Why was Christ's death necessary?

Man, Sin, & Salvation
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steve
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Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by steve » Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:27 pm

Today I received the following question by email, and sent the following response. Feel free to add light to the topic, if you like.
Steve,
My son asked me a question that I do I need help answering: If God is loving and all knowing and powerful why did it take a human sacrifice to forgive mankind? Why couldn't He just say that all is forgiven? I will be working on my own reply but I would really appreciate your input too. Thank you for any help you can give.
Sincerely,
Shiela

Hi Shiela,

This question has been debated by theologians for centuries. It involves the nature of the atonement, and exactly what was intended and accomplished by Christ's death. Several views have been championed by different parties through the years.

Some speak of the atonement as paying a price for something that was damaged, while others say it was a satisfaction of justice, the scales of which could not be balanced by any other means. Some believe that the death of Christ was not so much to make forgiveness possible as to defeat Satan and set us free from his power. All of these views have some scripture in their support, though all of them leave some things unexplained.

What we can say with certainty is that it did not require Jesus' death to turn God to our side. On the contrary, it was because God was already on our side that He sent Jesus to die (John 3:16; 1 John 3:16; 4:9-10). There was no reluctance on the part of God to forgive, since it was He who freely offered the sacrifice to close the gap.

Exactly how the sacrifice actually closed the gap may, possibly, remain a mystery that only God fully understands, but it clearly was necessary for some reason, or else Christ should not have suffered so much for that which could as well have been achieved at less expense. Thus, we know that Christ's death was necessary for full reconciliation to take place, but that it was not due to any reluctance on God's part to forgive. Rather, it was His unilateral decision to forgive that induced Him to make the necessary sacrifice.

Blessings!

Steve Gregg

dwilkins
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Re: Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by dwilkins » Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:54 pm

I think that's a decent answer on the purely atonement angle, though you could add elements of the imagery of Passover and the scape goat offering that might help illustrate it. But, there was more to the story.

In addition to solving the sin problem I'd suggest a few additional reasons he had to die. First, you can't be resurrected unless you have died (1st Cor. 15). He couldn't have been rescued off of the cross after crying out that "It is finished". Whether he could have been translated to heaven without dying or not, our resurrection after death is based on his resurrection from death, so our hope requires that his death happened. Second, since Christ was one of the signatories in the Old Covenant with Israel, if he hadn't died the Jews could not have been released from the Old Covenant without becoming spiritual adulterers (Romans 7). Since he died, they were released and free to marry again under a different covenant. This doesn't have any direct application for anyone in 2015, but it was a major issue for the Jews, and major point of confusion for the Judaizers, in the first century. Third, he had to die in order to fulfill the prophecies associated with that event. I suppose they could have been written differently to begin with. But, since they were on paper he had to go through with it. Fourth, one of the indications that Christ was a prophet, and a key part of the indictment against the Jews, was that they tended to persecute and murder the prophets (Matt. 23). If he was going to play the role of a prophet, he was destined to die the way prophets generally did, at the hands of the Jews. The other New Testament prophets (Stephen, Paul, etc.) also participated in helping to fill up the measure of condemnation against the Jews. Though probably typological in some sense, it was important that one man die for the sake of the country so that the whole country wouldn't have to die (John 11). In the end, the substitutionary salvation this provided was associated with escaping the doom of the Roman War, and those who didn't take advantage of that salvation died anyway. But, he did provide a means of escape.

Doug

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Paidion
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Re: Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by Paidion » Sun Jul 05, 2015 11:02 pm

Jesus indicated that a person could be forgiven and indeed was forgiven BEFORE He died:

And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2 ESV)

Jesus didn't die in order that sins might be forgiven; rather he died that sins might be forsaken. He didn't die to forgive our sins; He died to deliver us from sin, that is, to save us from sin.

However, we do have passages such as the following which IN TRANSLATION indicate forgiveness of sins:

Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

IN TRANSLATION, forgiveness of sins seems to be the purpose of becoming a disciple of Christ. But "αφεσις" the word so translated, though it CAN mean "forgiveness" does not necessarily have that meaning. For example in Luke 4:18, the word means "release from bondage." I know of NO translation in which the word is rendered "forgiveness" in that verse. The main need of those who are oppressed is not forgiveness, but freedom from oppression. I suggest that Peter was saying in Acts 2:38, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the release from the bondage of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Mark 1:4 is another place in which "αφεσις" seems to be mistranslated.

