WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO DIE?

April 1, 2026

I have been a Christian for many years, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized every year, as I walked through Passion Week, one question continually bothered me:

Why did Jesus have to die?

Jesus was perfect, and I am a sinner who is unworthy of such a sacrifice. Why should He have to pay for my sins? Couldn’t God have found another way?

As I began to dive deeper into studying Scripture, God, in His infinite grace, gave me a clearer understanding of His character, and this understanding completely wrecked me.

To understand why Jesus had to die, we have to go back to the very beginning.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God in His presence. When they disobeyed God by eating from the forbidden tree, sin entered the world, and with it came death to man and destruction to man’s relationship with the Lord.

Through the fall of Adam, all of humanity is now subject to sin. Romans 5:12 states, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”

Every person is born with a sinful nature and is a slave to that nature. Romans 3:23 says that, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

What is the consequence of sin? Romans 6:23 states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The reality is that we deserve death because of our sin.

This is where God’s attribute of justice comes into play. Because God is perfectly just, sin cannot simply be ignored. It has a penalty, and it must be paid. God will judge all sin and require payment from each person according to their sin.

But this is where the story takes a beautiful turn. If God is just, then sin must be punished. Yet, God is also loving, and He wants to save sinners. The cross is where both justice and love meet. John states God’s promise when he says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

From the beginning, God gave us a glimpse of His plan of salvation for all mankind. In Genesis 3:15, God said that there would be a deep hatred between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s offspring, and her offspring would bruise the serpent’s head, while the serpent’s offspring would only bruise his heel.

Out of God’s unfathomable love for us, He provided a way for us to be brought back into a right relationship with Him by sacrificing His own Son, Jesus, on our behalf. Jesus’ death and resurrection would declare victory over death once and for all.

Then we might ask ourselves, how did Jesus’ death take the place of our punishment? Again, we can look to the Old Testament for the answer.

In Exodus, God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand that God’s people be released from their slavery. Out of his own pride and stubborn rebellion, Pharaoh refused, so God had Moses return with a warning that if he didn’t release God’s people, God would inflict a series of ten plagues on the Egyptian people. After nine plagues, Pharaoh’s heart was still hard, so God inflicted the tenth and final plague – the killing of all the firstborn males and animals.

In order to save the Israelites from this plague, He instructed each household to kill a lamb that was without blemish, that is pure and without defect, and place its blood on the doorposts and lintel. When the Lord passed through to strike the Egyptians, He passed over the houses with blood on the doors, and the Israelites were spared.

This was a foreshadowing of the passing over of our sins through the blood Jesus shed when He died for our sins.

Jesus fulfilled what the Passover lamb symbolized. He alone met the requirements necessary to stand in our place:

• Jesus is without sin. He was the spotless lamb without defect.

• Jesus is fully man. He took on human flesh to give His life for us.

• Jesus is fully God. He is able to bear the full weight of our sin.

• Jesus is all-powerful. In His own power and might, He raised Himself from the dead. Not only are we free from the payment of our sins, but we are also made alive through Jesus’ resurrection and will be in His presence for all eternity.

• Jesus is eternal. He paid for our sins once and for all.

Once I understood the significance of God as a just judge who had to punish sin, yet out of His love for us, He substituted His life for ours so that we could enter into His presence once again, I finally understood why Jesus had to die.

As we approach the Easter season, let us not miss the significance of Jesus' work on the cross. Instead, let us exalt His name and proclaim the good news of salvation to those whom He has placed in our lives.