Did Jesus Have to Die?

Yes. I believe that he did have to die.

There aren’t many “hills I will die on” but this is one of them. Keep reading and see why.

I was rescued.

In 2011 my life changed. I had been a lifelong prisoner of sin. I existed in a living hell on earth of self-hatred, shame, and guilt.

I was a bad person.

That’s not the judgment of the church. And it’s more than my self-judgment.

I had spent decades abusing others, including friends, enemies, and employees.

I emotionally abused my best friend, my wife for decades.

Worst of all, I emotionally abused my children. The video tapes in my brain tell the details I won’t share here.

No one reading this now, would have said “he’s a good man” had you known me then. No one. You would have assigned me the labels “toxic” and “abuser” and would have rightly and justly assigned me to the human trash heap called: “Avoid Him At All Costs.”

Let’s be honest. We give up on “those people.”

And I get it. Because I couldn’t quit being an asshole. I really couldn’t. I had long since accepted that I would die this way. I gave up, long before, trying to change.

Guilt drove me to yet another attempt to get fixed. I went in snark and bitterness, to prove to my wife I was hopeless, to a ministry called The Ultimate Journey.

So I sat in a 12 week very small group of other broken people, and learned how to love myself. To say it wasn’t easy is the understatement of all time. I had my arms crossed in defiance the first two weeks.

But in week 11, after spending weeks in growing compassion for myself, I suddenly was overwhelmed by God’s Spirit and my self-hatred defenses were down and I sobbed… “YES.”

In my soul, without words, I responded to God… “Yes. I will be loved by you.”

And God, who for the first time I knew as Love, rescued me from prison. Love saved me.

I instantly knew, all without words, the basic truths I shall set down in what follows.

The old, old Story became my Story too.

But it was not the story of a legal transaction between God and Jesus so I could be “saved.” Because that Penal Substitutionary Atonement scheme required one additional thing; it required either that I was one of the “elect” (Calvin’s scheme), or that I meant it and kept meaning it when I “said the sinner’s prayer” (Arminius’ scheme).

Well, I lived in psychological hell for decades with that crap in my brain.

I worried all the time that I wasn’t one of the elect because of my besetting sins as a young person and young man. Later, as in older adult, I gave up hope that I was one of the elect, since the bad fruit outweighed the good fruit.

To try to fix this hell, I became an “emotional Arminian” though my beliefs were 5 point Calvinist. I prayed numerous times over the decades for God to save me, and apply Jesus’ legal work on the cross to my account.

None of this delivered me from my hell on earth, nor did it rescue my family from its abuser, me. I was in prison. I was addicted to toxic systems in my mind, and could not get free.

I was a prisoner of Satan, Death, and Sin. And I felt it every day.

I know talking about “being a sinner” and “needing God to save you” is unpopular. Offensive. Many of you reading this see the “sin problem” as “well, we all sin. God forgives. End of story.” You don’t see the sin problem the way I do because it’s not “universe breaking” to you. And that’s fine.

But I see, feel, and experience the “sin problem” as universal Death.

Did God need a bloody death in order to forgive? Maybe? I dunno. The early church thought so. That’s yet another post or book.

Did God need a bloody death to “rescue” us and the universe from sin, death, and the devil? Yes. I believe yes. And it’s not an intellectual “yes” belief.

Why do I “feel” this deeply, and not just academically? Two reasons:

Reason One: since the metaphorical garden (I’m with Augustine on the metaphor), this world has been a daily bloodbath of physical death, and psychological death. There’s barely been a single day where innocent blood has not been shed on a large scale in four thousand years of written history.

In the last hundred years, and add a few, here’s the highlight reel of the biggies:

WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Rwanda, the Balkans, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2, Afghanistan, Ukraine.

After all our enlightenment, suits and ties, and modern diplomacy… we sit poised on the verge of nuclear war. Remember, we’ve already dropped two nukes and burned to death hundreds of thousand people.

Believe we’re getting better. I don’t.

That’s the macro scale of violence and blood. Of death. We are, as a human race, drowning in a sea of blood.

The micro scale is even more important to my view.

My family is victim to multigenerational violence. Some physical. But more harmfully, psychological violence. We are going through, today, a multiple victim tragedy in our family. All are victims, and many are perpetrators.

My daughter was born with genetic wiring for mental health problems. We saw it at age two. So different. Then she grew up under an abusive father- me. She’s a victim. And now a perpetrator. She’s destroying her 10 year old son’s life. He may grow up and continue the cycle.

All victims. All perpetrators.

Times billions. Billions of the same psychological abuses over thousands of years, by billions of “Ken Hoods.”

“Sin” is more than “mistakes” to me. It’s the cause of death, and suffering, which is death on the installment plan.

Depressed yet?

Reason Two: I personally experienced the overwhelming tidal wave of this “macro” death, and also the tidal wave of the “micro” death.

This is personal to me.

When I hear the Spirit of God whisper to me that Christ, God the Son, shed his own innocent blood, to rescue us… to rescue me… that’s big enough for me to feel… to know… that I’m rescued.

I needed a rescue of a magnitude to match the magnitude of the prison I lived in.

Many (most) of you have not harmed people on a scale of “magnitude.” You aren’t Putin. Or a child abuser. Or me. But you are directly impacted by us.

I was rescued, like the murderer the Apostle Paul, as a downpayment… proof… of the ultimate rescue when Christ returns, when His kingdom will be universal and without end.

I’m “proof of concept.”

If God can rescue me, God can rescue anyone. Everyone.

In short: I feel deep down inside, and I believe it’s from the Spirit, that the bloody cosmic nature of suffering, sin, and death, required a cosmic rescue that required the Creator to enter death and Hades via the violence of sin, in order to defeat it.

It’s what the early church universally believed for over a thousand years. The Spirit ratifies that belief in my heart.

So why don’t we see that rescue universally right now?

The “already and not yet” dilemma. I don’t know. Not what you wanted to hear, right?

Maybe it has to do with God’s non-coercive love. Maybe it’s because we have to take the territory one sacrificial love-step at a time. I don’t know. I’ll let someone smarter than me write that book. It’s probably been written.

I do know this: I was a wicked, evil man, who was rescued. One guy. But that means others can be rescued. So that’s my focus. To be what Ray was in 2011… the simple farmer who was Jesus’ very eyes. Eyes full of love and no shame. He sat with me and helped me love myself, so I could eventually feel that God loved me too.

A “nobody” who brought the kingdom of God to me.

I can be that “nobody” for you. And you can be that “nobody” for someone else.

We can bring the kingdom to this world. Filled with the Spirit given to us as a birthright at Pentecost… that’s God’s plan.

God will leave no one behind. Let’s be like our Heavenly Parent… let’s leave no one behind.

As Jason Gray sings…

“With every act of love, we bring the kingdom come.”