Why Jesus had to die to forgive our sins. Why did Jesus have to die for our sins? Everyone has asked this question. I know you have because you are here reading this.
Was God replacing animal sacrifice? So, at a surface-level glance, we know that sin causes death because death is the punishment for sin. The first humans sinned and tried to cover their shame which resulted from it, but did so in an inadequate way. God had to end the life of an animal, perhaps a lamb, to remove its skin to provide a better covering. Blood was shed.
From this moment on, blood sacrifice ending the life of an animal was required as a reminder to the people here that sin equals death. Now these we not just random animals, but would be set aside and kept almost like a pet before being sacrificed, the family would have become attached to this animal and it would cause grief when they sacrificed it, and what’s more, they would know they caused this pain to the animal and the grief that they feel.
Why not just forgive and forget? Ok, that’s good and all, but why would God need to take human form and die a horrible death to pay for our sins, and who was being paid that price? Isn’t God overall? Of course. God is God over everything, couldn’t he just forgive us and not die on the cross? Well, yeah he could have. Pushing this question back even further in time, couldn’t he simply have made clothing for Adam and Eve from synthetic fibers, wouldn’t that be easy for him since he created an entire universe? Yeah, but it would not have been beneficial for the growth of his creation.
It is also important to point out that we owe our debt to God, not Satan or any other being. Even more importantly, God does not owe Satan or any other being anything. There is why the ransom or substitution theory of Jesus paying our debts breaks down. The concept that our debt must be paid to God is correct, but how could Jesus pay that to God when Jesus is God in Human form? Nobody goes to the father except through the son because father and son are analogies for what the ancient Greeks could not understand and God is truly one being. Your creditors can forgive your loans, but can’t pay them off to themselves.
Now some have suggested that it was simply to show us how much he loves us or to get our attention with a dramatic display. No, he did not suffer an agonizing death just as part of a psyop to make a point, as there was true purpose here.
Was it to fulfill prophecies of the Messiah by the prophets? No, and I think this argument is stupid, and here’s why I believe that had nothing to do with it because he could have chosen another way and told the prophets that, to begin with. Crucifixion was the plan from the very beginning, and that can be seen in the first word of the Bible. Let me show you.
That word is Bereshit and was spelled in Hebrew Beyt Resh Aleph Shin Yud Tav. That means nothing to most people now, but looking at it in paleo Hebrew script it is 𓏴𓂝𓌓𓃾𓁶𓉐 and making it more recognizable to modern people by converting to a more modern system called emoji would look like this 🪧 💪 🦷 🐮 🧔 🏠.
Beyt + Resh together form the word Bar meaning “Son of” (in Aramaic, in Hebrew it is Ben). Aleph = Ox head meaning Power, Authority, Strength; said to be used by the Hebrews to represent “God”. Shin = Two front teeth meaning Sharp, Press, Eat… (the function of the teeth when chewing; consume/destroy). Yud = Arm meaning work, make and deed; the functions of the hand. Tav = Crossed Sticks meaning Mark, Sign, Signal, Monument.The meaning here is The Son of God will be destroyed by His work on the cross. Even from the beginning, the Son of God was to die on the cross for us by His hand to save us from our sins.
Fun fact, The second word indicates that God and the son of God are one. So we see that before Adam, this was the plan that God had chosen all along. Furthermore, and this is important, God took human form and lived a perfect and sinless life of service and furthering his word even to the point of submission to a horrible death, all as an example of how we are to live. So what is the meaning of life? To be like Christ.
God already forgave sins regularly before his death on the cross.
Also, let’s not forget that God was forgiving sins through humans sacrificing animals in the past in the old testament, then Jesus forgave specific people of their sins in the new testament before his death and resurrection.
However, you might point out that the scriptures do indicate that he died to atone for our sins. It does say that, and his willing sacrifice was a way of showing his love for us, but it was only A way, he could have done it differently had he chosen to. Now you might point out that Jesus said he would prefer that figurative cup to pass from him, so why did he choose this to be the way?
