Why did Christ die?

Christ died because his Father killed him. “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.” (Isaiah 53:10) One of the greatest paragraphs in all the Bible is Romans 3:23-26.

All have sinned and come short of God’s glory and must be justified without cost, by His grace, through the redemption that has been accomplished by Christ Jesus, Whom God publicly provided (by the shedding of his blood) as an appeasing sacrifice to be appropriated by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness because, in His tolerance, He had passed by sins committed previously in order to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so that He Himself might be just and the Justifier of the person who believes in Jesus.

Christ’s death was God’s justifying the ungodly (Romans 4:5). Yet Proverbs 17:15 tells us “He who justifies the wicked and condemns the just are equally hateful to Yahweh.” How can it be right for God to justify the ungodly? This is the very heart of the gospel – that God justifies the ungodly! Something so profound happened in Christ’s death that millions of sinners can be acquitted. It is God the Father who put forward Christ for slaughter (Romans 3:25). There is this eternal paradox: the Bible reveals God to be infinitely passionate about and joyful in His own name and glory and, at the same time, the Bible reveals Him placing His omnipotent affection on God-belittling sinners who despise His glory and cheapen His name. Is God crazy? Is He in need of counsel? No. The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). It was not for Jesus’ sin that God crushed Him. It was because He wanted to show His people mercy. He wanted to forgive and heal and save and rejoice over us with loud singing. So in order to accomplish His purpose – to save sinners and at the same time magnify the worth of His glory – God lay on Jesus our sin and abandoned Him to death on a cross. There is a great heaviness to be grasped here. If God was going to acquit sinners then something awesomely terrible had to happen so that His unswerving passion for His glory might not be impugned. That is what Paul is talking about in Romans 3:25 when he refers to the demonstration of God’s righteousness. Christ, the God-man, must die for God to be the “just and the Justifier”. Jesus’ death glorified His Father’s name and saved His Father’s people.