8. Why Did Jesus Die?

Crosses are popular as jewelry. People wear crosses on necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. I have a cross necklace that Sarah gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I get a lot of compliments on it. Today I’d like to sport a different piece of jewelry. (Put on a miniature gallows as a necklace.)

What? What’s the big deal? People were killed on crosses. People were killed on gallows. It’s just another execution devise. I’m thinking of getting some electric chair earrings.

Seriously though, doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that crosses would be worn as jewelry? Crosses were the ancient equivalent of the gallows or the electric chair. Only the worst criminals were executed on crosses. It was a slow and painful way to die. Death by crucifixion was so gruesome that even the Romans outlawed crucifixion in the fourth century. Why would an execution device like this be worn as jewelry, something to beautify your body? What is beautiful or fashionable about execution?¹

This is a little shocking when we put it into our contemporary context, but this helps us to see what a dramatic change has happened regarding society’s attitude toward crosses. The cross is the central symbol of Christianity. Something that was horrible and ugly, the sign of utter defeat 2000 years ago, has become something beautiful and a sign of power and dignity. In fact, the cross has become the single most important image of Christianity. Why?

I like to explain this by drawing a picture. (I couldn't get the picture into this blog, so you'll just have to imagine it, or you can click here.) The picture isn’t perfect, but what I’m going to draw is a general description of why the cross is so important. It is a visual description of why Jesus died.

First of all there are us and God. God created us, loves us, and wants a relationship with us. I love Ephesians 1:4. “Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” Doesn’t that make you feel valued? Before God made anything in this world, he chose you. Before he made anything, he loved you and me and chose us to be with him forever.

But there is a problem.

The problem is that we have sinned and rejected God. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.” We have all done this. I have, and so has everyone else in this room. That sin creates a barrier between us and God. It puts a block in our relationship.

This is normal. That is the way it works in relationships. If I say something mean to my wife, you better believe there is going to be a block in our relationship until we get that wrong out of the way. If we do something that we know is wrong, there is a block in our relationship with God. We have to take care of that before things can be right between us again.

To further complicate the matter, Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Not only are we separated from God, but we are also stuck in death because of sin.

Not only are the consequences of sin eternal death in hell, but sin costs us in this life, too. The more we sin, the more we give up of the life that God has for us. Sin has a way of getting its claws into us so that we do things that we wouldn’t even have considered before and reap all kinds of negative consequences.

To make matters worse, we cannot make it over the gap by ourselves. Give me some feedback. What are some things that people try to do to make up for the wrong that they have done? [Answers may be: going to church, giving money, being good, helping others. Write the answers on the left side of the cliff. When everyone is done, draw a line going down into the ravine.] These are all good, but they aren’t enough.

Those are all good things to do, but they can’t bridge the gap between us and God. The truth is that we can never do enough. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

Imagine that this wall here is a scale of righteousness. Mother Theresa is somewhere near the top. Hitler is down at the bottom. Imagine where you are. I guess that I am somewhere in the middle area or a little lower. The problem is that the standard isn’t the ceiling. The standard is a mile high. The bar by which we all are measured is Jesus, and he is perfect in every way. By our own efforts, we all far desperately short.²

Max Lucado put it like this, “We have attempted to reach the moon, but scarcely made it off the ground. We tried to swim the Atlantic but couldn’t get beyond the reef. We have attempted to scale the Everest of salvation, but we have yet to leave the base camp, much less ascend the slope. The quest is simply too great; we don’t need more supplies or muscle or technique; we need a helicopter.”³

Jesus is our helicopter.

Let’s look at a few verses from Romans chapter 3 that describe how this happens.

For no one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what his law commands… But now God has shown us a different way of being right in God’s sight – not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we can all be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins… (3:20-25a).

I have a confession to make. Two of the verses I quoted to you earlier are bad news / good news verses, but I only told you the bad news. Now it’s time to look at the whole verses.

BAD NEWS: For the wages of sin is death
GOOD NEWS: But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23)
BAD NEWS: All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. GOOD NEWS: Yet the Lord has laid on him [Jesus] the guilt and sins of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

The good news is that there is a free gift of eternal life available to us through Jesus Christ. The good news is that God has laid on Jesus our guilt and sin. The good news is that Jesus has paid the price for our sin. He has done what we could never do. He lived a perfect life. Then, he died instead of us. Jesus died on the cross so that we can be close to God forever. Jesus is the bridge.

We’re going to watch a video from the Jesus Film that depicts Jesus death on the cross. I think this will help us grasp what really happened a little better.

