v.1 n.7 Did God Have to Die to Save Humanity? by Charles Hunting

The widely held belief in Jesus as preexistent, eternal, coequal Son of God has carried with it the idea that a single human person, in this case Jesus, would not, if only human, have the value necessary to atone for the sins of the world. The reason offered is that a single person’s sacrifice could only atone for the sins of one other man. Hence Jesus had to be God Himself to be the Savior of all mankind. No Scripture is cited for this fundamental proposition; nevertheless the logic is supposed to be unassailable. It has long satisfied its many advocates.

Can human reason legitimately determine the value of a sacrifice? Peter’s inspired sermon on the day of Pentecost was quite explicit in its designation of Jesus the man as God’s appointed offering for humanity. “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man accredited to you by God…just as you know — this man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death” (Acts 2:22, 23). Jude supports God’s accreditation of the man Jesus, contrasting God and man, with these words: “to the only God our Savior [the One God of Jewish unitary monotheism], through Jesus Christ our Lord [the human lord adoni of Psalm 110:1], be glory, majesty…before all time and to all the ages” (Jude 25).

“Before all time” he was the Lamb designated for sacrifice “from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8, NIV) in order to bring about the reconciliation of a rebellious creation. Adam, the son of God created from the dust of the ground (Luke 3:38), could have gained immortality but failed. Eve, a special creation from Adam’s body, joined Satan in opposition to God.

Then followed the rest of human creation through Adam and Eve until God created through the Virgin Mary the prophesied seed who was to crush the serpent’s head. Jesus, referred to as the second Adam by Paul, during his historical life, divested himself of all the royal prerogatives, and “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). This was after having lived a sinless existence entitling him to freedom from the death penalty and the reward of eternal life offered to the first Adam.

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus, though now exalted and sitting at the right hand of his Father, was still referred to as a “man” (Acts 2:22). Was it, as some allege, because of the disciples’ strict monotheism that they were not ready to hear that God had died to save the world? Or is the “death of God” a completely unbiblical concept? God only has immortality: He cannot die.

Surely somewhere along the line the omission of the (contradictory!) notion that God Himself had died would have to be rectified. But we note Luke years later recording Paul’s continued proclamation of the human Jesus: “God who made the world and all things in it… and made from one, every nation…He Himself gives to all life breath and…determined their appointed times…and set the boundaries of their habitation.” This same God, “having overlooked the times of ignorance,” now declares to men everywhere to repent, “because he has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:24 ff.).

This same promised seed of Eve was to be a prophet of whom Moses said, “I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you [Moses], and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (see Deut. 18:15-18) These early statements attest to a being whose boundaries are existence within the human family. This precious identity of Jesus as the “Man Messiah” (I Tim. 2:5) was central to the first-century church’s understanding of the faith. Both Peter and Stephen quoted and applied to Jesus this passage from Deuteronomy 18:15 in Acts 3:22 and 7:37.

The stinging accusation of Israel and call to repentance sounded by Peter did strike home, with no record of a protest as to the inadequacy of a human savior, born of a human mother in an earthly location with the rather common Jewish name Jesus.

Hebrews states that Jesus shared in flesh and blood with the rest of us. “He had to be made like his brethren in all things” (Heb. 2:17) that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest, tempted in all things just as we are. Even in his rulership of all nations, as future judge and high priest of the earth, Jesus is kept inside the boundaries of the human family. After carefully detailing his human existence the writer to the Hebrews claims “Jesus Messiah is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Heb. 13:8), sealing his status for all time as a member of the human family, the second Adam and the image of the invisible (One) God, the Father (I Cor. 8:4-6).

Where did the idea originate that Jesus was fully God in addition to being fully man? As others have observed, such a God/man would have little in common with the flesh and blood constitution of ordinary men, the status which the Scriptures claim for him. “He was tested in all points as we are.” It took over four hundred years to formalize the innovative doctrine of the “two natures.” It was not finally settled until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Officially Jesus became God with “impersonal human nature.” Such a person is hardly a human being as so many distinguished scholars have complained.

Viewing Jesus’ final days on earth, would we see anything that would indicate more than the reactions of a completely overwhelmed human being? Facing a monumental battle, without the support of friends and family, bereft of angelic help, he pleaded with his Father to let this cup pass from him and allow a different means of atonement.

His reactions to the thought of the impending terror awaiting him on the cross were those of a very disturbed and distressed human person. He asked his Father to be relieved of the final agony. Where was the calm faith of one who knew he was the eternal God and who could easily handle the ordeal? Why the sweat like great drops of blood? Abandoned at the time of greatest need, without the protection of the cool mental assurance of his Divinity, he left his life in God’s hands. He asked that he be spared the bitter cup of those final moments of torment, moments when even his hope was gone and he paid the final price with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). He died as a hopeless sinner. He suffered the abyss of the blackness of doomed humanity that drives men to suicide and asked “Why?” This was a human reaction. Does this sound like the question of one who shared absolute Godhead with God the Father? Or was Jesus after all mortal man?

Other humans have faced equally cruel physical fates. Michael Servetus, slowly roasted over a fire of green sticks, cried out in screaming agony, “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!” But he had hope. Jesus, bereft of strength, physical or spiritual, as he carried the burden of the life and salvation of all mankind, was left hopelessly alone. And at the moment of his greatest need it appeared to him as if his Father had turned His back on him. “He became sin,” and bore that penalty for all of us. Here was the drama of the ages.

The word “awesome” loses its triviality when it describes the deed this tortured human faced in horrifying agony. He accomplished where Adam had failed. His was a trust to the point of death after a perfect life in which all conditions for eternal life had been met. Why did it have to be this way? Jesus did not know the why, and we can only speculate as to why one man had to face this ordeal as payment for our sins.

We can know that our acceptance of his sacrifice, along with our belief in his Gospel of the Kingdom, provides the way to eternal life and rulership with him in the Kingdom of the future. It is this final human battle at the cross that demands our admiration, respect and love. It is through Jesus’ supreme deed that we find our peace and security with God even in death. Jesus was not given this option. He faced the abyss, as it seemed, without God, so that we would not have to. All debts were paid and the world was reconciled through the one man.

The New English Bible translation captures the humanity of Jesus as Paul relates the world drama in Romans 5: “Let us exalt in the hope of the divine splendor that is to be ours…For at the very time when we were still powerless, then Christ died for the wicked…Death held sway from Adam to Moses…and Adam foreshadows the Man who was to come. But God’s act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ. For if by the wrongdoing of that one man death established its reign, through a single sinner, much more shall those receive in far greater measure God’s grace and his gift of righteousness, live and reign through the one Man, Jesus Christ…For as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of the one Man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:2ff.).Surely in view of the complete absence of biblical evidence for a “God-Man” we should hesitate before we abandon the Hebrew Bible’s picture, confirmed by the New Testament, of the Messiah as the human descendant of David, qualified to be the Son of God not by some imagined “eternal begetting” but by God’s staggering creative event in the womb of Mary. The Father’s miraculous production of His unique Son provides, according to Gabriel, the basis and cause of Jesus’ title, Son of God (Luke 1:35). Gabriel and the inspired canon know nothing of the creedal definitions of Jesus which belong to later centuries and which so many today unconsciously canonize and believe, as though they existed in Bible times. Luke 1:35 defines, against traditional creeds, the reason why Jesus is entitled to be called Son of God. The begetting (coming into existence) of that Son was at a historical moment, not in eternity.