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

When you read the account of John the baptizer's ministry, you find that he asked people to repent and be baptized, but that he never said a word about forgiveness. I suggest that John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forsaking of sins or for release from the bondage of sins. In its verbal form the Greek word means to leave or forsake. For example, the word is used where it says that Jesus left the crowds and went up into the mountain to pray.
Paidion

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Jason
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Re: Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by Jason » Wed Jul 08, 2015 12:29 pm

We might also say that Christ's death was primarily to display God's love ("God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us") while also providing us an example to follow ("As I have loved you, so also love one another"). I still think this is the main reason for the atonement, which I'd argue is symbolic since I'm sure God could've defeated Satan any number of ways. Is it possible He chose to play things out the way He did because it best displayed His love toward us?

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steve
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Re: Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by steve » Wed Jul 08, 2015 12:55 pm

There is no question that the death of Jesus is represented as the prime evidence that God loves us. But the meaningful expression of love is in doing things for others that they need to have done for them—e.g., feeding the hungry, liberating the oppressed, rescuing captives, etc. It would seem that Christ's death was an expression of love in that it met some particular need of the beloved ones. The question remains: "In what sense was His death beneficial to us?"

If it was simply to demonstrate to us that loyalty to God is required and appropriate even to the point of the loss of one's own life, so that we might be encouraged to be faithful unto death, this would benefit us, I think. However, we already had the examples of prophets and martyrs to convey that example and that encouragement (James 5:10). That Jesus would simply be following in the train of the prophets would seem anticlimactic, rather than the pinnacle of history.

That Jesus' death defeated the devil and became the basis for our personal victory over sin is also indisputable, but the Christus Victor motif leaves unexplained the question of how such a death accomplishes such a victory.

It seems that the ransom concept, which Jesus Himself endorsed (Mark 10:45) makes sense, if we can determine why such a ransom was required, to whom it was paid, and why the death of the Son of God was the proper currency for the payment. There are mysteries unexplained here, but this view at least has the advantage of solving a problem in a manner analogous to certain rescues we can understand in human life.

The sacrifice, or "sin-offering," motif is also endorsed by scripture, wherein the sins of the guilty are transferred to an innocent victim, who is then punished as a substitute (Isaiah 53:10; 2 Cor.5:21). This involves justice issues which, if true, would seem to be above our pay grade to fathom, since we have no perfect analogy in human courts of justice. Nonetheless, we cannot assume that there are no deeper principles of justice, known to God, but not to us (i.e., Aslan's "deeper magic"), which came into play in this situation. It seems impossible to deny that the Old Testament and New Testament writers accepted this concept (Isaiah 53:6; 1 Peter 2:24).

There is much debate concerning which of these ideas (or others) may be the "true" explanation of Christ's death. I have never seen any reason to choose among them, since nothing would prevent them all from being simultaneously "true."

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Jason
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Re: Why was Christ's death necessary?

Post by Jason » Wed Jul 08, 2015 2:31 pm

If the wages of sin is death, then Christ accepted those wages for Himself to spare us. But why is death the payment for sin and why not forgive sinners apart from some redemptive act? Maybe God had no choice and is beholden to some cosmic ethic, but I suspect He can accomplish what He desires an infinite number of ways. That He chose Christ dying on a cross is a fact we know for certain. Why He chose this scenario is an interesting question in light of the many ways God could've gone about it.

If there is a deeper meaning behind the atonement, then our desire to simplify the matter (for, say, the sake of preaching to others) is necessarily flawed, right? If the reason for the atonement is hidden from our frail human minds, then should we merely restate what the Bible teaches while acknowledging the mystery it presents? I rarely see this done. Most often, it's confidently stated that humanity was under God's wrath and so He punished His Son to save sinners from Hell. While perhaps true, this produces more questions than answers.

I can appreciate the complexity of atonement theory, but many of us feel a desire to simplify that which is complex (a task useful for practical living). Maybe I've simplified this too far, but viewing the work of Christ as primarily a display of love is a notion I can comprehend and therefore live out. And while it's true that we've had prophets and others who've given up their lives, God doing so Himself does strike me as a pinnacle moment. That God would rather suffer than have us suffer is great news insofar as it informs us about His character. Perhaps He could've just waved his hand and forgiven our sins, but Him choosing to suffer says something about our worth to Him in a way that merely stating "Okay, I forgive you" never could.

Or maybe those of us who are seeking simple answers are just too childish in our thoughts. This has occurred to me also.

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