Why did Jesus have to die?
Because God will not overlook sin, and because He loves you too much to leave you in it - the cross is where both are true at once.
Jesus died to bear our sins and bring us forgiveness, while upholding God’s perfect justice. Before anything is said about justice, hear why God did it:
In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Everything on this page follows from that. The previous page showed that every one of us has sinned. Sin is not overlooked. It has a price, and the price is death:
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Notice the two halves. Death is wages - earned. Eternal life is a gift - given.
God will not simply overlook sin.
When God revealed His own character to Moses, He said this about Himself:
The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty
Merciful, gracious, forgiving - and He will by no means clear the guilty. Both are true of Him. Forgiveness could not mean pretending sin had not happened. Jesus said what it would take, the night before He died:
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
He had to.
That same night He prayed:
And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
He knew what the cup held, and He submitted to His Father’s will. When He was arrested a few hours later, He said plainly that He could have stopped it - and why He did not:
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?
After He rose, He said it again:
Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day
What happened on the cross
Seven hundred years before, Isaiah described it:
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
Jesus willingly bore our sins:
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
An exchange took place. He took what was yours - your sin, and its wages. He gives what is His - a righteousness you did not earn. And the purpose of it was not only to remove your guilt, but to bring you to God:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God
God remains just when He forgives.
This is the heart of the Christian message. Paul sets it out:
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Propitiation means the sacrifice that deals with sin and satisfies God’s righteous judgment against it. God had patiently passed over former sins; the cross shows that He was righteous in doing so, because the payment was coming. At the cross He is just - sin is fully dealt with - and the justifier - the one who believes in Jesus is declared righteous.
He gave His life willingly.
This is how He described Himself:
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
The sheep that went astray, on the previous page, are the sheep He died for.
He did this for you.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
He did not wait for you to improve. He loved you while you were still a sinner, and He died for you then. Paul could say it in the first person, and so can anyone who trusts Him:
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
It is finished.
On the cross Jesus said:
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God
One sacrifice, for ever. There is nothing left for you to add to it, and nothing you could add. And He did not stay dead:
Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
The One who died for you is alive, and what remains is to receive what He has done. That is the next page.