Why was Jesus’ death necessary anyway?
Because death is our problem! When God made Adam, He appointed him to represent us in the Garden of Eden (ĚäÉ ÚĎä). The Hebrew name “Adam” means mankind. My relationship with God depends on my representative’s relationship with God.
God commanded Adam, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that
you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Bible, Torah, Genesis 2:16-17) God’s
warning was clear: disobedience leads to death.
Adam and Eve ignored God’s warning and deliberately disobeyed Him. The consequence? Death – spiritual and physical, as God had warned. “The wages of sin is death,” as the Bible expresses it. Their expulsion from the Garden of Eden illustrates the reality of their personal relationship with God being broken because of their sin. It is because Adam died spiritually that he died physically several hundred years later. Adam and Eve would not have died if they had not disobeyed God.
And so when the representative, Adam, disobeyed, all mankind disobeyed! Sin (like poison) entered into our world and into human life. When God punished Adam by causing him to die, we were all likewise punished – we all die too.
So death is man’s big problem. If anyone were to save us, he would have to solve this problem. He would have to conquer death. He would have to restore our broken relationship with God. This is something you and I could never have done for ourselves or for others. God in His kindness says that the way we are to be saved is for Christ to take death, spiritual and physical, upon Himself in our place. What is the evidence that Jesus defeated death? The evidence is His resurrection from the dead. “O death, where is your sting?” (Bible, Injil, 1Corinthians 15:55)
Here is how the Bible (Injil) summarizes the parallel between Adam and Christ:
“Since by man [Adam] came death, by Man [Christ] also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” (Bible, Injil, 1Corinthians 15: 21, 22)
“Christ also
suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust,
that He might bring us to God.”
(Injil, 1Peter 3:18)
How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?