Why Did Jesus Have to Die...on a Cross?
A rather astute and insightful reader of this blog sent me a message earlier this afternoon making a great point. He said something to the effect of, "Now that we know why Jesus had to die (see the post below), perhaps now can turn to the question of why he chose to die the way he did, i.e. on the cross." I won't pretend for even the slightest moment to have a definitive answer to this question, but over the last several months I have been accumulating various thoughts on this topic from an array of different sources. Below I am providing a summary of some of what I have found...Pope John Paul II, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, writes,
God is not someone who remains only outside of the world, content to be in Himself all-knowing and omnipotent. His wisdom and omnipotence are placed, by free choice, at the service of creation. If suffering is present in the history of humanity, one understands why His omnipotence was manifested in the omnipotence of humiliation on the Cross. The scandal of the Cross remains the key to the interpretation of the great mystery of suffering, which is so much a part of the history of mankind. The crucified Christ is proof of God's solidarity with man in his suffering. God places Himself on the side of man. (emphasis added)Romans 6:23 declares, "For the wages of sin is death." Yet God promised He would send a sinless Sacrifice to take the punishment sinful man deserved (Genesis 3:15). "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6) His sacrifice was substitutionary and vicarious.
Heidelberg Larger Catechism: "Is there something more in his being crucified than if he had died some other death?" – "Yes…he took on himself the curse which lay upon me, because the death of the cross was cursed by God."
Hanging on a tree was purposefully intended to expose the corpse to ultimate disgrace (Deut. 21:22-23).
Calvin: "By his arraignment as a criminal we know that as one innocent he voluntarily took the role of a guilty man."
Gregory of Nyssa: The cross' distinctive shape – four arms converging in the middle - reveals that Christ is the "the one who binds all things to himself and makes them one."
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree'" (Gal. 1:13, quot. Deut. 21:23; cf. Rom. 8:3-4 – "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.").
Thomas C. Oden, in the second volume of his 3-part systematic, The Living Word, writes,
The atoning blood of the victim covers the guilt of all the penitent. The metaphor of blood in the NT implies life being taken away violently, life offered in sacrifice. Wherever there is blood, there is life. Life is in blood. Sacrifice implies death that enables life for another. Blood symbolizes the dedication of a life wherein one offered life substituted for the indebted life of another. (p. 366)Hebrews 9:22 – "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." The atoning virtue, or power to cover sins, was assumed to reside in the shed blood. No blood less than that of the Son of God would have been sufficient to enable a declaration that the sins of all humanity have been forgiven. No one but the God-man could be at once just and Justifier.
My take?
Stanley Grenz, in his book Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology, quotes T.F. Torrance* as saying,
Jesus Christ is...not a mere symbol, some representation of God detached from God, but God in his own Being and Act come among us, expressing in our human form the Word which he is eternally in himself, so that in our relations with Jesus Christ we have to do directly with the ultimate Reality of God. (p. 208)The person Jesus Christ reveals to humans in our own language and categories who God is internally. The fact of his death reveals the heart of God as fundamentally self-giving, but the means by which he died reveals the all-encompassing nature of his sacrifice, the extent to which he is willing to go to identify with and stand in place of man's guilty and fallen state, his absolute solidarity with man's suffering, the vicarious and transcendental nature of substitutionary sacrifice, and the vastness of his holistic descent into man's fallen, alienated, and disgraced position before God. The irony is that even upon resurrection and glorification he still bears the marks of the cross in his nail-scarred hands and pierced side (John 20:27), and in his ascension he ascended as God-man, effectively drawing the human nature fully into the communion of God's being. He is forever more Jesus Christ, theanthropos, and it is in his fleshly body through death (Col. 1:21) alone that God and man are reconciled.
That is why I love him, worship him, and live for him.
*Torrance, Ground and Grammar of Theology, 160.
Labels: theology
5 Comments:
Sean, thanks for this post. On the issue of why he choose to die. I might be going out on a limb here...thinking back to the gospels the first thing that comes to mind is that Greater LOVE has no other than this that one lay down his life for his friends. Jesus was just doing what was is His nature. This might not be the most theological answer...I should have ask my four year old whofyg seems to have a better grasp on these things than me.
Liked the Torrence quote...
Heath, thanks for pointing those things out, especially the reference to the faith and understanding of a four year old. Perhaps more seminary types should take that into consideration.
Torrance is the man.
Kids do blow me away sometimes. I was frustrated one day because I could not find my keys. My little girl looked at me and said "its all about Jesus" Again thanks for the post...they stir my mind and get the wheels turning. Torrence is the Man, I am currently working through The Christian Doctrine of God. Please, please know that I wish more pastors at times where the seminary type, because there seems to be no concern theological or proper Biblical studies. I know that not al can afford schooling, but they can pick up other books besides leadership and pastoring skills and not that those are bad, but I don’t know many that would read someone like Torrence. And I not sure how many have actual picked up Wesley. Wesley knew that it was not possible for all his preachers to go to school, so he published a 50 vol Christian Library mainly for his preachers. Most preachers probably have never read the content of the first vol. Well I will get of my soap box. Again thanks for this blog...I get excited with every new post.
Grace and Peace
Heath, those are great insights. While I didn't grow up in the holiness movement, I have come to sense some anti-intellectual currents that run through it. I seriously doubt whether or not many Wesleyan pastors have read Torrance, espeically given his strong Reformed pursuasions. But in any case, any "good" Wesleyan should be no intellectual slouch. That is ridiculous, and Wesley would have had a fit if he would have found out otherwise.
Good morning son. I love you. I don't know if this is quite the right thread to write this, but Jesus’ death is certainly central to my thought this morning.
I woke this morning to thoughts of a dream that I had overnight.. I was standing in an empty shell of a small church. Only three walls, a dirt floor, and no roof. But yet I felt called in that moment that God had something special planned for that place at that time. At first it was only a couple of interested by passers then a small flock of some 25 or so gathered inside this shell of a building.
I found myself explaining why... what it was all about: it was grace. Grace, Fathers gift through the death of His son Jesus. And through His death, because (and only because) I have accepted Jesus sacrifice and have asked Him to come into my life that I now have a restored relationship with Father. I am His son. The reality is that without Him I am nothing. Without Him I can do nothing.
Back to grace, Father desired this relationship with me since before Genesis. Why? What could I offer, what could I ever do or accomplish for Him? Worldly thoughts perhaps, but because of grace none of those things matter. He desired this relationship, not only just with me but with every person placed on His earth. Through His grace He looks past my sin, sin that Jesus took upon himself while He hung on that old wooden cross. While he endured the humiliation, the beatings, the spikes in his hands and feet. While the sword was thrust into His side. He loved me enough to say, "John, I love you!" There is NOTHING I could ever do to cause Him to love me any more. Likewise, There is NOTHING I could ever do to cause Him to ever love me less. This is grace.
As I site here with tears on my cheeks as I contemplate what Jesus did for me, I am simply overwhelmed... I am simply overwhelmed! Thank you Father...
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