Why did Jesus die on the cross?
Jesus died on the cross so that we could be forgiven our sins but why was that necessary?
If God wanted to forgive us, why couldn’t He just have done it? Like a royal or presidential pardon? Why did He have to endure such suffering in order to do so?
Even the atoning sacrifices of the Old Testament were killed humanely. Jesus was not.
At the heart of it, there is a mystery as to why or how the actions of Jesus on the cross can lead to the results they do. That can only be known on authority. As the song says “We’ll never know how much it cost to see our sins upon the cross” basically because it is beyond our capacity to understand. However we can say the following:
It points to the death and resurrection of Jesus being about much more than forgiveness.
The answer I felt I received was like this: “Yes, I could have issued a Divine pardon but you needed to see that forgiveness is not trivial, it is not without cost. If I had simply said “you are forgiven” then nothing would have changed. The nature which led you to sin would still be there and the propensity to sin would have remained. You would still be in captivity to the Enemy. The sacrificial animals were there to show you the seriousness of sin but, because they too, did not have the power to change your nature, or to redeem you, they had to be repeated again and again. When you see Me on the cross, you see what the sins of the world mean to me. This is the pain the sin of the world inflicts on me. This is the way that my Spirit is grieved.”
If He hadn’t have done something spectacular like that, nobody would have taken any notice, nothing would have changed!
It is about:
- Cleansing of the mess Humanity had made of His Creation.
- Taking upon Himself the consequences of our sins.
- Demonstrating just how serious our sin is on the Cosmic scale.
- Facing evil and overcoming it, not with more evil but by taking all it could throw at Him and surviving.
- Identification with Human suffering.
- A demonstration of His nature and of His love for the Humanity which He had made.
- Jesus offers transformation, not just forgiveness.
Consider someone who commits an act of vandalism and causes an amount of damage which they would have no chance of repaying. In most legal systems, although they would receive a penalty, they would not have to make good the damage.