Why Did Jesus Die?

11 September 202612 min read

Did God need blood before he could forgive? Was somebody required to be punished before mercy was legally permitted? Or have we been reading the sacrifices backwards for a very long time?

This article continues Why All This Blood?, where we considered what God meant by the Old Testament sacrifices, why blood was used, and whether sacrifice was ever intended to placate God or make him willing to forgive.

If the Old Testament sacrifices pointed forward to Christ, then whatever they meant must finally find its fulfillment in him.

But this immediately raises a problem.

For centuries God had told Israel that he did not eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats; that he did not desire sacrifice in the place of obedience; that he could not be purchased by ever-increasing quantities of blood. Could the meaning of the cross really be that God had at last received a sacrifice large enough to placate him?

Was Jesus’ death meant to turn away an angry God?

Was it because God needed to see blood before he could forgive the sinner?

Was there some legal requirement in the government of God which made it impossible for him to forgive until he had punished somebody?

If that is what the cross means, then the Old Testament sacrifices seem hardly to have pointed forward to Christ at all—for God had repeatedly appealed to Israel not to understand sacrifice in precisely that transactional way.

And so we must ask, “Why did Jesus have to die?”

The cross did not make God love the world

We should establish one fact at the beginning: the cross did not make God love the world.

God loved the world; therefore, he gave his Son—“For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). The gift proceeds from the love. “It is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son” (1 John 4:10). God did not send Christ so that he would begin loving sinners; he sent Christ because he already did. God “was making all human beings his friends through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and again, “we were God’s enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).

Notice the direction.

God is not being reconciled to the world. God is in Christ, making his enemies his friends. We are the ones being reconciled.

This is worth dwelling on, because it takes us very close to the original sense of the English word atonement: at-one-ment—the bringing again into one of those who have become estranged. Whatever else the biblical words translated “atonement” may include in their particular contexts, the whole process moves toward reconciliation.

And in the New Testament the direction of that reconciliation is remarkably clear.

God is not the estranged party who must be won over by blood.

We are.

Something has happened to humanity: to our relationship with God, our trust in him, our understanding of him, our condition under sin—and God acts in Christ to repair it.

“For the forgiveness of sins”

This does not mean that Jesus’ death has nothing to do with forgiveness.

Jesus himself says:

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” — Matthew 26:28 (ESV)

But notice the language Jesus chooses.

“Blood of the covenant.”

That phrase reaches straight back to Sinai:

“Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” — Exodus 24:8 (ESV)

Which raises two questions we should not pass over too quickly.

Why blood? Why not something else?

And what exactly is a covenant, and what is it for?

Let us take the second question first.

What a covenant is for

Does God need a covenant with man before he can do good to him? Does he need a properly ratified agreement before he is free to bless, forgive, and restore?

Surely not.

God had been good to man long before Sinai.

He had given life before there was any covenant ceremony.

He had preserved Noah before giving the rainbow.

He had called Abraham and promised to bless him before the covenant was solemnized in the strange ceremony of Genesis 15.

The covenant therefore cannot be something God needs in order to become gracious.

It is rather something man needs, so that the gracious purposes of God toward him may be made explicit, understood, and trusted.

God puts the relationship into words. He makes promises. He identifies what he proposes to do, and what life with him will look like. And he gives tangible signs by which creatures who have so much difficulty trusting him may know the certainty of what he has promised.¹

This is precisely how Hebrews explains the vow God swore to Abraham:

“To those who were to receive what he promised, God wanted to make it very clear that he would never change his purpose; so he added his vow to the promise.” — Hebrews 6:17 (GNT)

The vow added nothing to God’s truthfulness. It did not make him one degree more reliable than he already was.

It was given for the sake of those who were to receive the promise, that they might see he would never change his purpose.²

This is why the recurring covenant formula throughout Scripture is so simple:

“I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

The heart of covenant between God and man has always been relationship.

God has not suddenly become willing to do good to man because an agreement has been reached. He is making known the kind of relationship he is inviting man into.

At Sinai, for example, God did not begin the covenant by saying, “If you will first obey me, I will rescue you from Egypt.” By then the rescue had already happened, and the Ten Commandments begin with an acknowledgment of the fact:

“I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves.” — Exodus 20:2 (GNT)

Deliverance precedes the covenant. God has already acted for them; now he shows them what life in relationship with him looks like.

“Do not worship other gods.”

“Do not murder.”

“Do not steal.”

“Do not commit adultery.”

“Do not bear false witness.”

“Do not covet.”

And when the covenant is formally entered into, the people respond:

“We will obey the LORD and do everything that he has commanded.” — Exodus 24:7 (GNT)

Then the blood formally ratifies the covenant.

Which brings us back to the first question.

Why blood?

Blood was not incidental to the covenant ceremony. Scripture shows blood and sacrifice appearing again and again in connection with covenant. When God enters into covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, animals are killed and divided. At Sinai, animals are again sacrificed, and Moses uses their blood to inaugurate the covenant. Hebrews itself draws attention to this:

“Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.” — Hebrews 9:18 (ESV)

There is plainly, then, something about blood that belongs very deeply to the biblical language of covenant.

The question is what it means.

So why was blood so fitting to what was being represented at Sinai?

“The life of every living thing is in the blood.” — Leviticus 17:11 (GNT)

The blood represented life, and the covenant concerned life.

Israel was entering into a relationship with the One from whom their life came, and the terms of that covenant described what life in harmony with him looked like.