He did this for us. Jesus is our bridge to God and real life.

Real Christianity is not about working harder or doing more. Real Christianity is about receiving the gift of what Jesus has already done for us.

Why did Jesus die? I think the answer has three parts.

First, Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins. The just cost of sin is death. Jesus took our punishment instead of us. Now, no matter who we are or what we have done, we can be free of our past sins. Our slates can be wiped clean.

Second, Jesus died to restore our relationship with God. One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.” God didn’t just bridge the gap to help us avoid death and hell. He saved us from death so that we can have life! He bridged the gap so that we can be with him! Our basic sin was focusing our lives on ourselves. Our basic salvation is God’s transforming us to focus our whole lives on God.

Third, Jesus died to form a holy community in love with him. One biblical author put it like this: “Jesus suffered and died … in order to make his people holy” (Heb. 13:12). In Ephesians 5 Paul said, Jesus “gave up his life for [the Church] to make her holy and clean.” When we cross this bridge, we aren’t the only ones there. We enter a whole horde of people who are also putting their faith in Jesus Christ and being transformed moment by moment. Why bother with Church? We’ll talk about that next week, but for now, the simple answer is: Jesus died so that we could be part of the Church and be made holy all together with everyone else.

Now these three parts - forgiveness, transforming relationship, and holy community – aren’t the three reasons why Jesus died. They are they three components of the reason why Jesus died. If we leave out any of the parts, we get a really skewed understanding of the cross and Christianity.

Accepting forgiveness and neglecting transformation just doesn’t cut it. It’s like receiving a pardon from death row and staying in the prison. We are free to leave that awful place, but we all we do is sit there and rejoice that we’re forgiven. Jesus died to set us free from the prison of sin. If we don’t follow him out the door of the jail cell and breathe the clean air of his Life, we missed the whole point.

Along the same lines, we can’t just cross the bridge and try to go it alone. God made us for each other. Jesus died for us to be a whole people full of his love. His grace flows best when we’re connected with others in holy community. Solo Christianity isn’t a live option. Jesus didn’t die to have little individual islands of people following him. He died to have one swarming mass of people with waves of his love circulating in and out among us and him and us and each other. That’s just part of the deal. In some ways, that’s the best part of the deal.

Going to church and trying to be a better person won’t do either. That puts us back on the other side of the gap trying to earn our way over. No matter how moral or good we become, we will always need the cross of Jesus Christ to reconcile us to God. We can’t make it on our own. We have to accept God’s forgiveness and put our trust in Jesus.

Jesus died so that we could have forgiveness of our sins, transforming relationship with Him, and holy community. The way is open for us to enter this new life of transformation and love. Jesus has made a bridge for us to go across, but we have to cross over. How do we do that? How do we cross over the bridge? How does one go about putting her faith in Jesus?

Crossing the bridge basically involves two things: believing and repenting. Both of these words are often misunderstood, so we’re going to spend a little time unpacking each of them.

To believe is to put one’s faith in something or someone. Mentally acknowledging that something is true is only a fraction of what the Bible means when it talks about believing. Here is an example. I can look at this stool and speculate that it can hold my weight. I can touch it, examine its construction, and see that it looks structurally sound. I might even put my weight on it a little to test it. However, I haven’t really put my faith in it until I sit in it. [Sit on stool, and put legs up in the air.] Now, I’m really trusting in this chair. This is what the Bible means by “belief” or “faith.”

We can study the Bible, and read The Case for Christ. We can understand all of the theological terms surrounding the cross. But until we put the weight of our whole lives down on Jesus, we haven’t really trusted him; we haven’t really believed. Crossing the bridge is entrusting your whole life to God. It is trusting in Jesus’ death on the cross as the only way your sins can be forgiven. It’s getting in the car with Jesus and trusting him to chart your course.

Having faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have any doubt. You might have lots of doubts and questions that are still unanswered. It might even feel like you have more questions than answers. However, if you have enough faith to take the leap and to entrust your life to Jesus, that is believing.

The first part of crossing the bridge is believing. The second part, repenting, naturally flows out of believing. Jesus’ essential message was “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near” (Mark 4:7),⁵ but “repent” isn’t a word we use much any more. Let’s talk a little about what it means to repent.

There are two aspects of repentance. The first aspect of repentance is reflective: recognizing we have done wrong and asking for forgiveness. Guilt can be good if it leads us to repentance. Prisoners who don’t show remorse don’t get parole. Before we can get on the right path, we have to understand that we’ve been on the wrong path. We ask God to forgive us for going our own way, and we ask God to help us to walk in his way.

