Why did Jesus die?
Jesus said that the died “as a ransom for many” (verse 45). Jesus is saying that he died as the payment owed to purchase you and me out of the slavery to sin and death.
Taking this a step further, the Bible teaches that Jesus died as a substitute for us. To many people this sounds like an ugly appeasement of a bloodthirsty God. Actually I heard this quite often at seminary. However the biblical picture is not one of human beings attempting to appease an angry God, rather it is God himself voluntarily making himself the voluntary substitutionary payment. This is the opposite of the acient picture of bloodthirsty primitive gods.
Furthermore, it is important to realize that there is real sin, and real evil, and real transcendent divine justice . These things are real. While ancient people did not grasp the grace and love of God, modern people do not grasp the justice and holiness of God.
How is that Holiness and Justice can retain their intrinsic character while at the same time redeeming/ransoming human beings like me, every one hundredth part of whom is permeated with sin?
We find the answer in Jesus on the cross.
“Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be;
Let that grace now like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.”
When I think of Christ's death, I also must think of His resurrection, one is not without the other. Christ's death won the battle of mankind being forever doomed to death( from the prideful choice in the garden). Without Christ's death, He would not be living in believers today. I don't think of His death at all to appease God, but, more to appease Satan, for Satan is who wanted to see Christ die. Little did he know that his desire produced a mercy so great and so eternal for man, that the death he intended for God's son, will actually be his own at battle's close. Thank you, Jesus.
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