God: Why did Jesus have to die? 1 Pet. 3:18
1 Pet 3:18, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:”
1. Jesus Christ died when he was about thirty-three years old. Other than the fact that he died as a relatively young man, on the surface there seems to be nothing unusual about that statement.
2. The reason why that seems to be a routine statement, is because death comes to everyone.
***When the Irish writer, George Bernard Shaw, completed a statistical study on the subject of death, he said he came to just firm conclusion: One out one people dies.
3. Normally, that is why biographers seldom spend much time on the deaths of their subjects. However, when we come to Jesus, this rule is broken because about one-third of the "gospels", which is the closest thing we have to a biography of Jesus, is devoted not to his life, but to his death.
4. Now we know that Jesus was totally different in his birth from every other human being, because he was born of a virgin. We know he was totally different in his life from every other human being, because he was absolutely sinless. But I want you to learn now that Jesus was totally different in his death from every other human being in this respect every other human being ever born was born to live, but Jesus was born to die.
5. Peter affirms that Christ died. The word for “died” in vs. 18 speaks not just of physical death but also the awesome sufffering.
***A few years ago Mel Gibson released “The Passion of the Christ,” he was widely criticized for the brutality with which he depicted the death of our Lord. In response to that criticism, he released a “recut” version of the movie on Friday. It’s six minutes shorter because he cut out part of the scourging scene and part of the crucifixion scene. He also changed some of the audio and the angles of certain shots to soften the shock of the film. But 2,000 years ago, no one could soften the crucifixion for Jesus. What they did to him was far worse than any Hollywood movie could portray.
***The great preacher, Dr. R. G. Lee, put it like this: "His death prearranged, prophesied, and provided by God, was no afterthought. Jesus was born with the shadow of the cross upon him. With the shadow of the cross upon his heart, he learned to walk, he learned to talk, he learned to work. From his earliest moment upon this earth it was his burden by day, his pallet by night."
7. Normally, people are remembered by something they accomplished by their living. For example: When you think about George Washington, you immediately think he was the first president of the United States. When you think about Benjamin Franklin, you remember he discovered electricity. When you think about Thomas Edison, you remember he invented the light bulb.
8. When you think about Neil Armstrong, you know he was the first man to step foot on the moon. When you think of Sir Edmund Hillary, you know he was the first to climb Mount Everest. When you think about Walt Disney, you think about the creation of Mickey Mouse.
9. But according to the Bible, the most significant thing Jesus Christ ever did was to die. Two thousand years after Jesus left this earth physically, the universal symbol of the movement that he began, is not a cradle, nor a crown, but a cross, the cruelest instrument of execution known to the ancient world, and one which was banned nearly fifteen hundred years ago. The cross is God's flashing neon sign telling us that if you're to know him, that is the Lord Jesus, you must know him in his vicarious death.
10. One half of one verse, 1 Pet. 3:18, gives us a simple, straight forward, succinct, and yet practically exhaustive teaching on the death of Jesus Christ. For in this half a verse we learn three crucial truths about that death.
I. A Sacrificial Death For Sin
A. Man dies because of Sin
1. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins" Now I call it a sacrificial death because as Heb. 9:26 puts it, "He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." You will never understand the death of Jesus until you understand its relationship to sin.
2. We all know that death is universal, and death is inevitable. Medicine cannot prevent it, it can only postpone it. What we call living we could also dying, because at the end of the day we reach the end of the day.
3. Everybody, at one point or another, asks the question: "Is there life after death?" But nobody has to ask the question: "Is there death after life?" Because we already know the answer to that question.
4. Yet, Jesus' death was different from any and every other death that has ever occurred because of its cause. Jesus death had a cause!
***You see, basically there are four ways of dying: There is, first of all, execution (whether lawful or unlawful); secondly, there is suicide; thirdly, there is accidental death; and fourthly, what we call "natural causes." Now though that explains the how of death, it does not explain the why of death.
5. We are told very plainly in Scripture that people die because of their own sin. The first Adam was not born to die, he was born to live. He was morally and spiritually perfect, created in the image of God.
6. Death was not in the picture. However, God made one thing very plain. He said, "If you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die." (Gen. 2:16-17) That was the first time man had ever heard the word "die."
