubim and the flaming sword but it is not by our works, or our goodness but only through Him
Ephesians 2:8,9
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
My thanks to the Bible Project for much of this insight!