Why Jesus died on the cross

Why Jesus died on the cross

Following is a letter received in response to my earlier Easter Season blog entry on, “Where’s the proof of Jesus’ resurrection?” I found it worthy of response, which I have provided below.

From: attendingtheworld

Sent: 14 April 2008

To: monterice@gmail.com
Subject: [perichorus] Comment: “Where’s the proof of Jesus’ resurrection?”

E-mail : atworld0@gmail.com

URL : http://attendingtheworld.wordpress.com/

“Great detailed post. I, though, have a few questions to raise:

In Christ’s resurrection, how do we explain the following:

1. “He died for our sins:” If so, why did those who committed the “sin” of crucifixion did not receive the same “forgiveness.”

2. Why did Christ have to stay “dead” for three days? What is the significance of 3 days? Who ran the world in the meantime? If God was to “die” or “sleep” the Universe as we know it, would have collapsed and ceased to exist!

3. Why did Christ not perform the miracle while on the cross and re-lived to show the miracle he had brought to the world and, since his message was that of love, then love the rest of creation including those who attempted to kill him and make them see the light and believe in him?

ATW

RESPONSE TO ATW

Dear ATW (attendingtheworld)

Greetings to you! Thank you for your thoughtful queries to perichorus. Please bear with my late reply. Nonetheless, I have given thought to your questions and have sought to provide you a brief response.

I will not seek to provide you an exhaustive response; only some brief thoughts that may at the very least stimulate you towards further reflection and engagement with the issues you have raised regarding the Christian faith. What I’ll do is reply now, in the order of your three questions.

As you may realise, “meanings” in communication are often not fully comprehended, simply because we don’t necessarily readily catch a person’s real intended meaning simply because we may read or fail to read a sender’s “meaning” through his word or sentence construction. Nonetheless, I’ll try to discern your heart and what you’re asking through these questions.

“In Christ’s resurrection, how do we explain the following:”

I. “He died for our sins:” If so, why did those who committed the “sin” of crucifixion did not receive the same “forgiveness.”

The depth and breadth of God’s forgiveness

On the contrary, the Scriptures says that with reference to those who crucified Him, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:42) So I think that Jesus’ desire is quite clear here. He sought to extend forgiveness to every human involved in the “sin” of crucifixion.

I think it is relevant to also point out that when Steven was martyred, he seemed to pattern his response to his persecutors according to Jesus’ example. For as he was dying he cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60) This is an important text because most likely, many of the Jewish religious leaders who plotted Jesus’ death, would have also been involved as members of the Sanhedrin, in the plot against Stephen’s death in Jerusalem.

The writer Luke meanwhile has deliberately arranged the story line to demonstrate how Stephen as a model disciple of Jesus, died in a manner that revealed how Jesus’ resurrected life was at work within the very pattern of Stephen’s life. In fact, for this very reason, those who plotted against Stephen made the same charges against him as they earlier made against Jesus; that Stephen presumably spoke “against” the “holy place and the law” of Moses (Acts 6:13). But the truth is that the charges against both Jesus and Stephen were to some extent true: as God’s prophets (though Jesus is more than a prophet), they did speak against institutions such as the Temple, which in time had replaced the role of God Himself in the peoples’ lives (Matthew 23:37-24:2; Acts 6:13-14).

Therefore, the point here is that given Stephen’s reiterated prayer of forgiveness towards his killers— many of whom were the same people who earlier plotted Jesus’ death, the biblical story reveals that forgiveness was indeed extended towards those who committed the “sin” of crucifixion.

However, extension of forgiveness, and the receiving of forgiveness are indeed two different things. If our heart is too hardened, we may choose to not receive God’s extended forgiveness.

II. Why did Christ have to stay “dead” for three days? What is the significance of 3 days? Who ran the world in the meantime? If God was to “die” or “sleep” the Universe as we know it, would have collapsed and ceased to exist!

