Why did Jesus Die?

For most people who have read through the Old Testament, the stories are probably the most memorable parts, and some of the most challenging sections are those that describe they types of ceremonies the Law of Moses required. You may not remember all the details and differences between a burnt offering and a sin offering and a peace offering, but the one big takeaway you need to have is how bloody this whole thing should have been.

If you were selected to be a priest, and you didn’t like the sight of blood or of dead things, you were in serious trouble. God had created for Israel a system of death, and it all started with the Passover, where every household needed to sacrifice a lamb and spread the blood on the outside of house.

Sometimes we might read that part as if it was a kind of art project, but think about what that must have been like for the children. Think about how your kids would react if they saw you kill an animal, and drain the blood, and smear it on the outside of the house.

Death and blood is a common part of a rural or farming society, but it’s definitely not a part of our lives today. Our culture doesn’t like people thinking about death. Chickens don’t have nuggets or fingers, but that’s what gets presented to us. Companies don’t really want us to think about the reality of a dead animal.

And yet, in God’s Old Testament economy, He chose to have the entire religious system built around blood and death. It wasn’t simply blood that mattered; it was the fact that blood represented death. And beginning with the first Passover, God wanted His people to know that in order for them to have life, something had to die. There had to be a transaction, if you will—a replacement.

Some people think that that all changed when we got to the New Testament, but as we come to the second half of Hebrews 9, w see that one of the similarities between the Old Covenant and the New is the emphasis on death and blood.

Our Lord Jesus shed His own blood. When we use that phrase, what we’re saying is that He died. If you grew up in church, saying that Jesus the Son of God, the Messiah, died seems so obvious, but to a first-century Jewish population, it was a scandal. It was ridiculous.

In 1 Corinthians 1, the Apostle Paul says: the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. He goes on to say: we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews. Many Jews thought that the Old Testament sacrifices made them good enough for God. And in their self-righteousness, they assumed a Messiah would come to give them the salvation they had earned. So, they couldn’t conceive of a King and a Messiah who had died.

The second half of Hebrews 9 helps correct that view. It helps us understand the core aspect of Christianity—the death of Jesus Christ. It also helps us answer the foundational question: Why did Jesus die? You need to know the answer to that question, both for yourself and for the people to whom God would have you minister. You need to know why Jesus died.

As we finish our study in Hebrews 9 today, I want to share with you 5 answers to that question: Why did Jesus died?

Number 1, Jesus died to purify our consciences.

Jesus died to purify our consciences

This is what we find in verses 13 and 14 which say—For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, [14] how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

The blood of all those Old Testament sacrifices, the blood of goats and bulls, only brought a temporary cleansing. You might have felt a little better about yourself afterward, but then you were going to go out and sin again. But in the New Covenant, we have something worth infinitely more than the life of an animal; we have the blood of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. This was the perfect sacrifice. This was the perfect cleansing.

Part of the emphasis here is on what the sacrifice of Christ does internally for His people. It brings a transformation. It brings a complete purification of the conscience. Instead of making you feel detached or estranged from God, the death of Christ should bring confidence. Instead of having to be dedicated to meaningless external religious rituals, you can now serve the living God. You are a child of His. You belong to Him. You live because of Him, and you live for Him.

That’s why Romans 12 says that we should present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. We serve a living God, not some dead rituals.

A second reason Jesus died is to redeem us from sin.

Jesus died to redeem us from sin

Look at verse 15—Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

Because of the cleansing and the purification Christ brings, He is qualified as the mediator of the New Covenant. He brings us to God perfectly which lead to the promised eternal reward. But how do sinners inherit that reward?

Under the Old Covenant, Ezekiel 18:4 told us: the soul who sins shall die. If any part of the Old Testament wasn’t kept, the punishment was death. You had to die. But when you trust in Jesus Christ— when you surrender your life to Him—Jesus’ death counts in your place. He died to redeem you. He died to ransom. He paid the price to deliver you.

In biblical culture, this idea of redemption was used for slaves. Someone paid a price in order to release them from a previous master and transfer them to a new one. Under the Old Covenant, the price was death. And that is exactly the payment that Jesus made. He took the punishment of the Old Covenant so that we could be released from it. We couldn’t qualify for the blessings of God because we deserved to die.

To many of you, this might sound like basic Christianity, but you should know that there are so-called Christians and churches who deny this reality. They deny a doctrine known as “penal substitutionary atonement." The word “penal” has to do with punishment, or a penalty. It’s like when we talk about the penal code which is the set of laws we live under.

Under God, all of us are lawbreakers, and we deserve to die. But Jesus came and He died to take our place. That is the doctrine of penal substitution.

The reason some groups deny this is because they say it makes God mean. Why would He require us to die? They don’t like the idea of a God who would punish people.

There are two main problems with denying this doctrine. Number one, this doctrine is taught all throughout Scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments. This is why God demanded that there be a sacrifice. He was teaching the people that in order for them to receive life, there had to be a death. Jesus died to make propitiation for the sins of his people. That’s exactly what it says in Hebrews 2:17.

