Did Jesus have to die?
The classic answer to the question follows under the lovely theological term penal substitutionary atonement or the judicial model. Here the focus is on the intent of Jesus to pay the due price for the sins of humankind through death. Jesus is the one who elects himself to bear the brunt of God's justice for transgression of God's law which is sin and so, he had to die for that to repay the debt. If Jesus does not die, the sins of humankind cannot be forgiven because God's holy law is not satisfied. But maybe Jesus died not for sin, but as a result of sin.
The first problem with this, and here I am more in line with the Eastern Orthodox view of Jesus, is that the expiation for the fallen nature of humankind by virtue of sin begins with the very Incarnation of Jesus. It is in the person of Jesus as fully God and fully human that we witness the image of the true human being as Kierkegaard and then Barth would later emphasize. This makes far more sense. Jesus is the embodiment of a human nature that is assumed by God in order that it may be redeemed and this not just from the end of Jesus' life in the flesh on Good Friday, but from the moment he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Redemption begins at Christmas and not just Easter.
The second problem is that it assumes that God places laws in place that even God cannot change. If the law is that in sin death enters the world, then only by death to "repay" the debt of that sin, can sin be forgiven. The law is placed in terms of an absolute decree that must be fulfilled and since human beings cannot do it by virtue of sin, only one who is without sin can fulfill that law and thereby repay the debt. The resurrection then serves to cancel the debt permanently. This is totally logical, except for the part about God creating immutable laws regarding sin for which the only solution is the sacrifice of God's very own child. Moreover it glosses over the significance that God had already claimed victory over sin and healed the will of human nature in the very Incarnation itself.
Jesus has to die because of who he was and for the new Kingdom of God he came to reveal and found. Throughout the Scriptures those who speak for God and render judgment are the same whom the very Chosen people of God reject. Those who serve God fully are rejected not only by whatever form "the world" might be, but even those who believe they have the right to receive God's Kingdom by who they are and what they do. As Jesus says in Matthew 21:
Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” 39So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ 41They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’
It might seem radical but it is not a stretch to suggest that when God enters into our presence and disrupts what we believe to be order, that our instinct is to kill God. To get rid of that which is causing the disruption. Jesus had to die because humanity inherently disobeys God. It is the logical outcome of what sin does. The Jews wanted him dead for blaspheming the Law, and the Romans mocked him while his closest followers stood by, watched, and tried to avoid any connection with him. Jesus, the true human, the human being that God had fully assumed, was grotesque and disruptive to all that is human: religion, social class, economy, behavior, psychology, politics, gender, race, etc.
What Jesus offended were the social structures and limitations of what it means to be human. This sort of disruption is exactly what the presence of the Kingdom of God does. He was here to break these apart in order to rebuild them in a limitless continuum that runs straight to the Trinity. However, this is not comfortable human behavior since it demands we change everything – including our very selves – on a continual basis. It demands that we put aside self-preservation in order to experience true life. Conversion is continual and progressive even as the very Kingdom of God is "being revealed" to us and is not yet fully revealed, even in the Scriptures. This is a paradox that requires faith, and courage.
Jesus died because human nature in all of its social structures that protect it kills God when God enters into the presence of human beings. What is unfathomable is that God spites that behavior not with death, the outcome of a fallen nature, but with love and with life. Jesus spites death not as a payment for sin to appease an immutable law of God, but because death is not part of what it means to be truly human.
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