First part of question 2: “Why did Christ have to stay “dead” for three days? What is the significance of 3 days?”

The cryptic meaning to Jesus’ resurrection on the third day

There indeed is perhaps some “significance,” as to why Christ stayed “dead” for three days. For the Lord Jesus Himself taught His disciples:

“The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” (Mark 9:31)

The early church also found significance in that Jesus rose on the third day:

“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴ and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; NRSV)

Technically speaking, Jesus was not actually dead in the grave for three days; but only for two evenings: Friday and Saturday evening. He then rose on the third day, which is Sunday morning. But Jesus did indeed often stress that he will rise from the dead on the third day after his death, when He spoke about his eventual death on the cross (Matthew 13:38-40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; John 2:19-21). So then, there is obviously a major significance to the fact that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day, and not on the second or fourth day. Perhaps the best clue we have for this, is found in Jesus’ word to the Pharisees, who asked him for a “sign” that would prove his messiah-ship. Jesus said that the only “sign” to be given them would be the sign of the prophet Jonah:”

“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”

But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster,

so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:38-40; NRSV)

What is Jesus talking about? Well first of all, Jesus does not give His inquirers a direct, logically precise answer! No! Rather, He replies in the form of a riddle. He does this because He wants them to work through the answer.

Second, Jesus’ reply involves the use of what is sometimes called a “type.” The term comes from the Latin word typus, which means “”image or impression as the result of a blow.” The idea is that of a watermark pressed upon a paper sheet, or an engraving pressed upon a coin. In Scripture, we sometimes use the term to describe how an event in the New Testament was somehow foreshadowed through an event that earlier transpired in the Old Testament.[1] A helpful example is the term déjà vu, which means, “already seen.” We say déjà vu to describe the experience of feeling sure that we have witnessed or experienced a new situation in an earlier event; or than we feel as though an event has already happened or is mysteriously repeating itself.

Well, in His providence, God has actually structured within the biblical story a number of these divine déjà vus, or more accurately, typological events, as a means of ultimately revealing the meaning of Jesus coming, death, and resurrection, and all that this signifies for us today.

I’ll need to digress here for a moment. Within the modern age, Christians and nonchristians alike had unwittingly read and interpreted the Bible through the scientific paradigms of modernity. One example is the quest to constantly find the “one true and only meaning” of a given biblical text, or that the truest meaning of a text is found through the intellectually observing and comprehending the precise grammatical and syntactical structures of biblical terms, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. Well, there is a some need role for some of this thinking, within what we have called the historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture.[2]

But the truth is that biblical truth is primarily revealed to us through the Bibles images, pictures, symbols, story plots and events, and— divine déjà vu (typological) events. Like the issue before us: as Jonah was in the whale for three days, so Jesus had to spend three days in the grave before the Holy Spirit raised Him from the grave.

Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s restoration of all creation

Now for Christians, the significance of Jesus being in the grave for three days prior to His resurrection— as in the pattern of Jonah in the whale, lies in the change this produced in our understanding of history, and God’s purpose towards history. This means that the significance of Jesus’ three days in the grave was for an eschatological purpose. This is revealed to us through its transformation of the Sabbath, and thus its original purpose within the biblical story.

Let us recall that Jesus died on Friday afternoon, just prior to the beginning of the Shabbat (Sabbath), which last from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. God gave humankind the Sabbath day as a day of rest, for it symbolises God’s “rest,” by which the Bible means that God called His first creation “good” (Genesis 1:31-2:4).

“It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” (Exodus 31:17; NRSV)

Now when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, He rose on the morning following the Sabbath; thus on the morning of the first day of the week. For this reason, the first Christians began gathering together for worship on the first day of the week, which at that time, they thus began referring to as “the Lord’s Day” (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; cp Romans 14:6).