The word “propitiation” means “to satisfy.” God’s righteousness demanded something, and His righteousness will not be satisfied until something is paid. God doesn’t just ignore sin; He can’t do that. Instead, He decides, through His Son, to make the payment. And that’s why, by extension, the word can also mean “to show mercy.”

And this is a second problem with denying penal substitution. Not only does it ignore the teaching of the Bible; it also ignores the holiness of God. It ignores the justice of God.

If someone stole $10,000 dollar from you, and a judge steps in and says, “I’m going to forgive him. Let’s just move on with our lives,” you’d be outraged, wouldn’t you? Where is the sense of justice? But if some relative of the thief stepped in and said, “Your honor, I have $10,000, and I will pay back the person who was robbed,” wouldn’t that be more acceptable? Wouldn’t that be the just thing to do?

God cannot simply overlook sin. He has to punish it. He has to fulfill the Law of His own righteousness. Those who deny penal substitution claim that Jesus died, not to pay a debt, but simply to show us God’s love. Well, it was a demonstration of love, but we can’t reduce it to just that. Jesus died to pay the penalty we deserve. He died to redeem us.

Now, in speaking with a Jewish audience, we see a third important reason for Christ’s death. Number 3, Jesus died to confirm the New Covenant.

Jesus died to confirm the New Covenant

This is the point of verses 16-21. Verse 16—For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. In every Jewish covenant, there was some kind of death. Typically it would be an animal sacrificed that represented the curse that would fall on someone if they didn’t keep up their end of the bargain. But one of the clearest expression of the necessity of death was in the case of a will, or a testament.

A will, similar to the New Covenant, wasn’t an agreement between two parties. It was a one-sided declaration. But it didn’t go into effect until the person who wrote it died. This was an obvious fact. A legal agreement requires death.

And in verses 18-21, the author of Hebrews remind the people who even the Old Covenant was instituted with death, with blood. Animals were killed. The people were sprinkled with the blood. The tabernacle was sprinkled with blood. All the instruments were sprinkled with blood.

Sprinkling bronze or golden instruments was symbolic, but sprinkling people’s clothing would have left a permanent mark. If you get blood on your clothes, it’s not coming off anytime soon, if ever. The blood was a reminder and an expression of the certainty of the promise. The covenant between God and man wasn’t a pinky promise. It wasn’t an idealistic hope. It was a covenant sealed in blood.

Well, when Jesus died, He proved the certainty of the New Covenant. One the last night of His ministry, what did Jesus say to the disciples during the supper? He said: “Drink from the cup, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant.” The death of Jesus Christ was the inauguration, the establishing, the beginning of the New Covenant. How do we know that God is going to keep His promises to us? We know because He has already given us His Son.

Romans 8:32 says—He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? That’s an amazing promise for us as we think about heaven, about the day when we will be free for sin and enter into our eternal reward. Is God ever going to change His mind about that? No! Absolutely not! Because He’s already given us His Son.

To be a Christian is to believe in the death of Jesus Christ. The eternal Son of God died to purify our consciences, to redeem us for sin, and to confirm the New Covenant.

A fourth response to the question, “Why did Jesus die?” comes to us at the end of verse 22. And this is a key verse in this section. Verse 22—Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Answer number 4—Jesus died to forgive us from sin.

Jesus died to forgive us from sin

This is very much related to what we’ve already been saying, but it highlights a different aspect of the blessing. It gives us another picture of what happened on the cross.

Purifying our conscience focuses on the internal or subjective experience. We feel cleansed. Redeeming us gives us the picture of being freed from a master. We’ve been released. But the idea, or the picture of forgiveness, is of sending something away, or letting something go. That’s a more literal definition of forgiveness. It is to let something go.

Under the Old Covenant, the most holy and solemn day was known as the Day of Atonement. That was the only day of the year where someone could enter into the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. The High Priest sacrificed an animal for himself and his family. He would also sacrifice a goat for the people of Israel. The goat that was killed represented a substitutionary death.

A second goat, however, was kept alive. This goat was not sacrificed but was sent away into the wilderness. The High Priest placed his hands on the goat, and confessed the sins of the people. And then it was sent away. It was let go, to be lost in the wilderness. This was a picture of God removing the people’s sins. Their sins were sent away, like a kite you let go of on a windy day—it’s gone. You’re not going to see it again. You let it go, and it’s not coming back.

This is the image David captures in Psalm 103:10-12—He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. [11] For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; [12] as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

God’s promise in Micah 7:19 is very similar—He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

If you go on a cruise, and you’re out in the middle of the ocean, and you drop a gold ring, it’s not coming back, right. That is gone to the bottom of the ocean. That’s what God does to our sins because of Jesus’s death. That’s the forgiveness of God.

When your sin comes back to you, when you remember it, when you feel guilty about it, even though you’ve already confessed it—that’s not God. God’s done with it. God has cast it away in the death of His Son on your behalf.

