Why Did Jesus Have To Die?

Apparently the jury is still out.

Back in the day when I was a lawyer doing jury trials, I handled a number of personal injury cases. One of the hurdles I had to overcome was explaining why my client should be compensated with money for their injuries. For many jurors (and maybe most people), the idea of giving cash to someone for an accident doesn’t seem to line up with concepts of justice, especially when the media is full of stories of people getting huge awards that seem disproportionate to their injury. 

So they ask a legitimate question: How does cash provide justice?  And if it does, how much is enough?

It’s a good question. How does giving someone money provide justice for a physical injury?

My response was that there were three options:

Option 1: If we could make the responsible party go back in time and make it so the accident never happened, we would…but we can’t.

Option 2: If we could make the responsible party heal my client to their pre-accident condition, we would…but we can’t.

Which is when I brought up...

Option 3: Make the responsible party bring the scales of justice back into balance by compensating my client with money.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. We would all prefer to have option 1 and 2 available as a way to make things ‘right’. Indeed, every client I ever represented would have taken option 1 or 2 in a heartbeat. But those two options were obviously unavailable. So we’re left with making one party pay another as a way to achieve equilibrium of justice.

Similarly, this same dynamic is at work when we ask the question: “Why did Jesus have to die?” The whole concept of Atonement (which is the fancy church word we use to explain the death and resurrection of Jesus) is the attempt to describe what it achieved. It addresses the questions of: What did it do for God? And more selfishly, what did it do for us?    

Part of the answer is that Atonement fulfills the need for justice. Theologians say that it satisfied God’s need for justice, but I often wonder if we don’t need it more. Justice is a concept that is unique to humans. It is not observed in the animal kingdom, but seemingly, it is wired into our DNA. Something within us yearns for the scales to be brought back into equilibrium. Things aren’t ‘right’ unless justice has been accomplished.

Especially when thinking
about Atonement.

So Atonement begins with an honest assessment about where we find ourselves, both way back then and in the present moment. Yes, we understand that humankind went off the tracks with the fall of Adam and Eve. Yes, we all admit that we’re miserable sinners. Yes, we are the responsible party for an injury to God and to his Creation. Yes, somewhere deep within us, we want it to be set back ‘right.’ But we also ask why did Jesus have to die to set our shortcomings straight? Why couldn’t God just take us all back to the Garden of Eden and make it so that evil never entered the world? Why can’t God simply heal us back to our ‘pre-fall’ condition?

The answer is that as that as much as we wish we could…we can’t. That train left the station long ago. Instead, the only thing will bring the scales of justice back into balance is for someone to pay, and given the immensity of the injury, recognizing that the amount of compensation needs to be astronomical.

Enter Jesus.

It is through Jesus that we answer the double question of "why?" and "how much?" His crucifixion and death reflect the magnitude of the harm we've caused. It revealed (and still reveals) how far humanity has fallen since we exited the Garden so long ago. But it is through his sacrifice that justice and equilibrium are restored. After all, the restoration of perfection requires a perfect payment.   

Is it what we wanted? No. But is it perfect? If we think about it, Yes. It. Is.

Keep the faith,