Board index ‹ Salvation

[No Sports]

Why did Jesus have to be tortured and killed for our sins?

[jimwalton]

First of all, why did Jesus need to die?

God is life; union with him is life, separation from him is death. (Like picking a wildflower. As soon as you pick it, you have broken its contact with life. It is now dead. The question is merely how long it will take to fade. Though it looks alive [for the time being], that won't last long. Though it still has nutrients running through its system, it is technically dead [separated from life] and fading.) Let's use that analogy (though that analogy has some flaws).

Adam and Eve were brought into the Garden and given access to the Tree of Life. There they could enjoy unity with God and be alive. God wanted them to have a relationship of love with him, and since love must always be chosen, not forced, He gave them a choice. They chose to rebel against him and chose to be separated from His life. Therefore that day they "surely died", meaning they were separated from God. All children born to them were also under the status of separation from God (sort of as if [another analogy] they had left their country to become citizens of another country. Their children were now citizens of the far country as well).

The Bible says that sin brought separation from God by choice, nature, and behavior. The separation was complete, and the result was "death" (separation from the life of God). The idea behind Penal Substitutionary Atonement is that someone who did not deserve to die took the punishment of death (archetypally) for all humanity, making it possible for them to be restored. The one who had never sinned became sin for us so that we might become life once again through his death nd resurrection.

It's not substitution in the sense of quantifiable exchange, but in the sense of a legal demand: Jesus, who didn't deserve to die, died as a substitution for those who did deserve to die. Somebody else who didn't owe the creditor anything paid your debt for you (death) and set you free.

That's the premise behind it. It addresses the problem because it relates to death and life, redemption and substitution. The only way to break the power of death is not to wave a magic wand, but to enter death and prove that it is not strong enough to hold you. (The only way to show a prison is not escape-proof is to enter the jail and prove that you can break out.) Otherwise it's just bravado: "I could break outta there." "Nuh-uh." "Uh-huh." "No you couldn't." "Yes I could." Somebody finally has to put their money where their mouth is and show that death doesn't have the ultimate power. Therefore the way to break the power of death and sin is to die as anyone else would, and then break out, to show that death has no power over you (Heb. 2.14-15).

Secondly, why so much pain and torture? Why couldn't they just stabbed him with a sword—would that have accomplished the same purpose?

Yes and no. What was important in Jesus' death is that an innocent person died. In that sense, the sword would have sufficed. But there was important imagery in all the gruesome torture. It symbolized several things:

- The horribleness of the sin for which Jesus was paying the price. That kind of agony showed the kind of agony humanity had been going through since sin entered the world.
- The extent of Jesus' sacrifice. The depth of the agony showed the depth of his love.
- The intensity of God's wrath. The torture showed how much God abhors sin.
- The affinity of Jesus with humanity. His extreme torture shows in a symbolic way that he knows exactly what it's like to be human, from its deepest joys to its most difficult suffering, from health to horror, from devotion to betrayal, from justice to travesty, and from wellbeing to brutality.