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    Why did Jesus Have to Die?: A little book of guidance
    Why did Jesus Have to Die?: A little book of guidance
    Why did Jesus Have to Die?: A little book of guidance
    Ebook47 pages42 minutes

    Why did Jesus Have to Die?: A little book of guidance

    By Jane Williams

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    About this ebook

    For many people, the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans is just another tragic fact of history - a cruel travesty of justice, perhaps, but nothing more. But for Christians the death of Jesus has a much deeper and far-reaching significance.

    Jane Williams examines the reasons why Jesus' death was seen by his first followers as nothing less than the demonstration of God's love for his creation, and the means by which we all can find forgiveness and redemption, both now and in the world to come.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSPCK Publishing
    Release dateDec 15, 2016
    ISBN9780281074440
    Why did Jesus Have to Die?: A little book of guidance
    Author

    Jane Williams

    Jane Williams is the McDonald Professor in Christian Theology at St Mellitus College, London, and a visiting Lecturer at King's College London. Her recent books include The Art of Christmas (2021), The Art of Advent (2018), Why did Jesus have to Die? (2016, all SPCK), and The Merciful Humility of God (Bloomsbury, 2018).

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      Book preview

      Why did Jesus Have to Die? - Jane Williams

      Introduction

      There is no reason at all to doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was executed by crucifixion in the early decades of the Common Era. Crucifixion was routine under the Roman Empire, and Jesus’ death is only remarkable in that it did not put an end to the disturbance he caused. Early Roman historians occasionally mention the Christian movement and its founder as a nuisance for the peace of the Empire.¹ So the simplest answer to the question of why Jesus had to die is that he annoyed the Romans. First-century Palestine was under Roman occupation, and the Romans dealt with any hint of religiously motivated unrest with efficient brutality.

      Jesus’ early followers cited Roman oppression as one of the reasons for Jesus’ death. They also noted the involvement of the local religious leaders, who generally did not recognize Jesus as an authorized teacher of the faith and did not want to find themselves and their people in trouble with the Romans for something they did not even approve of. These Christian writers also accuse the ordinary people in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus of colluding in Jesus’ death, roused to a mob mentality and baying for his crucifixion (cf. Matthew 27.21; Mark 15.14; Luke 23.20; John 18.40). Finally, they say that Jesus’ own friends and followers ran away and left him to his fate. So another answer to the question of why Jesus had to die is that everyone around at the time, civic and religious leaders, indifferent bystanders and close friends, colluded in his death.

      Yet the early Christian accounts do not think that human culpability is the whole story. They also assert that Jesus’ death is divinely ordained, and they record Jesus as saying that his death is ‘necessary’ (cf. Matthew 16.21). It is because of this divine involvement, the New Testament says, that we continue to talk about this one particular death, not just as yet another example of human cruelty or of innocent suffering, but as something that, paradoxically, is part of the divine response to just that cruelty and suffering. Jesus’ first followers testified that his death was not the end, that Jesus was raised from the dead and that they met him again. But the resurrected Jesus still bore the marks of the nails that had been driven into him to hold him to the cross. His resurrection did not wipe away his death, but it confirmed that Jesus, both in life and in death, is at the heart of God’s action towards the created world and its inhabitants. It is because of the resurrection that we tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth. But the resurrection also confronts us, unavoidably, with the fact that Jesus died on the cross.

      So we have a historical fact, with ordinary historical causes, and we have a theological fact with a divine cause, too. These two are not mutually exclusive, nor does the divine cause override the freely chosen human ones. God does not crucify Jesus Christ, human beings do. But Jesus’ resurrection from the dead requires his followers to try to understand how God’s Son came to die on the cross. It makes the death of Jesus deeply mysterious and challenging. It does not fit into any readymade theological patterns or assumptions about how God acts. If Jesus is the Son of God, the question of why Jesus had to die becomes even more painfully unfathomable. But it is important to note that God is always unfathomable. To say that the action of God in

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