Why did Jesus have to die on a cross?

Question

SYW 성경 · Accepted Answer

The cross is where God’s justice and God’s love meet. Sin had to be judged, and sinners had to be saved — so the sinless Son took the sinner’s place, bearing the curse in our stead, so that God could remain just while justifying everyone who believes.

The problem: sin cannot simply be waved away. "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). God cannot shrug at evil, not because He is petty, but because He is good — a judge who takes bribes to ignore crimes is not a good judge. This creates the great dilemma of the Bible: if God judges strictly, no sinner survives; if He simply overlooks sin, His justice collapses. The cross is God’s own answer to that dilemma.

Substitution: wounded for our transgressions. Seven centuries before Calvary, Isaiah wrote: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities ... and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:5-6). At the cross a great exchange took place — our sin counted to Christ, His righteousness counted to us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Even the manner of death mattered: the law said "cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree," and Galatians 3:13 explains that Christ was "made a curse for us" — He absorbed the very curse we deserved.

Justice and love, satisfied together. Paul sums up the logic of the cross: God set forth Christ as a propitiation "that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). Judgment was not skipped — it was executed, on the Son, voluntarily. That is why forgiveness through the cross never cheapens justice. And the resurrection is the receipt: proof that the payment was accepted in full (Romans 4:25). Nothing in the universe says "your sin is serious" and "you are loved" more loudly, at the same time, than the cross.

The problem: sin cannot simply be waved away

Substitution: wounded for our transgressions

Justice and love, satisfied together

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