Why did Jesus have to die? Colossians 2

Sermon preached by Revd. Andy Bachelor on Sunday 13th June 2010. This was the second of a series of four sermons answering questions raised by members of the congregation.

Good Morning / afternoon / evening everyone. Today we are continuing our sermon series on challenging issues as nominated by our congregations. This week the question we are addressing is ‘Why did Jesus have to die’.

This is a question that cuts right to the heart of the Christian faith. You will find that the cross is the most prevalent symbol in any Christian church, demonstrating the importance of Jesus death and resurrection, which is at the core of what we believe, and something we remember often as we share together in the bread and wine of communion.

There is a general acceptance, even among those who are outside the Christian community, that a person called Jesus existed, and that he had a ministry of healing and teaching in first century Judea. He is mentioned specifically by several of the most respected historians of the time, including the Roman scholar Tacitus, and the Jewish writer Flavius Josephus, who mentions both his life, his death on the cross, and the reports of his resurrection.

During his life Jesus clearly had a major impact on the community around him. People flocked to hear his teaching, to come to him for healing, or to witness the miracles he performed. But there was much more to Jesus ministry than this.
It was his claim to be the Son of God that eventually led him to the cross, and throughout the gospels we see Jesus telling his disciples that his death was a crucial part of his mission, and a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. In Matthew 20:28 he says: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ In Luke 24 we read: ‘this is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day’.
From the earliest days of the church, theologians have wrestled with the question of why Jesus had to die, and what it was that his death on the cross accomplished, and this has become known as the doctrine of the atonement. When I was at theological college this was something that had a powerful impact on me as I studied what many generations of scholars had written. What I discovered was that, although there are a number of ways of interpreting the meaning of Jesus death, taken together they illuminate the amazing power and depth of God’s love for humanity and what he was prepared to sacrifice for us.
Of course to cover all these centuries of reflection would take far more time than I have available today, but I will try to give you an overview of the main schools of thought about what Jesus death accomplished.
To begin with we need to recognise that things had gone wrong in God’s creation from pretty early on. The book of Genesis describes how God brought the Universe into being, and it describes it as being very good. To start with human beings lived in a harmonious relationship with the productive and beautiful world around them, and with the God who had provided it all for them.
God gave humanity the freedom to make decisions and choices about how they lived and responded to him.
This of course involved an element of risk, since that meant that people could decide to turn away from him and make bad decisions as well as good, but as we heard in Alan’s talk last week, any truly loving relationship has to spring from a free choice.  

But at some point humanity did indeed make that decision to go their own way, to do their own thing, to reject Gods plan and purposes with tragic consequences.

That once-perfect creation was corrupted, sin and death and evil were let loose in the world, and darkness fell across creation. We don’t have to look very far around us today to see that darkness reflected in the society we live in. Injustice, corruption, hatred, war, terrorism, discrimination, pollution, selfishness. The world we live in is still a broken place.

People rejected God, cut themselves off from him, and as a consequence found themselves struggling to make sense of life, without the clarity, purpose, and hope for the future that they were created to experience.

But God wasn’t prepared to abandon us to deal with the mess we have made of things on our own. Those of us who are parents will understand that eventually our children have to make their own decisions about how they live their lives. We want them to find joy and fulfilment, but sometimes they make mistakes, ignore our advice, and end up in trouble, not sure what to do next.
But most parents never give up on their kids, will do everything they can to help, to bail them out, often sacrificing a great deal to do it. At the end of the day it’s because we love them, and that love is just a dim reflection of the love God has for us, his children.

So God decided to step in, to bail us out, and that was Jesus’ mission, costly though it would prove to be. So why did that mission involve his death? Well as Christians have wrestled with this question over the ages the church has formulated a number of views, often influenced by the culture of the time. To begin with the church saw the work of Jesus as being primarily to do with overcoming the spiritual forces that held humanity captive. There was a stronger sense of evil at work and an awareness of human frailty and mortality in a world where illness was often fatal and life expectancy much lower.

People were seen as being tempted and led astray by Satan, reflected in the story of Adam and Eve being led to disobey God by the serpent in the garden of Eden. Jesus, the son of God, was sent by his Father to engage these spiritual forces and overcome them, and by doing so, to set human beings free from the oppression of evil. Jesus was either seen as a ransom payment to Satan, or as bait which led Satan into a trap. Although it appeared that evil had won when Jesus died on the cross, by his resurrection he won the final victory over death and evil, bringing freedom to anyone who put their trust in him. In our reading from Colossians we see an echo of this in the words of verse 15: ‘Having disarmed the principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.’

The idea of Jesus defeating the spiritual powers on the cross was revived during the early years of the 20th century, and became known as the Christus Victor model.

