For those unfamiliar with Christianity or those only culturally tied to
it as a religion, there can be some confusion and uncertainty about the meaning
and purpose of Jesus' crucifixion as it pertains to the Christian Faith. I'd
like to offer four primary reasons for the death of Jesus, in brief:
Reason 1: Servant - In this, Jesus obeyed God and followed the
divine will perfectly throughout his life even to the point of death. Jesus
was the perfect human being as God always intended, representative of both God
and Man, selflessly denying himself for the love of his fellow man and God,
giving himself in obedience to God, even into death, for the purposes of God's
saving work. Here, the grace of God is shown in that for whoever trusts God and
follows Jesus, God recognizes in them the same selfless obedience that God sees
in Jesus.
Reason 2: Moral-Theological
Example - Jesus' obedience and selflessness is the ultimate expectation
that God has for humanity, both as individuals and as a community. If Jesus is
the ultimate human and a sign-post pointing forwards to God's consummation of
creation, disciples of Jesus are called to follow his example in their daily
lives, even to the point of self-sacrificial death.
Reason 3: Defeat of Evil - The
resurrection that followed Jesus death from crucifixion ultimately shows that
evil and all the dark forces that the world can muster can never have the final
victory over Jesus and his followers. If killing is the ultimate act that one
can do to another, if death is the worse destruction that evil can do, then the
fact that Jesus overcame death by crucifixion and was resurrected into a
glorified body means that evil can do its worse and not have victory over good.
Jesus defeated both evil and death and all those who follow Christ participate
in that victory. This is also the reason why there cannot be any justice in the
world without a resurrection of the body from death.
Reason 4: Enacted Parable - This
is a difficult one. In order to grasp it, we must peal back centuries of
established theology (both correct and incorrect) in order to look at the
immediate role and self-understanding that Jesus had of himself as a prophet in
first century Palestine, warning his contemporaries about the threat of Rome
and God's imminent judgment upon the nation of Israel. Jesus was deeply steeped in the Jewish prophetic traditions, both
in terms of metaphor and method, particularly in how Old Testament prophets
acted out God's message and even upcoming judgment (see Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, etc.). In this way, Jesus,
in his crucifixion, was acting out the destruction of Israel by Rome. He was
demonstrating through a prophetic act that if the people continued their way of
being Israel and did not turn to God's way (the way of Jesus), then Rome would
attack and destroy Israel. Rome would treat the people of Israel as enemies of
the state and crucify them, which is exactly what happened in AD 70.
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