7. Well, as you well know, Adam and Eve did eat, and they did die. They died immediately in their spirit, and they died ultimately in their body. From the moment they sinned, their bodies became subject to disease, decay, deterioration, and death. Their spiritual death was immediate, and their physical death was inevitable.
8. We now know that ever since, every human being ever born has died. Now the reason that what happened to Adam happens to us, is because what happened in Adam happens in us. Adam became a sinner, but you and I were born that way. We share his sin and his guilt. We are born with the seed of death because we are born with the gene of sin. Rom 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
Ezek 18:4, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
Rom 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death;”
Jamess 1:15, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
9. All who sin die. Death is God's righteous and inescapable punishment of human sin. Before man sinned, death was impossible; since he sinned, death is inevitable. Not one single sin, either of word, thought, or deed, can ever go unpunished.
B. Jesus was Sinless, why did He die?
1. But that raises a question. Jesus was sinless, and since sin is the only cause of death, he should not have died. Yet Jesus did die. He ought not to have died, because he was innocent of any crime; He need not have died because he was innocent of any sin. Yet, he was mocked, flogged, stripped, tortured, and nailed to a cross, left to hang there until he was dead. But why? Well, there are really two answers to that question.
2. First of all, Jesus died a voluntary death. As a matter of fact, did you know that the death of Jesus Christ is the only voluntary death in the history of the world? Now you may try to argue about people who give their lives in rescuing other people, or soldiers who were killed in war, or even people who commit suicide. But the fact of the matter is, none of those people choose to die. Some may choose to die sooner than later. Suicides may choose the day, the time, and the place, and the method of their death, but nobody chooses the whether of death. For "it is appointed unto man once to die." Death is not an option.
3. The last item on the agenda of every life is death.
*** As someone has put it, "All the world is a hospital, and every person in it is a terminal patient." The only human being who voluntarily chose to die, who did not have to die, was the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why the Lord Jesus said in Jn. 10, "I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself." (vv. 17-18)
Phil 2:6-8, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Titus 2:14, “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”
Heb 2:9, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”
4. Eccl. 8:8 says, "There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death:” That is, when it is time for you to die, you're going to give up your spirit whether you want to or not. But the Bible says in Mt. 27:50 that Jesus "yielded up His spirit." He died voluntarily for our sins. That's why I call it a sacrificial death.
***A chaplain was going around speaking to soldiers who had been wounded in battle. He came upon a soldier who was missing his right arm.
1.Trying to comfort the man, he said, "Son, I just want you to know that you lost your arm fighting in a great cause."
2.The soldier said, "Chaplain, you're wrong. I didn't lose my arm, I gave it." Jesus gave his life. He died a sacrificial death for sin.
II. A Substitutionary Death For Sinners
1.Peter goes on to say, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust." (v.18) Now I want you to think about something, and it will make perfectly good sense to you. If sin is the only cause of death, yet Jesus had no sin, but Jesus still died, then there can only be one real cause of his death our sin.
2. If death results from sin, and Jesus never sinned, the only explanation for his death is this: He died on the behalf of sinners, and he died in their place.
A. Jesus died a Voluntary death
1. That’s a wonderful truth, but how do you explain it to people?
*** “Let’s suppose that you have cancer, and your cancer is so far progressed that the doctors have told you there is no hope. All methods of treatment have been exhausted. There is nothing else they can do. Without a miracle, you will die. So I come to you and say, “I’d like to help you out. I want to take every single one of your cancer cells out of your body and put them in my body.” You look at me with a mixture of puzzlement and incredible joy. The very thing that is killing you is about to be removed from your body. After you say that to the person, you then ask this question, “If that were possible, what would happen to me and what would happen to you?” The answer is, “I would die and you would live.” Why? Because I took the thing that was causing your death and placed it on myself, and I died as your substitute.
That’s what Jesus did for us. He took the penalty for our sins and he placed it on himself. This explains why Christ had to die. He did not die as a good example, and he didn’t die to teach us how to live or how to die. He died because he took our punishment on himself.
*** A little chorus says it this way:
He paid a debt he did not owe,
I owed a debt I could not pay.