The use of blood gave the whole transaction a seriousness which words alone may not easily carry. It said in effect: “This is no trivial agreement. Life and death are involved here.”

There is a further dimension. The ancient ceremony of passing between divided animals carried the solemn implication that the covenant-maker’s own life stood behind his promise. Jeremiah refers to precisely such a ceremony when God says of those who had broken their covenant:

“I will treat them like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” — Jeremiah 34:18 (GNT)

The men who walked between the pieces had called that fate down upon themselves, and God now gives them over to it (Jeremiah 34:20).

The slain animal therefore gave visible expression to the life-and-death seriousness of covenant.

And notice what Moses does with the blood.

Part of it is placed upon the altar.

The rest is sprinkled upon the people.

Then Moses says:

“Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” — Exodus 24:8 (ESV)

The symbolism is difficult to miss.

The altar on one side. The people on the other. And the same blood touching both.

God and his people are being joined in covenant fellowship.

Again, at the risk of being tedious, the blood was not presented in order to change God’s attitude toward Israel. He had already rescued them. He had already brought them to himself. He had already said:

“You saw what I, the LORD, did to the Egyptians and how I carried you as an eagle carries her young on her wings, and brought you here to me.” — Exodus 19:4 (GNT)

The blood enters into and solemnizes a relationship which grace has already initiated.

It impresses upon the people the life-and-death seriousness of what they are entering into.

And perhaps this is why blood is such a fitting symbol of covenant.

A covenant with God is ultimately an invitation to trust him with one’s life.

The new covenant

Now consider what happens when the prophets begin to speak of a new covenant.

Jeremiah describes it this way:

“The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.None of them will have to teach a neighbor to know the LORD, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest.I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs.” — Jeremiah 31:33–34 (GNT)

Here, surely, we are very close to the essence of what God has wanted all along.

“I will be their God.”

“They will be my people.”

“All will know me.”

“I will put my law within them.”

“I will forgive their sins.”

These are the terms of the new covenant.

Knowledge of God.

Reconciliation.

Forgiveness.

A law no longer merely heard from the outside, but written within.

A people restored to such confidence in God that they willingly live again in harmony with him.

Nothing in all this suggests that the fundamental problem was that God lacked legal permission to forgive. The problem is in the people.

They do not know him.

They do not trust him.

His law is not in their hearts.

They are estranged.

And God proposes to repair all of this.

This makes Jesus’ words at the supper considerably more meaningful:

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” — Luke 22:20 (ESV)

What then does his blood establish?

The very covenant Jeremiah had described.

“All will know me”

This seems especially significant.

For if the problem is that the creatures do not know God as he really is—if distrust and deception have entered the relationship—then reconciliation cannot be accomplished simply by God declaring that the parties are reconciled.

Man must actually be reconciled.

He must come to know God again.

He must see reason to trust him.

And this cannot be accomplished by compulsion.

God cannot force a person to trust him. He cannot bypass the mind and produce genuine love by an act of power.

The relationship can be restored only as the truth is made sufficiently clear for the estranged creature to make an intelligent and voluntary return.

This is why the blood of Christ is so appropriate to the covenant.

It is not simply a substance that gives an agreement legal validity.

The blood represents the life of Christ poured out before us.

And in that life and death, the God whom the covenant promises that we shall “know” is made known.

The blood of the covenant does not make God faithful to us.

It shows us how faithful he already is.

It does not make him willing to receive us.

It shows us the lengths to which he will go to bring us back.

And now the words at the supper can be heard whole.

“My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The forgiveness is not something wrung from God by the blood. It is one of the very promises of the covenant which the blood establishes: “I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs.” God had been saying as much for centuries. What the blood of the covenant does is bring the estranged creature to the place where such forgiveness can at last be known, believed, and received.

The death of Jesus is therefore not merely the killing of a victim. It is bound up with covenant, reconciliation, restored relationship, and the opening of the way back to God.

Hebrews develops this at length. Christ’s blood cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14). It establishes the new covenant (Hebrews 9:15–22). It opens a new and living way into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19–22).

These are all sacrificial ideas.

But none of them requires the conclusion that suffering had to make the Father merciful, or that some legal necessity prevented him from forgiving until he had inflicted an equivalent punishment.

Then why did Jesus die?

Not to make God loving. He already was.

Not to make him willing to forgive. He had been saying so for centuries.

Not to remove some obstacle standing between his mercy and ourselves.

He died to establish the covenant in which God is finally known—to bring back the estranged, to restore trust, to open the way home, and to make forgiveness something we are at last able to receive.

But if that is so, one question remains.

Why did this saving work take the form of such a public and terrible death?

Why the cross?

What was God demonstrating there?

And what did the cross reveal—not only about God, but about sin, Satan, and the larger controversy into which humanity had become involved?

That is the question we turn to next.

John Calvin makes the same point about the outward signs God gives. In the Institutes he argues that by this means God provides for our ignorance and dullness, and then for our weakness; the sign is not needed to confirm the word of God so much as to establish us in faith in it. See Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.xiv.1, 3. ↩
Calvin says the same of the oath: God, as a gracious Father, “accommodates himself to our slowness to believe,” and because we do not rest on his simple word, he adds an oath. See his Commentary on Hebrews 6:17. Ellen White observes the same thing about the ceremony of Genesis 15, where Abraham asked for a visible token as a confirmation of his faith, and the Lord condescended to enter into covenant with him, “employing such forms as were customary among men” for ratifying a solemn engagement (Patriarchs and Prophets, 137). ↩