Why did Jesus have to die?

It was Elias’ first day of school and my mind was set on trying to make his school trousers stay up.  As I pulled the trousers to their smallest setting and felt for that tiny clear button to hold it all together, Elias, in that nonchalant way of his asked, ‘Where is God?’ 

Here’s my opportunity I thought. Trousers - check.  Imparting godly wisdom - here goes.


Me - ‘God is everywhere all the time.’ 

PAUSE 

Me - It’s hard for us to understand this but we do know that God loves us. He loves us so much he sent his son Jesus to die for us.’

Son - ‘Why did Jesus die?

Me - ‘Erm... because of our sin. Because we do bad things and God is perfect so we needed Jesus to cover our sin so that we could be with God.’

LONG PAUSE

Son - ‘So why did he have to die?’

LONG PAUSE


And there it was. Another unravelling. The trousers were up but my spiritual certainty was not.


I have the answer to his question within the framework of Christianity: Jesus had to die because the cost of sin is death. God sent Jesus to die for us. In that death is grace. We can have a relationship with God because he looks through Jesus’ spotless sinless existence at us.  


But I still have some pretty hefty questions:


  1.  Why is the cost of sin death? Why couldn’t God just decide to look over our imperfections? He is all powerful.  


Also (sub question), why aren’t more Christians asking this question?  In the B.C days of animal sacrifice and offerings, I would have been required to sacrifice two pigeons or doves for both of my sons. No one gifted me birds at either of my baby showers; that would have been utterly weird. And yet we talk about Jesus’ death as though we are very comfortable with the idea of sacrifice and blood atonement.



  1. If we (somehow) accept that the cost of sin is death, how does this actually work?  What is it about blood and death that somehow magics away sin? 


Would God be appeased by any type of sacrifice?  Let’s say I lived in pre-Jesus times. If I did something really bad, would God be accepting of me if I stabbed my cat to say sorry? And if not, what makes some blood cleansing and some not?



  1. If we can somehow accept that the cost of death is sin and that blood sacrifice (ultimately in Jesus) covers this, why did God create such a problematic framework?   He set the system up like this.  Why? 



The overarching question here - Why did Jesus have to die? -  is my most embarrassing Honest Question.  This post didn’t take me as long to write as the last one but I held onto it before posting; I really should have a grip on this one. Asking questions is good but this question feels somehow blasphemous. Like I've gone too far.


But I’ve just got to know what I’m standing on so I have to ask. 


Are there answers?




Photo by IV Horton on Unsplash

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