Chapter 5 · So what?
Why did Jesus have to die?
If Jesus really rose, then death isn't the end. But before he rose, he died, and that was never plan B. Paul says it happened just as the Scriptures promised:
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures… he was buried… he was raised on the third day.
The Bible's word for it is sin. Not only the crimes that make the news: pride, lies, using people, living as if God weren't there. And sin doesn't just make us guilty. It takes us captive. Jesus said:
Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Nobody is outside that prison, since “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23), and it ends in death: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
John 8:34 · Romans 3:23 · Romans 6:23The price paid to set a captive free. In the law of Moses, if poverty forced someone to sell himself as a slave, a relative could pay to buy him back (Leviticus 25:47–49). Jesus paid ours, and Peter names the price:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed… but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
Paul says the same: Christ Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:6).
Leviticus 25:47–49 · 1 Peter 1:18–19 · 1 Timothy 2:5–6It set the prisoners free. Jesus became one of us so he could die, and by dying break the grip of the one who held us:
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.
The empty tomb shows who won. Peter told the crowd in Jerusalem that “it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24).
Hebrews 2:14–15 · Acts 2:24That's why the cross stands at the center of Christianity instead of being an embarrassing end to a good teacher's life. Early Christian teachers told it the same way. Around AD 180, Irenaeus wrote that Christ “gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity.” But Jesus said it first, on the road to Jerusalem, before any of it happened:
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.