Good Friday: Why Did Jesus Do It?

I need to start this off right ... "My name is PeteS, and I am a Chronic Over-Explainer." I'm a life-long member of Over-Explainers Annoymorous, but I'm going to try to hit the key ideas briefly.

The basic answer to the title question is found in the natures of God and man. God is righteous, just and love; God is a Creator. In saying that God is a Creator, I mean more than that He created our universe. It means that the universe was an expression of God being a Creator.

God created man with the ability to choose - to obey or disobey, to love or not love - his Creator. Those choices would have consequences, and with the first man's choice to disobey that changed his and his descendants' nature from good to not good, i.e. sinful.

With that choice made, God's justice would not allow Him to allow or force mankind to spend eternity in the presence of the God mankind had rejected. God's righteousness would not allow Him to tolerate sin in His presence. As Creator and One Who loves His creation, God would not do nothing, a this would consign all His human creatures to an eternity separated from Him.

The "something" God did was Jesus. Fully human, yet still God; truly good, yet sadistically punished as the worst of criminals; Jesus life and death satisfied God's righteousness and justice for as many as believe in Him. Persons who acknowledge their need before God and put their full trust in what Jesus did are forgiven and will be with God in eternity. Jesus' life, sufferings and death were substitutionary. That Jesus was at once human and God is essential. Jesus led a sinless life while subjected to all the temptations humans face, but was nevertheless punished as if he were a sinner - human for human substitution. Jesus was also God, making the "value" of that substitution, and extending it to, as many as believe. God's love is proffered. This why why Hebrews 12:2 says of Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame." Believers being redeemed so that they could be with Him in eternity was the "joy" Jesus had in prospect.