Why did Jesus have to die?
Jesus' work was amazingly fruitful. He taught and healed thousands. He attracted large numbers of listeners and could have had a far greater impact. He could have healed more thousands if he had gone to the Jews and non-Jews who lived in other lands. But Jesus allowed his work to come to an abrupt end. He could have avoided arrest, but he chose to die instead of carrying his message out into the world. Although his teachings were important, he not only came to teach, but also to die, and with his death he has done more than in his life. Death was the most important part of the work of Jesus. When we think of Jesus, we think of the cross as a symbol of Christianity, of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. Our Redeemer is a Redeemer who died.
Born to die
The Old Testament tells us that God appeared in human form several times. If Jesus had only wanted to heal and teach, he could have simply "appeared". But he did more: he became human. Why? So that he could die. To understand Jesus, we need to understand his death. His death is a central part of the message of salvation and something that affects all Christians directly.
Jesus said that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but that he should serve and give his life for redemption [multitude Bible and Elberfeld Bible: as a ransom] for many” Matt. 20,28). He came to sacrifice his life, to die; his death should “buy” salvation for others. This was the main reason he came to earth. His blood was shed for others.
Jesus announced his passion and death to his disciples, but apparently they did not believe him. “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples how he must go to Jerusalem and suffer much at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be put to death and be raised on the third day. And Peter took him aside and scolded him, saying, God save you, Lord! Don't let that happen to you!" (Matthew 1 Cor6,21-22.)
Jesus knew he had to die because it was written that way. "...And how then is it written of the Son of man, that he should suffer much and be despised?" (Mark. 9,12; 9,31; 10,33-34.) "And he began with Moses and all the prophets and explained to them what was said about him in all the Scriptures... Thus it is written that Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day" (Luk 24,27 and 46).
Everything happened according to God's plan: Herod and Pilate did only what God's hand and counsel "ordained beforehand should happen" (Acts 4,28). In the garden of Gethsemane he pleaded in prayer whether there might not be another way; there was none (Luk. 22,42). His death was necessary for us to be saved.
The suffering servant
Where was it written? The clearest prophecy is found in Isaiah 53. Jesus himself has Isaiah 53,12 quoted: “For I say to you, it must be accomplished in me what is written: 'He was reckoned among the evildoers.' For what is written of me will be accomplished” (Luke 22,37). Jesus, sinless, should be counted among the sinners.
What else is written in Isaiah 53? "Truly he bore our sickness and took upon himself our pains. But we thought him to be afflicted and smitten and martyred by God. But he is wounded for our iniquities and bruised for our sins. The chastisement is upon him that we may have peace, and by his wounds we are healed. We all went astray like sheep, each looking his way. But the Lord cast upon him the sins of us all” (verses 4-6).
He was “afflicted for the iniquity of my people...though he wronged no one...So the Lord would smite him with sickness. When he gave his life for a trespass offering...[he] bears their sins...he [has] borne the sins of many...and interceded for the evildoers" (verses 8-12). Isaiah describes a man who suffers not for his own sins but for the sins of others.
This man is to be “snatched away from the land of the living” (verse 8), but the story is not to end there. He is to “see the light and have abundance. And by his knowledge shall he, my servant, the righteous, establish righteousness among many... he shall have seed, and shall live long” (verses 11 & 10).
What Isaiah wrote was fulfilled by Jesus. He gave his life for his sheep (Joh. 10, 15). In his death he took on our sins and suffered for our transgressions; he was punished so that we could have peace with God. Through his suffering and death, the sickness of our soul is cured; we are justified - our sins are taken away. These truths are expanded and deepened in the New Testament.
A death in shame and shame
A "hanged man is cursed by God," it says in 5. Moses 21,23. Because of this verse, the Jews saw the curse of God on every crucified person, as Isaiah writes, as "struck by God." The Jewish priests probably thought this would deter and paralyze Jesus' disciples. In fact, the crucifixion destroyed their hopes. Dejectedly, they confessed: "We hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel" (Luke 24,21). The resurrection then restored her hopes, and the Pentecostal miracle filled her with renewed courage to announce a hero who was the bringer of salvation who, according to popular belief, was an absolute antihero: a crucified Messiah.