That leads us directly to the second aspect of repentance, which is active. The second part is doing something about what we say we believe. It is not enough to acknowledge the bridge. We have to actually walk across it.

In biblical language, “to repent” actually means to turn, to do a 180. Repentance is turning away from all that we know is evil and turning to God with all we are. We leave our old way of life behind us and follow Jesus.

Jesus told a story that helps illustrate this second part of repentance. It is in Matthew 7.

Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on a solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse, because it is built on rock. But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will fall with a mighty crash. (7:24-27)

According to Jesus, it doesn’t do any good to confess our sins (the first half of repentance) unless we follow Jesus and his teaching (the second half of repentance). We have to put our faith in Jesus, and real faith brings a changed life along with it. We are saved by grace, and we live by grace.

Confessing with out turning and following is like going the wrong way down a one way street even after we realized what we’re doing. It’s like saying over and over again, “AH! I’m going the wrong way,” but never changing our direction. Repentance is recognition of wrong and change. We have to leave behind some of the old stuff and take up Jesus’ new way of life.

But what’s it like to go across the bridge? What’s it like to experience God’s kind of life here on earth? Let me give you a few word pictures.

First picture: one of my friends was a little girl when she first trusted in Jesus. Her grandma asked her to describe it, and she said, “It’s like taking a bath on the inside.” That is a pretty accurate picture. All debt and sin is forgiven. God washes us away our sin. He cleans us up like no bath of water could ever do. In Isaiah, God says, “No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool” (1:18).

The second picture is the old Eagles song, “Desparado.” Let me read a few lines for you.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?

You been out riding fences for so long now

Oh, you're a hard one, But I know that you got your reasons,

These things that are pleasing you, can hurt you somehow

Desperado, oh you ain't getting no younger,

Your pain and your hunger, they're driving you home

And freedom- freedom, well that's just some people talking

Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses

Come down from your fences, open the gate

It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you

You better let somebody love you, let somebody love you

You better let somebody love you before it's too late

Putting our faith in Jesus is like coming home. We’ve been out doing life on our own for too long, but now we come home to God. Remember that in the very first week I quoted Augustine’s prayer, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.” This is how we come home and find rest for our souls.

Think about where you are on this picture. Wherever you are is OK. We are not here to condemn you. We want you to know that God is calling you toward him. He is wooing you, beckoning you toward the Bridge, his Son Jesus Christ.

In the last book of the Bible, Jesus makes this plea, “Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends” (Rev. 3:20). Some people today might hear Jesus knocking and be ready to open the door of their heart to him for the first time. We want to give you space to do that. Some people here today might have started across the bridge at some point, but for one reason or another, you went back in the other direction. You might be hearing Jesus knocking and asking you to start the trip with him again. Some of you might not even be close to being ready to cross over, but you’re interested in thinking about it and learning more.

I’m going to pray two different prayers in a minute. One of these prayers is for people who are ready to cross over the bridge, for people who are ready to take the leap of faith and to repent and follow Jesus. The other prayer is for people who are still thinking about it. Please feel free to pray along with whichever prayer fits you or just to reflect quietly.

I’ll start with the prayer of repentance. You can just repeat these words after me quietly or silently. “God, I have gone my own way, and I’ve done some things that I’m sorry for. Please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died for me, and I want to live life your way. I want you to call the plays in my life. Help me to follow you. Amen.”

Now, for the people that are still thinking, you can repeat these words quietly or silently. “God, I’ve got a lot to think about. I’m willing to investigate putting my life in your hands, but I still have some big questions. I might even be a little scared. Please help me to search for you with all my heart, and please show yourself to me. Amen.”

Journaling: Song - “There’s a Bridge to Cross the Great Divide” by Point of Grace

1. Where are you on this picture?

2. In what direction are you moving?

3. Is there anything stopping you from crossing over today?

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1 This illustration is from Gumble, 43.

2 Nicki Gumble uses this illustration in the Alpha talk “Why Did Jesus Die?” , but it is not in Questions of Life.

3 Experiencing the Heart of Jesus, (Nashville: Nelson, 2003), 52.

4 Adapted from The Bridge, (NavPress, 1981), as represented by Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg, Becoming a Contagious Christian, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 156-159.

5 The thoughts on repentance in the next several paragraphs (except for the illustration about my friend) come from Thomas, Coffehouse Theology, 103-4.