We are in the season of Easter. This is when, of all seasons of the year, our attention needs to focus on the resurrection of Christ. But we find our selves asking instead “Why did Jesus have to die?”
Ours tends to be a “Good Friday” faith. We see the empty tomb and we think “The Cross put him in there.”
So why not ask the Good Friday question directly? Maybe Easter will give us enough hope to face it.
Why did Jesus have to die?
The Heidelberg Catechism (the much loved 450 year old summary of biblical Christianity about which I’ve not blogged in too long) puts it as plainly as can be:
40 Q. Why did Christ have to suffer death?
Why indeed. Couldn’t he have simply begun to reign as King, as the disciples seemed to hope? Couldn’t someone who poured out so much love to so many at least avoid death by a lynch mob?
Here’s the Catechism’s answer:
A. Because God’s justice and truth require it:
nothing else could pay for our sins
except the death of the Son of God.
You can take that very brief statement in a number of ways. Which one you choose will depend on the kind of drama you see unfolding in the life of Jesus.
Christ’s Drama as a Tragedy
Our hope that Christ might have avoided the cross comes from seeing a merely human drama playing out:
- Jesus was a wonderful man, but just a man.
- The authorities somehow turned against him and that is a tragedy.
The Catechism assumes a bigger drama.
Christ’s Drama as a Western
Christ’s drama might be a “western,” but there are no Cowboys involved. Okay, what I mean is that there is a Western (i.e. European as opposed to Asian) way of thinking about the story.
If you circle the words “justice” and “pay” and “death” you have the outline of the usual Western theological drama. It is rooted in St. Anselm’s writings long before the Reformation:
- Our sin is a great crime, a breach of God’s law, and must be punished by death.
- God the King has been dishonored, and the infinite price must be paid.
- Christ alone, God incarnate, is the only one whose death can pay it.
Christ’s Drama as a Mystery
You can think of Christ’s drama as a “mystery” too, but without need for a detective to figure out whodunnit.
The clues might come to mind if you circle the words “God’s” and “truth.”
- Picture humanity created for TRUE life, communion with God.
- Picture humanity choosing an UNtrue life, a cursed life.
- We chose what God had told us would lead to bad consequences back in the garden: we turned away from intimacy with God in the foolish attempt to know, really experientially know, not only good but evil.
- God had said death would come if we chose that, and it did.
Then circle “death” and “Son of God.”
- The second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God willingly came to us, became human, specifically so that he could take the curse for us.
- Taking the death that was humanity’s consequence, Christ freed us from death.
That’s another biblical, and very traditional, Christian approach to the question of why Jesus had to suffer death. He chose the cross “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2) of bringing us life instead of death.
It is not just that the empty tomb implies the cross.
The cross happened so that we could get to the empty tomb.
From the Heidelberg Catechism perspective, to whom was the price paid (“…nothing else could pay for our sins…”)?
Thanks, Fr. Dustin, for your question. As you know there are several possibilities within the history of Christian thought.
Heidelberg does not address the question as directly as one might expect. If any other readers want to correct me I’d love to hear from them, but I would say the closest the Catechism comes to specifying this is that the price is paid to God’s justice.
The idea of making payment to justice makes it sound
either
like in Christ’s death God is paying God,
or
like Christ as God is making payment to something that is sort of a characteristic or character quality of God.
It might be more sensible to say that the price is paid within the system of justice God has placed in the universe, or inherent in God’s universe, but that is well beyond what the Catechism specifies.
Personally the question of who is paying whom or what seems like more than God has bothered to make plain to us, and the options end up sounding problematic.
Thanks, Gary.
That’s always been a tricky question for me to answer.
I’ve been greatly influenced by St. Gregory of Nazianzus. This comes from his second Paschal Oration:
“To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and Highpriest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence.”
Another way I typically think of it is as a parent who sacrifices for their children. Every parent does what they can go make sure their children get good education and a good upbringing.
Here sacrifice isn’t a “ransom” of some sort, but rather God willingly setting aside his divinity to be limited by what it means to be human – hunger, pain, suffering, vulnerability, death, etc. – none of which are common traits of divinity.
Fr. John Meyendorff once put it this way, “…the death of Christ is truly redemptive and ‘life-giving’ precisely because it is the death of the Son of God in the flesh. …’the death fo the Cross was effective, not as a death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord.’ The point was not to satisfy a legal requirement, but to vanquish the frightful cosmic reality of death, which held humanity under its usurped control and pushed it into the vicious cycle of sin and corruption.” (Byzantine Theology, pg. 161)
Fr. Meyendorff’s comment is what I was aiming toward in the “mystery” section of the post.
It always amazes me the way the mystery of God – or Christianity – always seems to hold together ideas in tension. I think Christ’s death is definitely one of them. The irony – or blessing – is always that we need both to see the big picture!