(See bottom of post of additional resources)
As you may know, tomorrow is Good Friday, the day set aside by many to reflect on the death of Christ. I remember growing up and wanting to know WHY Jesus died. I’d ask and the answer given was always “because He loves you”. That didn’t make any sense to me. Lots of people love other people and I didn’t understand what dying had to do with love. Studying the Bible as a believer, I now understand some of the richness of that why. And yes, love is a big part of that why, but there’s so much more to it. So WHY DID JESUS NEED TO DIE AND WHY DO WE CELEBRATE IT?
Here’s your Good Friday Crash Course:
God is perfectly holy and cannot tolerate sin (Ps5:4). And man is completely sinful (Rom3:10). This creates a problem.
God set forth the punishment for sin as death (Rom6:23). Every sin must be paid for because God is just and justice demands retribution. God is also loving and He graciously provided a payment for our sins(Jn3:16).
The sins of man needed to be paid for by a man. But every man sins and therefore would never be able to pay for the sins of anyone else (Ps49:7-9). Only God is sinless and doesn’t need to pay for any sins of His own.
This is why Jesus needed to be fully God (sinless) and fully man (able to pay the debt man owes). Jesus took the punishment we deserved and died for all who would believe (1Pet2:24). On the third day He rose in triumph. In His death, He fully paid our sin and gave us His righteousness(Phil3:9).
Now we can be reconciled to a holy God. This is how God can be just and the justifier of many (Rm3:26) Christians celebrate the sacrificial death of Christ because He paid our immeasurable debt; because He made peace between us and God; because He freed us from the bondage of sin and gave us a new life. And that’s the short story of what makes Good Friday truly good.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2Cor5:21
As with anything, I hope you’ll take the time to look up each verse given, in their proper context and let this post be a starting point for your personal prayer and study time.
Here is a sermon I found to be super helpful on the topic: https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/47-39
And here is a blog post with additional info: https://www.gotquestions.org/amp/why-Jesus-die.html