What was the ultimate cause that led to Jesus coming to earth and dying for our sins? To find this we must trace the question back to something in the character of God himself. Scripture points to two things; the love and justice of God.
The love of God as a cause of the atonement is seen in the most familiar passage in the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NASB). But the justice of God also required that God find a way that the penalty due to us for our sins would be paid. Paul explains that was why God sent Christ to be a “propitiation” (Romans 3:25 NASB). This is a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath so that God becomes favorably disposed towards us. This shows God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. Here Paul says that God had been forgiving sins in the Old Testament but no penalty had been paid; a fact that would make people wonder whether God was indeed just and ask how he could forgive sins without a penalty. No God who was truly just could do that, could he? When God sent Christ to die and pay the penalty for our sins, “it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus’ (Romans 3:26). Therefor both the love and justice of God was the ultimate cause for the atonement.
Was there any other way for God to save human beings than by sending his Son to die in our place? Before answering this question, it is important to realize that it was necessary for God to save any people at all. When we appreciate that “For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgement” (2 Peter 2:4 NASB), then we realize that God could have also have chosen with perfect justice to have left us in our sins awaiting judgement; he could have chosen to save no one, just as he did with the sinful angels.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You” (Matthew 26:39 NASB). We may be confident that Jesus always prayed according to the will of the Father, and that he always prayed with fullness of faith. Thus it seems that this prayer shows that it was not possible for Jesus to avoid death on the cross which was soon to come to him. If he was going to accomplish the work that the Father sent him to do, and if people were going to be redeemed for God, then it was necessary for him to die on the cross. The epistle to the Hebrews emphasizes that Christ had to suffer for our sins: “Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”.
As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins alone, God the Father, poured out on Jesus the fury of his wrath: Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God patiently stored up since the beginning of the world. God had not simply forgiven sin and forgotten about the punishment in generations past. He had forgiven sins and stored up his righteous anger against those sins. At the cross the fury of that entire stored-up wrath against sin was unleashed against God’s own Son.
Christ’s death met four needs that we have as sinners:
- We deserve to die as the penalty for sin.
- We deserve to bear God’s wrath against sin.
- We are separated from God by our sins.
- We are in bondage to sin and to the kingdom of Satan.
Because we as sinners are in bondage to sin and to Satan, we need someone to provide redemption and thereby redeem us out of that bondage. When we speak of redemption, the idea of a ransom comes into view. A ransom is a price paid to redeem someone from bondage or captivity. Jesus said of himself, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45 NASB).
Though we were in bondage to sin and to Satan, there was no ransom paid to either sin or to Satan himself, for they did not have the power to demand such a payment, not was Satan the one whose holiness was offended by sin and who required a penalty to be paid for sin. The penalty for sin was paid by Jesus Christ and received and accepted by God the Father.
We were redeemed from Bondage to Satan because “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), and when Christ came he died to “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:15). In fact, God the Father “has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).
So on this Easter Day while we rejoice of the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, let’s keep in mind as to why he had to die in the first place. Without His death, we are still would have a debt that needs to be paid, without His death, there is no resurrection. Without the resurrection we do not have the Christian life we are able to live in today. Because God so loved the world…