Now, here is where we can begin more fully appreciating a symbolic and divine meaning to why Christ was in the grave for three days. As Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, early Christians however began referring to the Lord’s Day as the “Eighth Day.” Contrary to a common presumption, the Lord’s Day is not something of a “Christian Sabbath.” It is not a Sabbath per say. Rather, as the early church defined it, it is the first day of something new: a new creation. Or rather, of the beginning of God’s restoration of creation, back into its original intent as ordained in the first creation. Sunday is thus day we celebrate the reality that with the resurrection of Christ, God has begun re-creating the created order. This means that Jesus died for far more than to pay the debt of our sins. Rather, that His death and resurrection, God had put into effect the dawn of a new creation (Romans 8:19-22).[3]

“He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence.

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,

and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him,

whether things on earth or things in heaven,

having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

“He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,

so that he might come to have first place in everything.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,

whether on earth or in heaven,

by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:18-20; NRSV)

The theological term to describe this, is recapulation. The term means, “to re-cap.” Thus, where Adam failed to live in obedience to God, as then also all humanity failed, Jesus “re-capped,” or “re-lived” God’s plan as the “perfect Man,” that in Him all men may be restored to God’s original plan for both humanity and all creation. So, you may want to further explore this “recapulatory” purpose behind the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Second part of question 2: “Who ran the world in the meantime? If God was to “die” or “sleep” the Universe as we know it, would have collapsed and ceased to exist!”

The cross reveals how much God suffers to bring about His promises

Well, I suppose you are right: the universe would collapse if God “ceased to exist” through Jesus’ death on the cross! This raises some other questions: So, if Jesus was somehow, God in the flesh, did God really “die” on the cross? How could the universe go on if God actually “ceased to exist?” Part of the problem perhaps lies with our attempt to resolve this problem through our Aristotelian forms of logical deduction and reasoning.

Perhaps we should construct the way forward in this manner: In Christ, God suffered the experience of death, yet not in the manner that creatures experience death. For what the Scriptures say is that “it was impossible for death to hold him” (Acts 2:24; also Hebrews 2:9-14). God made a promise to our Father Abraham, that His descendants would be as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:1-7). God then assured Abraham that the promise would come to pass by making an “oath” through the “cutting of a covenant” (Genesis 15:8-11; cp Hebrews 6:13-17). As the Genesis text shows, that oath involved the ancient rite of slaying several animals, cutting each in half, and walking between the pieces. By doing so, the oath-taker was saying, “So let it be to me, if I fail to keep my oath to you.” In the form of a theophany (a visible manifestation of God’s presence) God then walked between the pieces as Abraham watched (Genesis 15:17-18). God thus essentially was saying to Abraham, “To fulfil my oath to you, I place my very existence on the line!” Well, the “death” of Christ thus demonstrates the extent to which God went to make good His oath to Abraham; in Christ, God suffered the pain the death! But again, as you have already expressed it, God did not cease to exist, the universe did not collapse, because “it was impossible for death to hold Him!” Now, there is more to this discussion, which I will address in your last question.

III. Why did Christ not perform the miracle while on the cross and re-lived to show the miracle he had brought to the world and, since his message was that of love, then love the rest of creation including those who attempted to kill him and make them see the light and believe in him?

Demonic origins to human demands for miracles as proof of Jesus’ identity

This is a most important question, as what you are asking, was actually also earlier asked by Jesus’ killers while He hanged on the cross. Therefore, the issue you are raising is an issue directly engaged within the passion stories, and actually all throughout the Gospel narratives. In the passion narrative, the question is presented like this:

”Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying . . . He is the King of Israel;

let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.”

(Matthew 27:39-42; NRSV)

What the Gospel story shows us here, is that these two requests, directly mirror Satan’s earlier question to Jesus during His wilderness temptations. In that question, Satan tempted Jesus to perform a miracle that would validate His identity as the “Son of God:

”Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him,

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down!

