Why did Jesus die on the Cross?

Today, being Good Friday, millions of people throughout the world will remember the death of Jesus on the cross nearly 2000 years ago. After all, it is an historical event attested to by the witness of Scripture as well as non-Christian historians like Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny. And yet, why did Jesus die?

If you say that He died because He was betrayed and crucified by men, you would only be partially right. The real reason Jesus died wasn’t because of man’s schemes, it was because of God’s plans. On the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the crucifixion, Peter told the religious leaders of the day that Jesus, “was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). The death of Christ wasn’t a tragic accident; it was all part of God’s predetermined plan to rescue us.

Both as individuals and as a human race we need to be rescued from something: sin and death. Sin means breaking God’s law. James 2:10 says that if we keep God’s law for the most part and yet “stumble at just one point” we are “guilty of breaking all of it.” If you are dangling over the edge of a cliff holding onto a chain of ten links, it doesn’t make a difference if one link breaks or all ten break; you fall to your death either way. In the same way, it matters little if we’ve broken one or all of God’s laws (The Ten Commandments). The end result is the same: We stand guilty before a holy God.

Instead of God giving up on us, “God demonstrated his own love for us in his: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The punishment that our sins deserve—death—was paid for by Jesus, out of love. The prophet Isaiah said it this way: “The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him” (Isaiah 53:5). Jesus paid for our sin in his body on that cross.

Some people object and say, “How could God punish Jesus, an innocent third party? That doesn’t seem fair?” But Jesus isn’t a third party, He is God, in human flesh, and so, when Jesus died, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). God was paying for our sins Himself, “in Christ,” paying the debt that our sins had accumulated.

This is why the day that Jesus died is called by Christians “Good Friday.” The day that Christ died was indeed very good for us because it was the culmination of God’s rescue plan to deal with our sins. We often say that Christ died for our sins, and that’s true, but how do we actually know that his death accomplished all that? How can we be sure that when Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished,” that the work of paying for our sins really was accomplished? The proof is the resurrection. Romans 4:25 says that Jesus was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” The resurrection authenticates the work that Jesus accomplished at the cross.

Though God’s good salvation plans were achieved at the cross and by the resurrection, the saving benefits of Christ’s death don’t apply to you automatically. You have to receive them by faith. God’s gift of salvation is rather like any other kind of gift you might receive. It can’t be enjoyed if it’s not opened. Similarly, we must receive Christ as our Savior and Lord in order for the benefits of Christ’s death to be opened up to us. If you’ve never done that, please click here to learn more.