“The God of our fathers,” Peter proclaimed before the Sanhedrin, “raised Jesus, whom you hanged on a tree and killed” (Acts 5,30). In "Holz" Peter lets the whole disgrace of the crucifixion ring out. But the shame, he says, is not on Jesus—it is on those who crucified him. God blessed him because he didn't deserve the curse he suffered. God reversed the stigma.
Paul speaks the same curse in Galatians 3,13 to: “But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, since he became a curse for us; for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'...” Jesus became the curse on our behalf so that we might be freed from the curse of the law. He became something he wasn't so that we could become something we aren't. “For he made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2. Cor.
5,21).
Jesus became sin for us so that we might be declared righteous through Him. Because he suffered what we deserved, he redeemed us from the curse—the penalty—of the law. “The chastisement is upon him that we may have peace.” Because of his chastisement, we can enjoy peace with God.
The word of the cross
The disciples never forgot the ignominious way Jesus died. Sometimes it was even the focus of their preaching: "... but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks" (1. Corinthians 1,23). Paul even calls the gospel “the word of the cross” (verse 18). He reproaches the Galatians for having lost sight of the true image of Christ: "Who charmed you, seeing that Jesus Christ was painted crucified in your eyes?" (Gal. 3,1.) In this he saw the core message of the gospel.
Why is the cross "gospel," good news? Because we were redeemed on the cross and there our sins received the punishment they deserve. Paul focuses on the cross because it is the key to our salvation through Jesus.
We will not be resurrected to glory until the guilt of our sins has been paid, when we have been made righteous in Christ as "it is before God." Only then can we enter into glory with Jesus.
Paul said Jesus died “for us” (Rom. 5,6-8; 2. Corinthians 5:14; 1. Thess. 5,10); and "for our sins" he died (1. Corinthians 15,3; Gal. 1,4). He "carried our sins up himself...in his body on the tree" (1. peter 2,24; 3,18). Paul goes on to say that we died with Christ (Rom. 6,3-8th). By believing in him we share in his death.
If we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, his death counts as ours; our sins count as his, and his death abolishes the punishment for those sins. It is as if we were hanging on the cross, as if receiving the curse our sins have us. But he did it for us, and because he did it, we can be justified, that is, considered just. He takes our sin and our death; he gives us justice and life. The prince has become a beggar boy so that we may become beggar boys princes.
Although it is said in the Bible that Jesus paid ransom (in the old sense of redemption: ransom, ransom) for us, the ransom was not paid to any specific authority - it is a figurative phrase that wants to make it clear that it is him cost us an unbelievably high price to set us free. "You were bought with a price" is how Paul describes our redemption through Jesus: this too is a metaphorical phrase. Jesus “bought” us but “paid” no one.
Some have said that Jesus died to satisfy the father's legal claims - but one could also say that it was the father himself who paid the price by sending and giving his only son for it. 3,16; Rom. 5,8). In Christ, God himself took the punishment - so we wouldn't have to; "For by the grace of God he should taste death for all" (Heb. 2,9).
Escape the wrath of God
God loves people - but he hates sin because sin harms people. Therefore, there will be a "day of wrath" when God judges the world (Rom. 1,18; 2,5).
Those who reject the truth will be punished (2, 8). Whoever rejects the truth of divine grace will get to know the other side of God, his anger. God wants everyone to repent (2. peter 3,9), but those who do not repent will feel the consequences of their sin.
In Jesus' death our sins are forgiven, and through his death we escape God's wrath, the punishment of sin. That does not mean, however, that a loving Jesus calmed down an angry God or, to a certain extent, “bought him silently”. Jesus is angry with sin just as the Father is. Jesus is not only the judge of the world who loves sinners enough to pay the penalty for their sins, he is also the judge of the world who condemns (Matt. 25,31-46).
When God forgives us, he does not simply wash the sin and pretend that it never existed. Throughout the New Testament, he teaches us that sin is overcome through the death of Jesus. Sin has serious consequences - consequences that we can see on the cross of Christ. It cost Jesus pain and shame and death. He bore the punishment we deserved.
