Why did Jesus have to die on the cross
I keep hearing him ask this, and I’m no theologian, but when I was a kid, I kept asking this too. It’s a difficult subject. One day, after I kept asking about it, a youth pastor pulled me aside and explained it to me this way:
Think way back, before modern laws, when people lived in small tribes and communities. The payment for sin was death.
Let’s say you stole someone’s goat. You didn’t just steal an animal—you stole food from another human being and could have caused him to starve. This created an cosmic imbalance because you now owed him something.
So let’s say you went to a wise man, and everyone agreed that you should lose your hand for taking the goat. But even then, no matter how hard they tried to make the punishment perfectly equal to the offense, they would either take too much or not enough. A debt would still be owed by either you or the person you wronged. If you kept trying to make everything perfectly equal, you could go back and forth forever. The only way to be absolutely certain the debt was settled would be death.
So, the payment for sin is death.
But people got crafty and said, “Okay, if death is required, let’s use livestock instead.” They would sacrifice goats and other animals to atone for their sins. But obviously, you would eventually run out of livestock.
This is where the idea of the scapegoat comes in. The sins of the people would symbolically be placed upon the animal, and the animal would bear those sins on their behalf.
Then Jesus came to Earth without sin and lived a sinless life. He took the place of the sacrificial lamb. Because He was innocent and without sin, His sacrifice was enough to cover the sins of humanity—past, present, and future. He paid the debt for us and provided us with a way to eternal life.
But to receive that gift, we have to acknowledge Him, put our faith in Him, and try to live according to His teachings.
That’s how it was explained to me as a kid, and for whatever reason, it helped me understand the idea of why Jesus had to die in a way that made sense to me.
Has anyone else ever heard it explained this way?