And the hope of our church is that every one of you would know that hope and have that forgiveness by calling out to God for mercy through the death and Resurrection of Jesus. This forgiveness doesn’t come automatically. It comes when you lay down your pride, humble yourself before God, confess your sin, and call out for mercy and forgiveness. God hears that prayer. God answers that prayer. Your sins will be wiped away. Your sins will be erased from the record of heaven. You will be forgiven. And if you’re not sure about that, or if you have any questions about that, I or any of our members would be glad to talk to you about it.

None of us, however, can make that decision for you. In fact, you can’t even make it for yourself because our sinful hearts are so turned away from God. So ask God for a new heart. Tell Him you want to believe. Tell Him you want to trust in Jesus Christ and know His eternal forgiveness.

The beauty of the gospel, the beauty of the New Covenant is that it is not a recurring payment. Jesus died once for all. There are no external rituals to complete. There are no sacrifices required other than the sacrifice of Christ.

And this leads us to our final response to the question: Why did Jesus die? Number 5, Jesus died to free us forever.

Jesus died to free us forever

Jesus didn’t wash your heart like a car wash. Jesus washed His people permanently. Verse 24 explains something we’ve already talked about in previous messages. The Old Testament was a picture of something. But what Jesus accomplished was the real thing. The High Priest enters into a manmade representation of God’s throne. Jesus entered into God’s very presence in a once-for-all decisive act.

One of the joys of the Day of Atonement was when the Hish Priest appeared to the people after his duty in the Holiest Place was done. The people watched waiting for him to come out, which was s signal that everything had been done according to God’s instruction and the sacrifices had been accepted.

But that appearing of the High Priest was a picture of a greater appearing, the appearing of Jesus Christ in His Resurrection, and the appearing of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus only had to die once, and that was enough. As the Son of God, His life was worth more than any number of bulls or goats. The Day of Atonement was every year. The atonement that Christ provided, that salvation and restoration, was permanent.

Verse 26 says that is Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t permanent he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

In other words, Jesus’ life was either infinitely worthy or not. If it was finite, then it would have to be offered forever because our debt of sin before a holy God was infinite. But since Christ’s sacrifice was infinite, only one death was required. One death was enough. To mandate more is tantamount to blasphemy because it is to say that His one life and death is not worth enough.

But we know that He is worthy and all-powerful. Our great enemy is Satan. His great weapon against us was sin and death. But Satan, sin, and death have all been conquered in the permanent victory of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. It was once for all.

And the victory that we see in Jesus’ Resurrection is a reminder and a picture of the final victory to come. This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t enough; it just means that His victory is unfolding. There was only one sacrifice needed—only one death. And that is a general principle of life, right? People only die once. There are some exceptions we see in Scriptures, but the general rule is, we only get one death. If it’s a real death, then this phase of life is over. Well, in the same way, Jesus only had one death, but that death will lead to a final victory.

Let’s read verses 27 and 28—And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, [28] so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Verse 27 is used to many times to talk about the certainty of judgement, which is true. But seeing this verse in its context, we see that that’s not really the main point. The writer is simply making an analogy. Just like our one death leads to a final or definitive judgment, Christ’s one death leads to a final and definitive victory.

Our Lord died. The Son of God tasted death on our behalf. He hung in humiliation on the cross once. But He is coming again in glory.

We need to rest and rejoice in that promise. Rest and rejoice. We rest because our sins are paid for. And we rejoice because God’s eternal plan will be complete and we will be a part of it.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, the angels told the disciples, “He’s coming again, just like you saw Him leave. He’s coming back in the same way you saw him leave.” So we rest, and we rejoice.

I think it’s important to note that this promise of Christ’s victory and return is in direct contradiction to what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. The Roman Catholic Church officially teaches that in the eucharist, in the bread and cup of the mass, the elements literally become the body and blood of Jesus. They are not just representations.

And this is problematic for two reasons. One, like we’ve already said, we don’t need to re-enact the death of Christ anymore. It was a once-for-all sacrifice. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t teach that Jesus dies again; they agree that He only died once. But they claim that the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice and that there is a continued carrying out of redemption [CCC 1364, 1366, 1367]. They teach that the church is re-creating the original sacrifice. But if the death of Christ was enough, it wouldn’t need to be recreated. We wouldn’t need to participate in it again. We simply need to accept it and believe in it.

A second problem with the Roman Catholic view is that if the elements of the Supper literally become Jesus’ body and blood, then that contradicts what the angel said to the disciples. He didn’t say Jesus would return in the Lord’s Supper. He said He would return in the same way they saw Him go.

So, whatever inaccurate views of Christ’s death are out there in the world, and whatever ways our world tries to get us to forget about or ignore death, we need to always be ready with the truth that our Lord because God is holy and we are sinners. He took our punishment. He was our substitute. In Him, we died to the Law, and in Him we will be saved forever.