The Death of Christ

Why did the Son of God die? Let’s back up and begin with this question: Why did the Son of God become human? If God wants to communicate with us, what are the non-human options? Off the top of my head: (1) God could make a public announcement, (2) God could appear in a vision, (3) God could send an angel. Intriguingly, God did all these things in the Old Testament.

The Human God

What’s the deficiency with these approaches? How can we relate with an angel who doesn’t have a human body? How can we really know God’s love from a vision or a voice? If God is love and he wants to reach us on the deepest level, he will need to take on a human body and live a public life. As humans we relate most deeply with other humans. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) quotes Augustine as saying,

Nothing was so necessary for raising our hope as to show us how deeply God loved us. And what could afford us a stronger proof of this than that the Son of God should become a partner with us of human nature.[1]

In addition, if God is perfect and he takes on a human body, we can assume that his life will be the perfect human life. Hence, his incarnate life will serve as an example. This means he descends to show us his love and to show us the way. Aquinas quotes Pope Leo, “Unless He was God, He would not have brought a remedy; and unless He was man, He would not have set an example.”[2] As a result, in the process of taking on a human body, God did not lose anything in his deity. He remained fully God in order to save us while becoming fully man in order to serve as our example.

But if humans are designed in God’s image for the purpose of having a relationship with God, how can this human God show us how to relate to God? Should he talk to himself while walking on earth? He can only serve as an example in this way if there is a distinction within God. In other words, this movement into our world will not work with a monopersonal God. This points us to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Why else did God become human? If we were saved by a mere angel or human being, God would not be rightly honored. Almost a thousand years ago, Anselm made this observation in response to his interlocutor Boso:

Boso. If this deliverance were said to be effected somehow by any other being than God (whether it were an angelic or a human being), the mind of man would receive it far more patiently. For God could have made some man without sin, not of a sinful substance, and not a descendant of any man, but just as he made Adam, and by this man it should seem that the work we speak of could have been done.

Anselm. Do you not perceive that, if any other being should rescue man from eternal death, man would rightly be adjudged as the servant of that being? Now if this be so, he would in no wise be restored to that dignity which would have been his had he never sinned. For he, who was to be through eternity only the servant of God and an equal with the holy angels, would now be the servant of a being who was not God, and whom the angels did not serve.[3]

Anselm is right. We are obligated to the one who saves us so our deliverer had to be God. If you grant that only God could save us and God had to be made human to reach us, we now have God in a mortal body. In other words, God is now able to die. Should he die or not?

The Human Death of God

God could come in a human body for a few years then ascend to heaven without dying like Enoch or Elijah. So the human God would live an ordinary human life while also teaching and performing miracles then simply disappear. In other words, he would have a normal human life but not a normal human death. I guess we would be grateful for such a visit, but what would it mean? Was God truly one of us? If God wants to communicate that he loves us while in a human body, how can he do so? We all know words can be cheap so God must show us his love. How should he do so?

How do we express love? We say, “I love you,” write a love letter, make a meal, give a gift, listen, etc. But what is the ultimate way to express love? We revere firefighters, police officers, and soldiers who put their lives in danger for others. And when they die in service we say, “They made the ultimate sacrifice.” Hence, if God wants to show us the ultimate expression of love, he will die for us.

How should he die? Should he get sick and die? Should he grow old and die? Should he die alone on a mountain or surrounded by friends on a bed? In his classic fourth-century book, On the Incarnation, Athanasius addresses these questions. He concludes:

If, then, He had laid aside His body somewhere in private, and upon a bed, after the manner of men, it would have been thought that He also did this agreeably to the weakness of His nature, and because there was nothing in him more than in other men. But since He was, firstly, the Life and the Word of God, and it was necessary, secondly, for the death on behalf of all to be accomplished, for this cause, on the one hand, because He was life and power, the body gained strength in Him; while on the other, as death must needs come to pass, He did not Himself take, but received at others’ hands; the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice.[4]

According to Athanasius, if the Son of God died a typical death, he would have seemed like any other man. If he died from old age while lying on a bed, how would he be different than any other man? Hence, he had to die openly in a way that looked like a sacrifice. Athanasius continues:

Since it was not fit, either, that the Lord should fall sick, who healed the diseases of others; nor again was it right for that body to lose its strength, in which He gives strength to the weaknesses of others also. Why, then, did He not prevent death, as He did sickness? Because it was for this that He had the body, and it was unfitting to prevent it, lest the Resurrection also should be hindered, while yet it was equally unfitting for sickness to precede His death, lest it should be thought weakness on the part of Him that was in the body.[5]

Since he healed others it was not appropriate for him to die from disease or sickness. Moreover, if the incarnate God died from a fever, we wouldn’t have thought he died for us. The Son of God died to show us his love by dying for us and his power by rising from the dead.[6]

The Sentence of Death

But why do humans die in the first place? Why are we mortal? Athanasius goes back to Genesis 2 and 3 to explain how we have been placed under a death sentence. God told Adam that when he ate from the forbidden tree he would die:

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Gen 2:15)

After Adam and Eve transgressed God’s command, corruption and death entered the human race. God told Adam and by extension Adam’s descendants: “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (3:19). Paul comments,

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. (Rom 5:12)

