Why did Jesus have to die? Why a cross?

A question often asked is “why did Jesus have  to die? It doesn’t seem fair, and it doesn’t seem that the God who is supposed to be a God of love for everyone had little love for his own son, and if this is so why believe that He loves us who sin.?   This means that he really doesn’t love and forgive but puts a cross on each of our shoulders and watches us suffering until we die. His own son He refused to help, so why should we believe that he would help or do something different with us?

When confronted with such question and actual reasoning by a non-theologically learned, or inspired and influenced by scriptures, it seems like the questioner’s thoughts about the truths of the crucifixion and death of Jesus appear reasonable. 

This individual’s question “why did Jesus have to die” led me to hear that she was needing to know. To be given an answer she could understand so that she could accept completely with both heart and mind and not see the cross as final word of Father God.  She sincerely sounded like she felt a pain for the death of one she still didn’t know but was also fearful for herself because she had so many doubts. 

Crises in life always bring the word “why?” and “please Lord help.”  During normal day to day life the word Lord is present somewhere within  beings but not called upon, but in a moment of fear, crisis, then the first one to call upon and expect an answer is “Lord please help me”  This is a very hopeful conundrum. There is both a tentative belief but also confusion about why someone wouldn’t help his son rather than let him die, and if this is so then there is doubt “that he will help me in my time of need”

Answering the question “why did Jesus have to die” needs to be answered in age-knowledge appropriate and respectful  manner in order not to add more confusion than the  already existing one and in order that it is spoken with both sadness for the pain experienced, and death of Jesus, and the ultimate joy in the sacrifice.  Joy that the sacrifice via method of the cross fulfilled a promised made by God the Father eons earlier in order  to reverse the evil done by sin and which would affect all descendants from the beginning till the end of time: but also embedded was a promise that the evil which would emerge from that sin would be reversed at an  opportune time. And so began the story of man and woman, carrying the weight of their sin and its effects, pains, sorrows.  Within that one sin of disobedience, pride and loss of dignity, the consequence “ you may not eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, for on that day you shall surely die” was uttered by God and so was the promise of death.  Within that first sin were the seeds of all possible sins beginning with murder, (fratricide) and all other sins which the human being would commit without even realizing the gravity of the words “you shall surely die.”

But again, why did Jesus have to die on the cross?  This can be an answer which may be easily explained and understood by the questioner and the respondent  “Jesus died on the cross because at the time in which he lived this was the most cruelest method of punishment for someone who was considered a criminal and condemned to die.  It was a painful. long, humiliating  method of killing the person”

It took quite a long time to die because a victim can be hanging on the cross for  at least for 3-5 hours before dying from suffocation.  A slow death.  In the end the victim did not have the energy to keep lifting himself to take another breath and suffocated.  Thirst was also part of death experience because he would have lost  a lot of blood and moisture would have made the person so thirsty and all combined would kill the person. Shock would have also been part of the final death experience.

This method of murder was so painful because big nails were hammered through the wrists and pushed through the bone ( not middle of palm, this would have torn right through quickly)  and you can imagine the excruciating pain.  The same with feet.  One foot over the other and long nail hammered through both feet.  The blood which would spurt out. The agony which the victim would have felt to even  lift his eventually would lead to his death. Shock was now inevitable.

Another different type of pain would have been the crown of thorns, crown made of spini, thick spikes. Thick and dried  hard   This would have been pushed (it was a Jewish skull  cap (Kippah), made of the thickest thorn from bushes around Jerusalen.  This would have taken something like spanner to place it on Jesus’s head and then press it down. The agony of this cannot be imagined because the skin around the temple being so sensitive  The soldier would not have been able to hold it and press it down.  Further, every time Jesus lifted his head to take a small breath, he would hit the back of his head against the wood of the cross and again agony, and new screaming which would he heard throughout the countryside where he had preached love, peace, care for one another.  The agony and his screams would have been heard by the people from a  distance but also heard by hills around Jerusalen. As the author Irene Hunt wrote “The Everlasting Hills” ( Part of nature which would have then and in the future remember the agony of their creator. They would hold the memory of those screams forever and know that even creation had suffered, watching, and had been redeemed by that agony.

Another of method of further torture would have been humiliating and the torture which would cause the most humiliation, and loss of dignity, that is being hung on cross naked.  The loin cloth we see around Jesus and the other two nailed on that day with him were painted by artists in about 5^th century (a modesty reason).  This last torture was to be a psychological torture, because he knew that his mother and other women would see him naked, though from some distance.  Only within the home, and his wife could a man be seen naked (if he had one).  This is why our Holy Father Pope Francis and past popes speak and write so much about dignity, and why Pope Francis speaks and has spoken so much about dignity and Mercy.  Restoring dignity will change a person because dignity affects the being which God’s breath has enlivened.  Sin stole from Adam and Eve their dignity as children created by the Father, thus leading to seeds of the many sins committed since then. The  seed which covered the whole structure of future sins needed to grow, and indeed from one original sin emerged the other sins.

To answer the question why? Because Jesus took onto himself every seed of sin.  He destroyed that first Original seed so that in time each enlivened creation maybe washed and cleansed and returned in dignity to the creator Father.  Just as garment of skin was placed over the human body to cover that stain the sacrifice of Jesus  destroyed that kernel of sin within which was the  entire structure of all sin to come.