I needed someone to wash my sin away
And now I sing that brand new song: Amazing Grace
For Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay.
***So many have the attitude of the late Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, President of the World Council of Churches, who said, "I would rather go to hell than go to heaven on the back of another man.” Well, I want to say this firmly and unequivocally, if you don't go to heaven on the back of Jesus, you will surely go to hell.
***John R. W. Stott put it. He said: The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting Himself for man.”
*** The great evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, was talking to someone who was trying to deny the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and he said: "Do not suppose God has made a law without a penalty. What an absurd thing it would be! The penalty for sin is death. For 'the soul that sins shall die.' If I have sinned I must die or get somebody to die for me. If the Bible doesn't teach that, it doesn't teach anything. And that is where the atonement of Jesus Christ comes in."
2. I have studied this Bible diligently and consistently most of my life, and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is one of the clearest truths found in the Bible.
3. Paul believed in it. He said, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8) He said, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Cor. 5:21) He said again, "For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us." (1 Thess. 5:9-10)
4. We already see that Peter believed in it. He went on to say, "Jesus Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree." (1 Pet. 2:24)
5. The Apostle John believed in it. He said, "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us." (1 Jn. 3:16)
6. The prophet Isaiah believed in it. He said, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, And carried our sorrows: Yet we did esteem him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; And swith his stripes we are healed. . All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned every one to his own way; And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:4-6)
B. Jesus died a Vicarious death
1. You notice I refer to his death as not only a voluntary death, but a vicarious death. The word vicarious comes from the word vicar which has as its root meaning the word substitute. Vicarious means to take the place of another. That is exactly what Jesus Christ did.
*** In his book Written in Blood, Robert Coleman tells the story of a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion.
1. The doctor had explained that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from two years earlier. Her only chance for recovery was a transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the disease. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor.
2. "Would you give your blood to Mary?" the doctor asked.
3. Johnny hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Then he smiled and said, "Sure, for my sister."
4. Soon the two children were wheeled into the hospital room--Mary, pale and thin; Johnny, robust and healthy. Neither spoke, but when they met, Johnny grinned. As the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, Johnny's smile faded. He watched the blood flow through the tube.
5. With the ordeal almost over, his voice slightly shaky, broke the silence. "Doctor, when do I die?" Only then did the doctor realize why Johnny had hesitated, why his lip had trembled when he'd agreed to donate his blood. He'd thought giving his blood to his sister meant giving up his life. In that brief moment, he'd made his great decision.
6. Johnny, fortunately, didn't have to die to save his sister. Each of us however, has a condition more serious than Mary's, and it required Jesus to give not just his blood, but his life.
*** I am reminded of a little old lady who was theologically ignorant, educationally illiterate, but she had a passionate love for Jesus Christ and the Word of God. An infidel asked her one time, "Can you even tell me what it feels like to be saved?" She thought for a moment and said, "Well, it feels to me as if the Lord stood in my shoes, and now I'm standing in His!"
*** Name tags LIAR, Thief, Drug addict, Murderer Jesus put every tag on him!
III. A Sufficient Death For Salvation
1. Peter goes on to say, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." Jesus died for the express purpose of bringing us back to a right relationship with the God who created us. Now we are told here what his death accomplished, but we are not told specifically how it was accomplished. Why did we need to be brought back to God?
2. Well again, we get now waste deep in good theology. God is not only a God of love. But as unpopular as it is to teach it, and unpleasant as it is to hear it, He is also a God of wrath.
*** In fact, the Bible scholar, A.W. Pink, says that in the Bible "there are more references to the anger, fury, and wrath of God than there are to his love and tenderness."
3. The Bible says in Ps. 7:11, "God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day." But now why is God angry? The Bible goes on to say in Rom. 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. . ." Now this does not mean that God is throwing a temper tantrum in heaven. God's wrath is his perfectly righteous and proper personal and holy reaction against sin. So now we can understand exactly what happened on the cross.
*** I can still remember in a science class in school when the teacher demonstrated to us the power of a magnifying glass. We were outside. I got my first magnifying glass out of a cracker jack box!
