1. Jesus is Part of the Trinity/Triune God
A common roadblock to seeing God’s love in Jesus’ death and resurrection is the perception that God the Father was abusing Jesus.
This can be a natural inclination if, like me, your earthly father was abusive.
Or, maybe God created you to be very caring and compassionate.
However, there are 2 things we need to keep in mind:
One, as humans, our default inclination is to judge God–the Creator of the Universe–through the lens of this broken world and the broken experiences we’ve had in it. (Along with our own desires and ideas of what we think is right.)
But that’s actually backwards. We need to view the world through the lens of God’s character and biblical truth. This is why understanding God’s true bible character is so important.
Two, Jesus is part of the Trinity/Triune God. God has three distinct personas: God the Father, Jesus (The Son of God), and the Holy Spirit.
God the Father is the ultimate authority of the three. But it’s important to remember that Jesus is also God.
Jesus may have wrestled with His calling of dying on the cross–which we see in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was arrested. But being both fully human and divine, what human wouldn’t need some prayer time before completing such a monumental and painful task?
Yet Jesus was–and is–divine. As part of the Trinity, He loves us more than we can imagine. And as such, Jesus willingly completed the will of God the Father so that we could be rescued from sin and eternal death.
Jesus isn’t a victim of abuse. He’s our rescuer.
2. Jesus Died for Our Sins–Past, Present, and Future
The reason that Jesus died on the cross was to rescue us from:
Being enslaved to sin
Eternal separation from God
Sin is not something that we can overcome on our own. It owns us; we’re slaves to it.
In John 8:31-36 (NLT), we read: Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” “But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.”
When sin entered the world back in the Garden of Eden, the future of humanity did not bode well. Suddenly, we were captives of sin and all the destruction and havoc it causes.
We also faced being enterally separated from God. God is holy. He is 100% set apart from all evil and wickedness which means God could not have us in His presence for all eternity.
This is a huge problem, right? And one we cannot solve. This is why any teaching you’ve been exposed to that focuses on earning salvation is utterly unbiblical. We are not capable of saving ourselves.
But here’s the thing, friend: God knows that. And He loves us too much to let that stand.
So He sent Jesus to be born into human history and, ultimately, die on the cross. When Jesus was crucified, He took on everyone’s sin–past, present, and future. In other words, the sins you and I have already committed; those we’re currently committing; and those we have yet to commit.
He also took on God’s holy wrath which technically should have been directed to us. This wasn’t an unjust wrath that wasn’t warranted. Remember, God is holy. He hates sin because of its nature and because of what it does to us–His beloved creation and kids.
But because God is merciful–meaning that He sometimes withholds things that we deserve–as well as gracious–which means He sometimes gives us things that we don’t deserve–He sent Jesus to take on His wrath instead.
Jesus' death on the cross satisfied justice and changed everything! Because through Jesus’ blood, God now sees us as holy. By believing that Jesus died on the cross, for our sins, we are forgiven and fully restored to God.
1 Corinthians 1:30 (NLT) says, “Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NLT) says, “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
Romans 5:8-11 (NLT) says, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.”
If God hadn’t sent Jesus to die for our sins, all of humanity would have forever been enslaved to sin. But because God is love (1 John 4:8), He didn’t leave us in that dark place devoid of hope–and His full presence.
3. Jesus Defeated Death
In Genesis 2:15-17 (NLT), we read: The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”
This is the tree that Adam and Eve ate from. Which means it wasn’t just sin that entered the world–but death as well.
Romans 6:23 (NLT) says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now, Jesus–who was both divine and human–was sinless. 1 Peter 2:22 (NLT) says: “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” Because of this, death had no power over Him.
Yet, for reasons we’ve already discussed, Jesus voluntarily laid down His life for our sake.
In John 10:18 (NLT), Jesus speaks to this: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
Jesus voluntarily died on the cross for our sins and then naturally came back to life again.
But this isn’t just a logical conclusion. This is the core component of the Gospel (which means good news). After all, what’s the point to anything else, even Jesus dying for our sins, if we don’t have eternal life with God?
In John 3:16-18 (NIV), Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Jesus’ resurrection removed an awful fate–as well as a major weapon of our enemy, Satan. No matter what happens to us in this life, if we’ve accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we know we’ll end up residing with God forever.
Colossians 2:13-15 (NLT) says, “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.”
In those last two sentences, the author is referring to Satan and all his dark spiritual forces. Prior to the cross, Satan’s greatest weapon was eternal death. But thanks to the cross, Satan was both shamed and disarmed.
Jesus didn’t come to free us partially. He went all the way–as a true rescuer would do!