The gospel reveals that God acts righteously when he forgives us (Rom. 1,17). He does not ignore our sins but deals with them in Jesus Christ. "Him God appointed for faith, an atonement in his blood, to prove his righteousness..." (Rom.3,25). The cross reveals that God is righteous; it shows that sin is too serious to be ignored. It is appropriate that sin should be punished, and Jesus willingly took our punishment upon himself. In addition to God's justice, the cross also shows God's love (Rom. 5,8).
As Isaiah says, we are at peace with God because Christ was punished. We were once far from God, but have now come close to him through Christ (Eph. 2,13). In other words, we are reconciled to God through the cross (v. 16). It is a basic Christian belief that our relationship with God depends on the death of Jesus Christ.
Christianity: this is not a set of rules. Christianity is belief that Christ did everything we need to make right with God - and he did it on the cross. We were "reconciled to God in the death of his Son while we were enemies" (Rom. 5,10). Through Christ, God reconciled the universe "by making peace through his blood on the cross" (Colossians 1,20). If we are reconciled through him, we are forgiven of all sins (verse 22) - reconciliation, forgiveness and justice all mean one and the same thing: peace with God.
Victory!
Paul uses an interesting metaphor for salvation when he writes that Jesus “stripped the principalities and authorities of their power, and set them openly on display, and made them a triumph in Christ [a. tr.: through the cross]” (Colossians 2,15). He uses the image of a military parade: the victorious general leads enemy prisoners in a triumphal procession. You are disarmed, humiliated, on display. What Paul is saying here is that Jesus did this on the cross.
What appeared to be an ignominious death was actually a crowning triumph for God's plan, because it was through the cross that Jesus gained victory over enemy forces, Satan, sin and death. Their claims on us have been fully satisfied by the death of the innocent victim. They cannot ask for more than has already been paid. By his death, we are told, Jesus took away the power of "the one who had power over death, even the devil" (Heb. 2,14). "...For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1. John 3,8). Victory was won on the cross.
Victim
Jesus' death is also described as a sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice draws from the rich Old Testament tradition of sacrifice. Isaiah calls our Maker a "guilt offering" (Deut3,10). John the Baptist calls him "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn. 1,29). Paul depicts him as a sacrifice of atonement, a sin offering, a Passover lamb, an incense offering (Rom. 3,25; 8,3; 1. Corinthians 5,7; Eph. 5,2). The letter to the Hebrews calls him the sin offering (10,12). John calls him an atonement sacrifice "for our sins" (1. John 2,2; 4,10).
There are several names for what Jesus did on the cross. The individual New Testament authors use different terms and images for this. The exact choice of words, the exact mechanism are not decisive. What matters is that we are saved through the death of Jesus, that only his death opens salvation to us. “By his wounds we are healed.” He died to set us free, to blot out our sins, to suffer our punishment, to buy our salvation. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we should also love one another" (1. John 4,11).
Healing: Seven key words
The riches of Christ's work are expressed in the New Testament through a whole range of linguistic imagery. We can call these pictures parables, patterns, metaphors. Each paints a part of the picture:
- Ransom (almost synonymous in meaning with “redemption”): a price paid to ransom, set someone free. The focus is on the idea of liberation, not the nature of the prize.
- Redemption: in the original sense of the word also based on the " ransom ", also e.g. B. the ransoming of slaves.
- Justification: standing before God again without guilt, as after an acquittal in court.
- Salvation (salvation): The basic idea is liberation or salvation from a dangerous situation. It also contains healing, healing and a return to wholeness.
- Reconciliation: Renewing a disturbed relationship. God reconciles us to himself. He is acting to restore a friendship and we are taking his initiative.
- Childhood: We become the legitimate children of God. Faith is changing our marital status: from the outsider to the family member.
- Forgiveness: can be seen in two ways. By law, forgiveness means the cancellation of a debt. Interpersonal means forgiveness that forgives a personal injury (According to Alister McGrath, Understanding Jesus, p. 124-135).
by Michael Morrison