The idea of sacrifice was also a major theme for the early church, which saw the death of Jesus as the ultimate sacrificial offering. Rather than simply ‘covering over’ the sin of the people, as was the case with Jewish animal sacrifices, detailed in the Old Testament, Jesus as the Son of God, became the one perfect sacrifice who took on the sin and death of humanity, while transferring to us his purity and life.

This way of thinking about the meaning of the death of Jesus fell out of favour as society grew more sophisticated and people rejected the implied power, danger, and authority of the devil that required a ransom payment from God. In the middle ages theologians began to see God as being dishonoured by the sin and disobedience of humanity. People therefore incur a debt to him, and it is the debt of all human kind that is taken by Jesus and paid for by his death on the cross.

Given the nature of the hierarchical and feudal society within which this model was developed, stressing the importance of honour and debt, it is not hard to see how it was influenced by the culture of the day.
Later still the ‘Moral influence’ model, which was later embraced by 19th century liberalism was developed. This saw the life and death of Jesus as the supreme moral example and demonstration of divine love. His example motivates his people to live and work for his Kingdom.

There is no sense here of God dealing with the sin of humanity or of engaging dark spiritual forces, and so was a radical departure from earlier theology.

When we get to the time of the reformation,theologians, particularly John Calvin, began to focus on the imagery of the courtroom. Society was now emphasising law and justice above service, obligation and honour. The understanding of the cross now moves from the engagement of evil or a moral example by Jesus to the consequences of personal sin and the requirements of justice. Throughout the Bible we find that there are consequences for rejecting God. As the people of Israel turn to false gods, as they become more corrupt, selfish, and unjust, their behaviour leads to first warnings through the prophets, and eventually to punishment. They are invaded, their land occupied, they are exiled and enslaved.  

We live in a society that has laws, has a framework within which we can find order and security. If someone breaks the law then that has consequences. There is that saying that goes ‘don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time’. In the Old Testament God gives his people rules to live by, to order their society. Moses brings them the Ten commandments, and there are many other laws too. God is a God of Justice as well as love. That means that he cannot simply ignore sin and pretend it didn’t happen.

Justice requires that wrongdoing is punished.  

We can’t avoid the fact that the Bible talks about Hell as well as Heaven. Some will always reject God, decide to live their lives without him, and that decision has eternal consequences.

Romans 3 verse 23 puts it quite plainly – ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’.

And because we are all imperfect people, because we all have an innately selfish nature which causes us to behave in ways which separate us from God and from others, we are unable to restore that relationship ourselves, we are condemned by our own sin. But the death of Jesus changed all that. The view that has become known as Penal substitution and has influenced a very large number of Christians states that Jesus took upon himself the sin of all of humanity, something he is able to do because he is God as well as being man, and by his death on the cross has paid the penalty for that sin once and for all.

This means that everyone now has the opportunity to find forgiveness, a new start, and a restored relationship with God. The barrier of sin has been blown away. Jesus has bailed us out. Of course the death of Jesus only provides us with the means, every person has to make a decision whether to take up his offer, and sadly many still reject him, unwilling or unable to admit their need.

For those who do accept him, Jesus brings a transformation that can be nothing short of extraordinary.
Many of you will have read or seen the film of the famous CS Lewis book ‘The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe’, which has many connections with the Christian faith. After the great lion Aslan has been killed and returned to life, he sets about restoring the lives of the creatures that had been turned to stone by the endless winter that had gripped the land of Narnia. It’s a reminder of the spiritual transformation that Jesus brings to our lives. At one time our hearts had turned to stone. We were trapped by the hardness of our lives and our rejection of God. But through the cross Jesus breathes new life into us, thaws us out, sets us free to love him and serve him, forgives us all that has gone before. Its a new start.

So there we are – a whistle-stop tour of the different ways that people have sought to understand the death of Jesus. For me all of them bring their own insights into the power of the cross and the infinite love of God for each one of us which led to the suffering and death of his son Jesus.

Through his death and resurrection Jesus has demonstrated the power of God and had defeated evil. He has shown us that death is not the end, and he has given us the perfect example of love and sacrifice. But above all else, his death provides each one of us with the means to find forgiveness, and a renewed relationship with our creator. God offers to transform us, restore us, revitalise us. Through Jesus death we have become his holy and chosen people, as Paul says, we are dearly loved.
The question is: How do we respond to that love?

Let us Pray:
Lord Jesus thank you for all that you went through for us. The love that led you to suffer and die on the cross. Thank you for all that you accomplished in your death, and your victorious resurrection. Thaw out our cold hearts we pray, that we may respond to that love in praise and service.

For your name’s sake we pray.
Amen.

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