Why would God send Jesus as a sacrifice to die for our sins?

This begins Holy Week. Many of us would prefer to fast forward from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) to his resurrection on Easter Sunday, skipping the parts in between where Jesus is captured, mocked, whipped, brutalized, and nailed to a cross. But if we stop and linger, some tough questions arise, the kind that tend to pop up the first time someone really stops to think about the events leading up to Easter. 

Why would God send Jesus as a sacrifice to die for our sins? If God is indeed all-loving and all-powerful, why not just offer grace and forgiveness without the sacrifice? Why would God choose to sacrifice the one who embodied God among us, the one who led a sinless life?

The answer often falls along these lines: We all have sinned – every human from Adam and Eve on down. On our own, we fall short of God’s holiness and righteousness. In order to overcome the barrier of sin that separates us from God, we need either a sacrifice (pointing to the laws in Leviticus that call for sacrifices for various sins) or a mediator (the priest who offers the sacrifice). God sent Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice for all of our sins. Jesus carried all of our sins with him on the cross in his death. And then he defeated the forces of sin and death in his resurrection. 

There’s a theological term for that: substitutionary atonement. There are variations on the theme (which you can find by searching the term or the question “why did Jesus have to die for our sins”), but they all boil down to the same thing: Jesus had to die for our sins if we are to escape the righteous judgment of God.  

I didn’t know the term “substitutionary atonement” existed until a couple of years ago, even though I’ve heard “Jesus died for our sins” for as long as I can remember. Many branches of Christianity see it as the central meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. 

Key passages used to support the theology that Jesus died for our sins include:

• Isaiah 52:13-53:12 – Isaiah talks of the suffering servant who died because “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer… [to make] his life an offering for sin.”
• 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 – Paul writes that Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” and that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
• Luke 4:16-22 – Jesus says the prophesies of Isaiah are fulfilled in him, although the passage he reads here is about proclaiming the good news to the poor, healing the blind, and freeing the oppressed, not dying for our sins.
• 1 Peter 2:21-25 and 1 Peter 3:13-22 – Peter writes that Jesus died for our sins so we might die from sins, be healed, and live in righteousness.

This theology is not without controversy because it emphasizes the demand for reparation or punishment for violating the law (sin), rather than love, as driving force in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It also raises questions about our view of God as all-loving and all-powerful. Does a loving God really insist on the sacrifice of an innocent person (albeit God in the flesh) to fulfill the laws God made? Why is an all-powerful God tied to the laws God created? 

I found another perspective in Christian Piatt’s book Banned Questions About Jesus, a follow-up to Banned Questions About the Bible. The responses to three related questions(1) contend that Jesus died because of human sins, not to take the place of our sins. 

Jarrod McKenna suggests that the question has it backwards. 

“The gospel is not that some deity takes out its rage on an innocent victim so he doesn’t have to take it out on all of us eternally…. God doesn’t need blood. God doesn’t need a mediator. We do!”

“…The lamb of God is NOT offered to God by humanity but is God offered to us to enable a new humanity. God is reconciling the world… through Christ by knowingly becoming our victim, exposing this idolatrous system that promises order, safety, peace, and protection in exchange for victims.” [p. 4]

The argument is that God seeks repentance, not reparation or punishment, from us. “Thus the loving example of Jesus effects a change in the heart of humankind, bringing about such repentance.” [Lee Camp, p. 3]

Jesus’ ministry was about more than becoming a sacrifice on the cross. Jesus forgave people for their sins while he was still alive and he preached the gospel while he was still alive. Rather than dying as “some kind of punishment or restitution”, David Lose says “Jesus suffered because the love and forgiveness he offered was just too comprehensible and terrifying for us to accept.” He concludes:

“From this point of view, Jesus didn’t ‘have to’ suffer and die, but he did so anyway in order to show us just how much God loves us. He suffered because he proclaimed God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness, and until you’ve lost everything, there’s nothing more terrifying to hear.” [p. 21]

Here are some questions, based on Banned Questions About Jesus, to ponder:
Do you believe God required Jesus' sacrifice in order for God to forgive sin?
Which do you think is more consistent with the gospel as you know it: a system of justice, where every sin must be counted and punished, or a system of love, where God forgives us because God loves us and we forgive each other because we love each other?
Is it possible to have love without justice?


(1) Why would God send Jesus as the sacrificial lamb…? [p. 2-8]
Why did Jesus have to suffer so much before he died? [p. 21-24]
How could Jesus forgive people for their sins before he died if he had to die for our sins? [p. 156-158]