Reflection on Christ's death
Why did Christ die on the cross?
This might seem like a simple, even redundant question, but it isn’t.
He died to restore justice and order to the natural order, which includes humankind. Romans 8.
He died to complete the Messianic prophecies, although that is disputed by those of Jewish faith. Isaiah 53.
He died to rise victorious over death, Christus Victorious. He had to die to rise and be the first fruits. I Corinthians 15
He died to be an example to those who would follow Him. More a traditional idea than one in the Scriptures, but Hebrews 12 may be referenced here.
He died as a penal substitution, to pay the final price for humanity’s sins. The sacrifices of the Old Testament (and in some ways, those of other cultures) were pictures of this embedded need for payment for sin, but they were ineffective, weak, only shadows really. Romans 3.
All of these are true, and there are other “reasons.” I would recommend John Piper’s book on this subject.
But.
All of them are reasons in the sense that these were results that came of the cross, but they are not motivations.
Love is the reason. Now, that is a big cliché, I know. John 3:16 and all that. But we lose sight of it so easily. I know I do. How much I need to just rest today in how much God loves us. How much I don’t have to worry about my own efforts. Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly is about this, and I am refreshed by reading it. He does not get his inspiration from 21st century contemporaries. He mines the 17th century Puritans, Owens, Goodwin, and Bunyan, the last people we think of when we think of God’s love. No group has suffered some smarty-pants critics than the Puritans. They dove into the depths of God’s love.
We do not think of the “perseverance” of the saints as being about God’s love, His almighty, pure, eternal, expansive, sacrificial, flooding love. “He who comes to me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6:37). But it is.
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