Why did God need Jesus to die in order to forgive our sins?

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Hey friends,

Someone on Threads this week asked a question that I think a whole lot of people wrestle with, and my response to it got quite the reaction. I received several of comments from people expressing that “they had never heard it put that way”.

Here was the question:

I love this question. Partly because I asked some version of it myself for a whole lot of years, and partly because the most common answer I grew up with always felt a little off to me, like a shoe that is technically your size and you can feel the seam every single time you walk. I preached a version of that answer myself back when I was an evangelical pastor, which makes sitting with it now a little more tender for me.

The version I absorbed went something like this. God is so holy and so worked up about sin that somebody had to bleed for it, and Jesus stepped in and took the hit so the rest of us could walk free. And I get why it lands for people. It is tidy and there’s a courtroom and a gavel and everybody goes home satisfied.

I just have a real hard time picturing God standing around tapping his foot with his arms crossed, waiting on a blood payment before he would be willing to love us back. Anyone else?

Think about how Jesus actually talked about forgiveness while he was walking around alive. The prodigal kid comes stumbling home smelling like pigs, and the dad does not make him fill out any paperwork or settle up a debt first. The old man is already sprinting down the road before the kid even finishes his sad little rehearsed speech. Forgiveness was just… there. The whole time. No transaction required, no invoice, no nothing.

And it is not only the parables. While Jesus was hanging on the cross, in the middle of the very worst thing people could do to him, he looked down at the ones doing it and said forgive them. Not once the debt gets settled. Not after enough blood has been spilled to balance the books. Right there in the thick of it with the nails still in. That is not a God waiting on a transaction.

The same guy who told us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek was not exactly moonlighting as a God who needed paying off before he would soften toward us. And the more time I spend with it the more I think the courtroom was never the right room to be standing in.

So here is where I have landed, at least for today. Ask me again next week and who knows.

God did not need Jesus to die. God sent Jesus knowing full well how we would handle it. Knowing we would get scared and territorial and political, knowing we would do the thing people have always done to folks who love too freely and tell the truth too plainly. We killed him. That part is squarely on us. The cross is humanity showing its whole entire chest, the absolute worst we have got, right out in the open for everybody to see.

And then Sunday. The tomb is empty and the whole thing just flips upside down. Death hauled off and took its best swing, hit as hard as it possibly could, and it still did not walk away with the last word. Jesus gets up and strolls out. And that right there is the part that wrecks me in the best possible way, because it means the worst thing that ever happens is never the last thing that happens.

Not for him, and not for us either.

Here is the thing I want you to be able to carry around this week. Forgiveness was never something God was holding back and dangling over your head and waiting on you to pay up. It is just who God is, and who God has always been.

The cross and the empty tomb showed us in the most dramatic way imaginable how far that kind of love is willing to go, and how little death actually gets to keep.

If you grew up flinching every time someone painted God as furious and itching to punish, you have my permission to set that picture down. The God who hikes up his robe and sprints down the road toward the kid who wrecked everything is the truer one. Let that be the one you carry.

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When you think it, say it.

When you think something kind about someone, say it right away. Do not let it sit in your head where it does nobody any good. If a friend comes to mind, tell them why. If somebody’s work moved you, let them know before the moment passes. I started doing this a few years back and it has quietly blessed more people than almost anything else I do. The encouragement you are sitting on is probably the exact thing somebody needs to hear today.

When you think it, say it.

I recently got to sit down for a podcast conversation with Dr. Larry Payne , who was my pastor when I was a kid. It meant the world to share a mic with the man who shaped so much of my early faith. He has a new book on the way, and he also puts out content here on Substack that is well worth your time, so I would encourage you to subscribe and follow along with what he is doing. And if you have a spare bit of time this week, give the podcast episode a listen, and share it with a friend.

We pulled in our very first garden harvest a couple of days ago. Eeeek!

Aren’t they cute? We were absolutely thrilled. There is something about a first harvest that rearranges your expectations in the best possible way. You walk out bracing for a letdown and you come back holding proof that small things grow when you tend them patiently. I think faith works a lot like that. The early fruit is rarely impressive to anyone watching, and it is still worth celebrating like crazy.

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Before you go, this Saturday I am hosting a live Q&A right here on Substack, and it is a true ask me anything. Personal stuff, book stuff, church stuff, life stuff, whatever you have been curious about. Nothing is off the table.

I will go live Saturday, June 27, at 1pm Central. Click here to get it on your calendar.

This is one of the perks I set aside for paid subscribers, and it is one small way of thanking the folks who help make all of this possible. If you have been thinking about joining that circle, this would be a fun week to do it. Just $2.50/month annually (the lowest Substack allows) or $5/monthly.

And if the timing is not right for that, no worries at all, you are still family here and these letters keep landing in your inbox every week.

I love you and there is nothing you can do about it.