For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

(Matthew 4:5-6; NRSV)

What the Gospel story is revealing is that the desire to seek a miracle as proof of Jesus’ messiah-ship or divinity as God in the flesh is demonic in origin. Listen to Jesus’ judgment against this satanic request for a “miracle,” as proof of His identity:

“The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

He answered them ‘. . . An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.’”

(Matthew 16:1, 4; NRSV)

As we earlier saw, the “sign of Jonah,” is the sign of the cross. The desire for a “sign,” or miracle that would validate the identity of Jesus as the Christ, is demonic for this reason: True faith in God does not begin from the premise of miracle, but from the premise of submission to the Lordship of God. Furthermore, we also see that all throughout the Gospels, Jesus consistently seeks to deter people from confessing his identity in response to the perfo5rmance of miracles. Even more so, He himself consistently refuses to link His self-identity as the Messiah to any healing He had performed. What Jesus had done however, is to deliberately teach and link his identity as the Messiah to His willingness and resolve to embrace his inevitable death on the cross, which resulted from his prophetic ministry towards the Jerusalem religious system.

What the cross foremost reveals: The suffering love of God

Ultimately then, it is not the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection that reveals the character of God, or who God is. It is rather the cross, which ultimately reveals to us the nature and existence of God. The resurrection reveals to us the power of God; God’s power over death, sin and evil. However, God’s person-hood- the kind of person whom God is, is perennially revealed in the cross. And what about Gold is revealed through the cross?

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7; NRSV)

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:16; NRSV)

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us— and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. . . . God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

(1 John 4:6-7, 9-10; NRSV)

God sets forth the cross as the pattern of life under His lordship

Now what the Scripture also reveals to us is that not only does the cross reveal who God is, but also the cross reveals God’s intended pattern of life for those who freely choose to follow Christ. The demand for a miracle is not pleasing to God. But what pleases God is our willingness to follow Christ in the way of the cross. For Jesus says to His disciples,

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25)

It is indeed a demonic victory which Satan enjoyed over the Church when at so many tragic epochs of history, that the cross of Christ had been demonically twisted through the mistaken paradigms of professed Christians into a symbol of military or political conquest. On the contrary, what the cross is rather, is God’s symbol of winning the world back to Himself through His suffering love towards a rebellious world.  It is a love that wins not through compulsion or coercion but through His freely offered grace which we must either freely received, or voluntarily albeit stubbornly rejected.

I must bring these reflections to a closure, by briefly referring to one other purpose God fulfilled through the cross; a purpose, which kept Christ hanging on the cross until He finally, tasted the reality of death. Here it is: In the cross, we discovered that God suffers pain, and that God is willing to suffer pain in order to reconcile creation back to Himself.

The cross does not directly address the source of evil, suffering and pain. But the cross does certainly reveal that God freely enters into our suffering and pain. I would encourage you to download the following link to a sermon I preached on Good Friday last month:

“What makes Good Friday, Good Friday?” (Text: Mark 15:33-39)

In that message, I stressed how the cross reveals above all else, the suffering which God freely enters into, in keeping with the extent of his love and compassion towards us and His creation. We can in fact say then, that a major purpose of the atonement— meaning the death and resurrection of Christ, was that through the cross, we discover who God is, and what kind of God He is.

I hope that these reflections can be of some help for you, and provide you some direction for further exploration.

Peace to you,

Monte

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[1] Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 127-130f.

[2] This problem with the modern mindset also did us a disservice when it comes to describing God as trinity. We often get stuck in all these arguments like, God is like the three parts of an egg shell, or the three forms of water, or the three forms of light, and so on. But we are here going way off on the wrong track. The only way we can even come to an understanding of God as Trinity is by reflecting on our own experience of God within the context of Christian faith: We believe in the one God long ago revealed to Father Abraham, whom has been revealed to us as Jesus, whom we experience now as the Holy Spirit. There is only one God; but we have encountered Him through three personas: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But this is another story.

[3] Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 127-128; Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spiritual through the Christian Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 168-169.