1. He took a small pile of leaves and then he held that glass at just the right distance to form a tiny circle of brilliant light on that pile of leaves.
2. In a few moments it began to smoke, then they burst into flames. Somehow that glass lens was able to gather the heat from all of the rays of sunlight striking its surface, and direct that combined sizzling intensity to one spot on those leaves.
4. Now I want you to picture the world, a globe covered with billions of people, and above it like rays from the sun, comes the blinding intensity and heat of the righteous judgment and wrath of God. It's bearing down upon the human race. Then imagine a great cosmic magnifying glass, as wide as the world placed in between, gathering all of that intensity of burning wrath, and focusing it on one spot, on one individual, on Jesus Christ nailed to the cross.
5. Jesus Christ became the focal point of God's wrath. When the Son of God was crucified, the wrath of God was satisfied. That's why the Bible says in Rom. 8:1, "There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
8. Peter puts it this way: "The just died for the unjust." Because the just died for the unjust, the unjust is now just. When the just died for the unjust, he made it possible for the unjust to be justified and thereby become just.
9. You see, God's law makes a double demand on men. As saints they must obey it perfectly, or as sinners, they must pay its penalty. Mankind has done neither one, but Jesus Christ did both.
*** A wealthy American made a trip to London. He was all taken up with Buckingham Palace, where the king lived.
1. So one morning he went to the gates, expecting to go right in, but two soldiers stuck out their bayonets and stopped him. They said, “Where do you think you’re going?” So he took out a $1,000 bill and said to them, “Take this money; I can pay my way in.” But they said, “You can’t buy your way into the king’s palace. You have to be invited. If the king invites you, you can go in free!”
*** In certain parts of the world, a merchant sells goods displayed on a counter or a table with no price tag attached. When someone wishes to buy an item, he lays down some money. If the merchant is not satisfied with a payment, he just leaves it lying on the table. But then the person wishing to buy the item adds to the money. When enough is put down to satisfy the merchant, he reaches down and takes it up. He is saying in essence, "I am satisfied with the payment." Isaiah prophesied, Isa 53:11, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.”
Rom 3:25-26, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”
1 John 2:2, “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
10. Now what is the bottom line? Jesus Christ took on the cross for you what you will have to take for all eternity, if you don't take Jesus Christ.
11. If you're going to know Jesus, you must know Him in his vicarious death. He died an initial death as the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. He died an official death, as the God-selected substitute. He died a judicial death, the judgment death for others. He died a sacrificial death, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God.
*** It is said that one time Napoleon, that archangel of war, was in a conference room with some of his generals. They were discussing the world situation, the campaigns, and the conquests of the great Napoleon. On the wall was a map of the world, and the British Isles, the one country Napoleon could not conquer, were painted in red. Napoleon pointed to those British Islands and said, "Had it not been for that red spot, I would have conquered the world."
14. I want to tell you today Satan must point to Calvary and say, "Had it not been for that red spot, I would have conquered the world." But he did not, and he will not, because of the blessed cross of Jesus Christ.
*** The Son And The Drawbridge
A man had the duty to raise a drawbridge to allow the steamers to pass on the river below and to lower it again for trains to cross over on land. One day, this man’s son visited him, desiring to watch his father at work. Quite curious, as most boys are, he peeked into a trapdoor that was always left open so his father could keep an eye on the great machinery that raised and lowered the bridge. Suddenly, the boy lost his footing and tumbled into the gears. As the father tried to reach down and pull him out, he heard the whistle of an approaching train. He knew the train would be full of people and that it would be impossible to stop the fast-moving locomotive, therefore, the bridge must be lowered! A terrible dilemma confronted him: if he saved the people, his son would be crushed in the cogs. Frantically, he tried to free the boy, but to no avail. Finally, the father put his hand to the lever that would start the machinery. He paused and then, with tears he pulled it. The giant gears began to work and the bridge clamped down just in time to save the train. The passengers, not knowing what the father had done, were laughing and making merry; yet the bridgekeeper had chosen to save their lives at the cost of his son’s.
In all of this there is a parable: the heavenly Father, too, saw the blessed Savior being nailed to a cross while people laughed and mocked and spit upon Him and yet, “He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.”
