Why Did Jesus Have To Die?
This question comes up every year around this time.
I’ve tried to answer it in different ways, but it always brings us back to the same mystery: the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. The crucifixion is central to the Christian faith—the cross has become its defining symbol. But why? What does it mean?
One of the most common ways Christians have answered this is through what’s called substitutionary atonement—the idea that, in Jesus Christ, God dies in our place, takes on our sin, and offers himself as a sacrifice to cover it. There is truth in that. Like much of our theology, it’s a metaphor—one that can be meaningful, but also one that can break down if pushed too far.
Where it begins to break down for me is in the assumption that Jesus’ death was required to satisfy God’s wrath—as if God needed someone to punish in order to forgive. That raises serious problems. It suggests that punishment is inherently just, that forgiveness requires a victim, that death is somehow the mechanism of grace.
But is that really justice? If God needs to punish sin, why punish an innocent person? There’s nothing just about substituting the innocent for the guilty. This is the difficulty with what’s often called penal substitutionary atonement—a strictly legal or transactional view of the cross.
The Christian tradition, however, offers more than one way to understand Jesus’ death.
There are images of victory—Christ overcoming sin and death through resurrection. There are early theological insights, like Gregory of Nazianzus’ claim that “what is not assumed is not healed.” In that sense, if God in Christ assumes even death—especially unjust death—then even death can be healed.
But for me, the guiding insight is this: Jesus’ death is a death that should never have happened.
It is the death of the innocent. It is unjust. It grieves the heart of God. And yet—it is also the death we all face. Human beings are not created for death, and still, we die.
So God, in order to heal what is broken, joins us in it.
This is sometimes called a solidarity understanding of the cross: God in Jesus stands in solidarity with those who suffer, with those who are oppressed, with those who are “crucified” by the world.
This is not new to the story of Scripture. From the beginning, God hears the cries of the oppressed in Exodus and comes to their aid. The prophets are called to feel and embody the suffering of the people. And in Jesus, God goes all the way—to the very bottom—to bear the deepest human pain, even the death of the innocent.
Why?
So that no one ever dies alone.
And because the God who joins us in death is also the God of life—the Creator who brings something out of nothing, the One who raises Jesus from the dead and promises to raise us as well—death does not have the final word.
So the cross does not justify Jesus’ death as something God desired. God does not will death—not for Jesus, not for anyone. There is nothing good about crucifixion. That is essential to the Christian claim.
Instead, the cross reveals what sin and death truly are—systems of violence, domination, and injustice. And it reveals who God is: the One who enters into that suffering, exposes it, and overcomes it—not with greater force, but with life, resurrection, and love.
That is why we call it Good Friday—not because the suffering is good, but because God is present in it.
And Easter tells us that life has the last word.
So if you want to know where God is in the world, the cross gives us a clear answer:
God is with the suffering.
God is with the oppressed.
God is with the crucified.
And if you want to follow Jesus, go there.
Go where there is pain.
Go where there is injustice.
Be present.
Tell the truth about death and sin.
And bear witness to a different kind of power—the power of love that refuses to abandon the world.
That is the good news of Good Friday.