God took human form and lived an entire life adhering to his laws as an example of how we are to live. He lived as a human man. Now many people may know that God already said through Paul that it appointed all humans to live, and then to die once, and then receive a new glorified body. Now I know, Enoch and Elijah, but they reappear in Revelation and get brutally murdered fulfilling the requirement. It’s almost as if this body is a worm and physical death is a chrysalis. When God allowed his physical body, Jesus, to die on the cross, he resurrected into a new and more glorified body, as will we all. The cross doesn’t matter, it’s the death and resurrection that matters here. The new glorified body is the one which he will use when he reigns on earth for a millennium after the end of this age.
While God will resurrect everyone at one point in the future, the ability to die and resurrect oneself is what separates God from humans, just as the ability to re-spawn would separate a videogame player from a non-player character, and assert dominance over the system. if the elevation of a physical body requires this process of death and resurrection the way a caterpillar requires a chrysalis to become a butterfly, why not use the needed process as a reference to obedience to the point of death? After all, your life is not your own but God’s. When you die, you will be with God in this, but not until a time that he appoints. Let me be clear, no you will not be a god yourself. Many Gnostics fall into this trap. You will be with God in a glorified body, but not a god yourself.
Ok, so how does the death of Christ cover sins? So while that may be a poetic way of understanding it, that doesn’t explain what took place, how his death and resurrection cover your sins. An important thing to notice is that God is holy and can not look at sin. Holiness and Sin are like matter and antimatter. When he in Human form took on the world’s sin to forgive it, he would have become corrupted.
I would argue that at the moment the body which we call Jesus realized that he had forsaken himself, it was God’s spirit leaving the body behind so that his holiness could be preserved. Consider that the body disappeared from under the burial shroud and he reappears glorified elsewhere. His holiness and glory were preserved, and his temporary body died. The cross was to serve as a veil between God and our sin to make it more tolerable, not that God needed protection or anything, but it’s how he chose it.
So why didn’t God simply wave his hand and forgive and forget the sin? Again, God is holy. A Judge that acquits an innocent man condemns himself as a criminal. How can a holy judge overlook sin without becoming a sinner? That’s not who or what God is. If something gas is to be paid, there has to be restitution made.
When God paid the debt that we owe him, it’s similar to how a government might print money for a stimulus package. He created the grace that he showed us. Back to the beginning with the animal, presumably, a lamb, one which God created as part of his perfect creation, that God sacrificed to literally cover the shame that came with human sin, then the institution of the sacrifices blemish-free animals, God created a blemish free human life to cover all sin.Why not just forgive us without the sacrifice?
From the beginning, God said that the wages of sin are death, and he can not go back on that as he said it. If God had simply said, “it’s cool don’t worry about it” then he would be both an unjust judge, as one who lets a murderer free who begs for forgiveness, but he would also become a liar when he said, “the wages of sin are death”. God needed there to be a death to satisfy the wages of sin as he created that decry. You can see my video on Sin for why this was the case.
Now, why can’t I just die for my sins? I mean I’m going to die eventually, can’t we just call it a day, and all is forgiven? Why can’t people simply sacrifice themselves? For one, if you are having thoughts like that, please get help, I’ve lost two friends to that. Additionally, if a sacrifice had to be unblemished, God would accept nothing less, and we are defiantly not unblemished, due to, you know, sin. This is why we need the gift of a perfect human to serve as a sacrifice so that God could be justified in forgiving humanity, so long as they repent and accept that forgiveness.
So, does the blood of Jesus cover your sins? Well yes, but not in some human-sacrifice-ritual way as an animal sacrifice would have been, but it was the completion of a perfect life, and your acceptance of that as a way of life unto death and striving to be a part of his example. Your choice to take up your figurative (or in many cases throughout history, literal) cross and follow Jesus is your salvation. We are also shown that through death comes the resurrection and that death has been defeated and does not need to be feared, so long as you choose life.
God chose the path to the cross before the world was created and the prophecies came after that. God said the wages of sin are death, and he is a just judge. To forgive sin without death would both be unjust and would make God a liar. A perfect and unblemished sacrifice is required, and we are certainly blemished due to our sins. God took human form as Jesus and lived a perfect life, which ended in his bloody death to be a sacrifice to pay our debt to himself. He literally provided the sacrifice to justify his own forgiveness of our sin in the way a government would bail out its population by printing money.