I know Jesus died for my sins, but why did He have to die? Couldn’t God have just forgiven sinful humanity?

The song “In Christ Alone,” by Keith and Kristyn Getty, contains one stanza that speaks to your question. It says that Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins satisfied the wrath of God.

Sometimes we forget about that wrath.

The simplest answer as to why Jesus had to die for our sins is that the only sovereign God (Psalm 115:3; Isaiah 46:9, 10; Ephesians 1:11) decreed it in His Word. The early believers understood this divine plan. In Acts 4, Peter and John quote Psalm 2 and interpret it as referring to Jesus (vv. 25-28). They see that God uses even the wicked who are against Him to accomplish His will. We cannot stop God from completing His plan.

While God’s ways are not our ways and are often mysterious (Isaiah 55:8, 9), God has clearly revealed in Scripture why Jesus’ death was necessary for forgiveness and salvation. The New Testament emphasizes two main concepts when addressing the meaning of the cross of Christ: satisfying a legal penalty for sin and achieving a cosmic victory over evil (1 Corinthians 15:54-57; Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14, 15; 1 John 3:8). While both truths require the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ in doing for us what we could not do for ourselves (overcome sin and death), we focus here on the first, called penal substitutionary atonement.

Humanity often fails to understand the negative impact of even one sin on God’s creation. God, His creation, and His law that governs it are perfect, aside from sin (Romans 8:20-23). To restore God’s creation requires payment of a penalty and a new creation. The penalty is death (Romans 6:23; James 1:14, 15; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 5:12-21). All creation must die and be recreated to enter eternity (Matthew 24:35; Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1). Jesus, as the divine Son and representative Human, accomplished both in His death and resurrection: “Jesus our Lord . . . was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:24, 25).

Jesus Christ paid the penalty as a substitute sacrifice for humanity to satisfy God’s just wrath on sin (Romans 3:25; cf. 1 John 2:2; 4:10). In His body, sin was punished (Romans 8:3; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17). Isaiah 53 already prophesied God’s atoning plan in detail.

My nine-year-old granddaughter once asked, “Why is there so much bloodshed in the Bible?” Her mother read her Hebrews 9:22: “And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.” Later, my daughter and I talked about the mystery of salvation through Christ’s atonement. Humanity’s problem is that sin cannot abide before a holy God. The cross was God’s loving plan to satisfy His own mercy and holiness and to resolve the problem of sin once and for all. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). 

The cross shows the depth of God’s love and the weighty cost of forgiveness — the only cure for sinful humanity.

— Elder Chip Hinds