He continues, “one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people” (Rom 5:18). Adam and Eve represented all of humanity so their decision affected everyone. Moreover, we all have done and would have done the same thing as Adam and Eve because “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23). How should God respond to our transgression? Should he keep his word or ignore it? Athanasius explains:

For this cause, then, death having gained upon men, and corruption abiding upon them, the race of man was perishing; the rational man made in God’s image was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution. For death, as I said above, gained from that time forth a legal hold over us, and it was impossible to evade the law, since it had been laid down by God because of the transgression, and the result was in truth at once monstrous and unseemly. For it were monstrous, firstly, that God, having spoken, should prove false — that, when once He had ordained that man, if he transgressed the commandment, should die the death, after the transgression man should not die, but God’s word should be broken. For God would not be true, if, when He had said we should die, man died not.[7]

The character of God and the trustworthiness of his word were on the line. For God to be proven true, humans had to die. So by sending his Son into the world as a human the Father placed the Son under the sentence of death and the Son accepted that sentence. And by dying as a human, the Son’s death has worldwide and timeless significance. This was God who died a human death. Paul states, “one died for all, and therefore all died” (2 Cor 5:14). He bore the penalty we deserved. And through baptism God connects us with the death of his Son so that his death becomes our death.

Then why do believers still die? If the Son of God has taken the penalty we deserved, shouldn’t we be free from death? Ultimately, yes, but in the meantime, we hope for that reality to arrive while still living and dying in our mortal bodies. Hence, for now the idea that “Jesus died for us” does not mean he died in our place so that we don’t have to die, but one day that is precisely what it will mean. In this life we continue to die, but through Christ’s resurrection we expect to be raised to imperishable life. In sum, Christ’s resurrection has taken the sting out of death.

Why do we have to wait? Why doesn’t God give us immortal bodies as soon as we join ourselves to Christ? This question has many answers, but here are two. First, suffering and death give us an opportunity to follow our Lord. Peter writes,

To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (1 Pet 2:21)

He continues:

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. (1 Pet 4:1–2)

According to tradition, Peter was crucified upside down. Second, hardship enables us to know Christ better. As Paul writes:

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:10–11)

If God knew we would rebel, why did he state that death would be our punishment? Couldn’t he have given us a lighter sentence? Death shows the seriousness of our sin. When we depart from God’s word, we are walking away from life so the only outcome is death. But death also shows the depths of God’s love because God had planned to bear the death penalty before we were created. For this reason, Jesus is called “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev 13:8).

If Adam and Eve transgressed at the beginning of the world, why didn’t Jesus enter the world and die immediately after the first sin? Again, why did we have to wait? Aquinas explains:

Nor was it fitting that God should become incarnate immediately after sin. First, on account of the manner of man’s sin, which had come of pride; hence man was to be liberated in such a manner that he might be humbled, and see how he stood in need of a deliverer. Hence on the words in Galatians 3:19, “Being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator,” a gloss says: “With great wisdom was it so ordered that the Son of Man should not be sent immediately after man’s fall. For first of all God left man under the natural law, with the freedom of his will, in order that he might know his natural strength; and when he failed in it, he received the law; whereupon, by the fault, not of the law, but of his nature, the disease gained strength; so that having recognized his infirmity he might cry out for a physician, and beseech the aid of grace.” . . . For if the physician were to give the medicine at the very outset of the ailment, it would do less good, and would hurt rather than benefit. And hence the Lord did not bestow upon the human race the remedy of Incarnation in the beginning, lest they should despise it through pride, if they did not already recognize their disease.[8]

In the words of Paul, God sent his Son when “the fullness of time” had come (Gal 4:4) and that was the fullness of time for humanity.

The Serpent’s Power Broken

Why did Adam and Eve break God’s command? They were greedy—they wanted more than God gave them. But they were also deceived by the serpent, whom John calls, “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray” (Rev 12:9). So our salvation requires the defeat of both death and the devil. John writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn 3:8). Here’s the argument in Hebrews 2:

But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.  In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. . . . Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (vv. 9–18)

Notice the Son’s deep connection with humanity in Hebrews 2: “He suffered death . . . he too shared in our humanity . . . he had to be made like them, fully human in every way. . . he himself suffered.” And he calls us his brothers and sisters. Regarding suffering, Luke Timothy Johnson says,

Greco-Roman writers could speak about what was ‘appropriate’ to the gods . . . But they would have found it incomprehensible to associate suffering with the Divine.[9]

The gods were immortal and unable to suffer, but it was precisely by his suffering and death that Jesus broke the power of the devil and liberated us from our fear of death. And that fear enslaved us all our lives.

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[1] Summa Theologica, 3.1.2.

[2] Summa Theologica, 3.1.2.

[3] Cur Deus Homo, 1.5.

[4] On the Incarnation, ch. 21.

[5] On the Incarnation, ch. 21.

[6] Some have criticized Athanasius’s christology for emphasizing Christ’s divine nature too much and we may see a hint of that here because Christ is portrayed as only having strength in his body. Was he able to get sick? Did he ever cough or have a cold? The Bible doesn’t explicitly say, but it does say, he was “fully human in every way” (Heb 2:17).

[7] On the Incarnation, ch. 6.

[8] Summa Theologica, 3.1.5.

[9] Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 185.