It is not easy making that journey from sceptic to believer. The questions came thick and fast in my mind as I traversed the divide. There were many, some poignant, such as does God exist? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? And some not so poignant but in need of answers nonetheless, like, did all the animals really fit into Noah’s ark? But the one question I kept asking myself as I started feeling the horridness of my sins was, “Why did Jesus really have to die for our sins?”
I recently read a story of a mother whose child was extremely ill with a terminal disease. The child was dying in front of her mother’s eyes. When we think of the anguish and pain the mother must have been going through, we tend to insert ourselves into that situation and imagine how we would cope. It was, however, not the heartbreak of the story that struck me; it was what the mother said when praying: “Please Lord, take this pain away from my child, let me die in her place instead.” It was heartrending, yet so very real. If I think of my wife and me in this situation, we would do anything to take the pain away from our children. We would most definitely want to take their place, and we would absolutely want to die for them.
If we think of this story, the crucifixion of Jesus starts making a little more sense. Even if we take the love we feel for someone, be it towards our children, spouses, siblings or whomever, we cannot comprehend, although we must seek to understand, the love God feels for us. We are his children, and he is our Father.
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is” (Eph 3:18 NLT).
Of course, my overactive mind started thinking that yes, people seem to understand that God sent his only begotten son to die on the cross so we may be forgiven, yet why did Jesus actually have to die for us? Was the Father not then sacrificing his own Son? Sometimes what gets misunderstood, as I did, is that yes God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for us, but Jesusis God, so therefore God took the penalty for our sins upon himself. It becomes evidently clearer that God does not want to see his children suffering, so much so that he would die in our place to save us.
If we understand how a loving Father would take the punishment upon himself in order to forgive his children, we are led to a slightly more complex conundrum. If God is sovereign, why could he not just forgive us and bypass the death of Jesus?
It is important to note that forgiveness, to be genuine, needs to be costly. If you choose to forgive someone, then they must have done something to you in the first place. If you forgive that person, you are the one paying the price. Imagine if someone in a parking lot accidentally reversed into your beautiful chrome-polished, flame-decaled Harley Davidson (I have tears in my eyes) and does not have insurance, but you can see they are struggling financially. Perhaps you take pity on them and forgive them for this. You may have forgiven them, yet you still need to fix your bike. You will have to pay the costs of the repairs. Because you forgave, you now have the burden of that debt. Forgiveness always comes at a price.
Let me give you another story to solidify my explanation. I was a bit of a wayward child. Growing up, we lived in a rundown block of flats where our playground was limited to the confines of the complex. One day, I happened to be playing with my soccer ball in the passageways. My mother told me not to play in the passages as I might break a window. Obviously, I did not listen and lo and behold, I broke not one but two windows. Now, the caretaker was a bit of a crotchety old lady, and the tenant was not much better. I apologised with what I thought was my most remorseful face. I let them know I was terribly sorry. Needless to say, I was told I would have to pay for the windows. But I was really, really sorry. Could they not just forgive me? I was a child; there was no way I would be able to pay for the windows. Now remember, my mother had told me not to play there, but I had disobeyed. The tenant and caretaker informed my mother that I would need to pay for the windows. My Mother was angry, but she forgave me. However, there was still the question of the window replacement costs. My Mother who was struggling to pay the bills as a single mother with two children, took this debt from me and paid for the windows.
So, we can explain the premise of punishment for forgiveness and why God took this upon himself, this however does not answer the question as to why that penalty had to be death? We still need to understand why this particular penalty and not something else, something less egregious.
“For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23 NIV).
Paul gives us this clue in Romans. Our sin separates us from a Holy God. To understand this, we would need to look back to the Old Testament. Right from the very beginning, man was disobedient. God gave the explicit instruction that to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would result in death. Both spiritual and eventually physical. Just like a single drop of poison taints a glass of water, so too does sin taint our lives, and just like we earn our wages from our labour, so too do we earn the wages of death from our sin. If God is Holy, then we are the opposite, and we could not possibly be in his presence. There needs to be a penalty that equals the holiness of God. There could be no other punishment as final as death.
Yet we would still not be holy enough to be in God’s presence. But God is just, and He still wants a relationship with us. Staying with the Old Testament, we read of all the animal sacrifices that God had instituted because of sin. These animal sacrifices were a temporary respite, much like a credit card, eventually you have to pay it back. They could never in themselves be the ultimate forgiveness from sin. The Hebrew word “Kaphar” is translated as atonement, but it is closer to “covering” the sin than “removing” it, much like a plaster over a wound. So why were animal sacrifices not enough? What were they really about? These animal sacrifices were ultimately pointing to God’s final and decisive sacrifice. The Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Not to be covered, but to totally remove them. They were a foreshadowing of the bloodshedding of Christ.
The text I quoted above, from Romans 6:23, is, however, not complete; there is a second part:
“…but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
The punishment of death is no longer final. Jesus made sure of that. Through Christ’s righteousness and sinlessness, we are able to be in God’s presence. We just need to accept the gift we have been given, that of the forgiveness of God and eternal life.
