Why Did Jesus Have to Die on the Cross?

one of the most difficult components in the story of Christianity has to be the crucifixion and death of Jesus some people just don't like the brutality of it other people see it as a sign of weakness in the person of Jesus and therefore incompatible with an all-powerful God and then some people just don't get what the correlation is between that and humanity's reconciliation with God and for me when I first came to believe in God and was warming up to Christianity I couldn't make heads or tails of this idea that Jesus had to die on a cross in order for human beings to be restored to friendship with God at that point of my formation I would have found the following analogy somewhat fitting imagine if you had wronged someone or or if you were indebted to them and you couldn't pay them back and so you had to appeal to their mercy and their reply to you with something like I forgive you and to prove the sincerity of my forgiveness I will now murder my beloved dog and you're like wow thank you so much for the forgiveness but you could just forgive me we don't have to we don't have to kill the dog we just leave the dog out of it and he's like no I cannot forgive you unless the dog dies this is how many of the explanations for the formula of how Christ's sacrifice leads to our forgiveness and salvation again why would an innocent party need to be murdered for us to be restored to God's friendship that doesn't seem like justification it seems like a further injustice being piled on to an already bad situation if God wanted to forgive us or if he was prepared to forgive us why not just forgive us but to use this analogy as a criticism of Christianity depends on surely I would say juvenile formulation of how the cross leads to our salvation and unfortunately it's a very oft recited formulation nothing goes something like Jesus paid the price for our sins to satisfy the wrath and justice of the Father but that doesn't sound like the forgiveness of a debt if we oh God a debt of repayment and he's prepared to forgive it that's what forgiveness means then why not just forgive it why force somebody else to pay it if you're prepared to forgive it and this apparent absurdity doesn't seem to be lost on the earliest followers of Jesus for example st. Paul says in 1st Corinthians that message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to those of us who are being saved it is the power of God and the longer I followed Christianity the more the analogy of the dog does not correlate to my experience of being transformed by the sacrifice of Jesus the analogy fails in a few different ways the first is that the two individuals in the exchange are actually peers there they're both human beings there it's not like one as higher as a higher being than the other and the remedy to their situation is material in nature as in a debt to be owed but that's not the case with us and God the second is that forgiveness alone isn't what Jesus came to provide for us and while a debt can be forgiven as in the analogy it doesn't necessarily lead to reconciliation and a restoration of friendship for example imagine if you hurt someone because of some compulsive flaw in your character like maybe you're a compulsive liar they could forgive you for lying and being dishonest to them but they don't necessarily have to let you back into a position of confidence from which you could hurt them again they could forgive you and then wish you well as they depart ways with you but that's not what God wants he wants us to be fully restored to Communion and friendship with him but in order to enjoy that level of intimacy we have to be capable of giving and receiving it and that depends on our moral goodness if the goal is for us to live in perfect harmony with God who is goodness itself and with citizens of heaven then we must first become perfectly morally good ourselves but if we still retain our attachments to compulsive dishonesty greed lust laziness and pride then heaven won't be any different from what we already currently have the paradise of heaven is contingent upon the upstanding nature of its citizens so God's forgiveness isn't enough God also has to make sure that we are transformed into Saints as well so how does he transform us well he he gives us of himself Christians call this His grace he infuses His goodness his strength his will and his love into us so that we become more like him and thereby become ready to take our place in heaven when the time comes Christians call this sanctification God's grace gives us the ability to live life as we should that is to to love our neighbors and to love God but there's one aspect of our experience that God's grace could not help us with because it was foreign to his nature specifically to suffer and to die God doesn't suffer because suffering is a consequence of some deprivation for example we suffer when we are hungry because we were deprived of food but God lacks nothing and is life itself so suffering from deprivation or death are unfamiliar experiences to him unless he creates the circumstance in which he can experience them and that's exactly what he did through the incarnation of Jesus he entered into the fiasco of human condition by becoming one of us and then by demonstrating the way back to harmony with God and with ourselves and with each other by his example and his experience and he didn't simply enter into one kind of life and suffering he didn't feel well that that people will and do suffer in unimaginable ways and so he made sure to choose a life and a path that would make sure that he suffered in excruciating ways so that he would have empathy for the full range of human suffering and that word excruciating by the way the etymology of that word means to crucify so Jesus literally experienced an excruciating death he didn't just live and die the way most of us hope to he fully immersed himself in the human experience including suffering and by somehow entering into that experience he conquers and redeems death and suffering so God forgives us but not only that he makes a way for our suffering to be redemptive he tells us to pick up our cross and to follow him and that if we embrace our cross the way that he did then we will be perfected in his grace a grace he can now give us because he suffered as we do thanks so much for watching guys if you enjoyed that then please consider subscribing and liking and come find me on Facebook and Twitter it's a huge help when you do that it helps us get these videos in front of more and more people and a big thank you goes out to you Catholic for presenting these videos and if you want to support the making of these videos then please consider supporting my work as a digital media and marketing expert my company holds with design specializes in branding web and graphic design marketing social media videography and all that kind of good stuff so if you know of a parish a diocese a ministry or a business that needs help in those areas then please send them our way and I'm sure we can help them out [Music]

Channel: Brian Holdsworth

Views: 34,824

Rating: 4.8748322 out of 5

Keywords: Brian Holdsworth, Catechism, Jesus, Catholicism, religion, faith, Good Friday, Atonement, Christian Salvation, Justification, Sacrificial Lamb, Catholic Sacrifice, Christian Suffering, God and Suffering, crucifixion

Id: 8EkmmRHncnQ

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019