Why did Jesus die for us?

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Biblical narrative in the large concerns individuals whom God has found reason to interact with to further his grand plan for humanity. Understanding that plan is the very purpose of the Bible and why it was written.

The Old Testament / Torah was stitched together from many different documents and stories dating back to the Bronze Age. It tells the story of humanities creation and journey through the creation of civilization with God’s guidance, all the up to the eventual triumph of God’s chosen people over evil and wickedness.

The New Testament picks up where the OT left off, and brings a new perspective on the purpose and role of God. It explains aspects of Creation that the OT left out, and gives additional color to the moral wisdom that God seeks to impart upon us. The story of Jesus is intended to be in the same vein as the stories of the fairly short list of Biblical Patriarchs in that God provides examples for humanity to follow through the trials of holy men.

But where the New Testament veers sharply off the script is in the inclusion of four Gospels, four takes on the story of Jesus from four different men who knew him. This additional attention is intended to convey the message that Jesus was different even amongst the Patriarchs. Jesus’s story is even richer and more complicated than the earlier prophets, because Jesus is intended by God to usher humanity into a new stage of development.

If you want to take a single message from the Old Testament it’s that your actions matter. God the Father wants the best from man. It was absolutely essential to getting humanity to the stage where they’re at now, where wickedness and strife has been triumphed over.

So God sends a new kind of prophet to give a new example and message, the message of forgiveness. God is well aware of the imperfection of mankind, but no longer is it necessary to fight wickedness at every turn. In fact, fighting sinks into one’s heart and before you know it, fighting is all you know.

God the Son’s job is to teach mankind that it’s okay to be you. Jesus will walk with you and show you the way. Trust in Him, and your life will be saved and transformed. The story leading up to Jesus’s death, His trial before the Romans, His behavior before and after His death, tells a story of sacrifice. He sacrificed Himself, in order that humanity can be redeemed. He forgives the Romans who killed Him, the social structures that condemned Him, the wickedness that lead to the death of God’s anointed Son.

This is a sharp departure from the Old Testament narrative. The future king David slew a messenger who lied to David about killing a God-anointed man, Saul, even though that man who was killed was his enemy, and the lie was merely to curry favor. The Old Testament’s continual narrative was “do not fuck with God.” David had two opportunities previously to kill Saul, and he refused to, even though Saul was trying to kill him.

The New Testament tells the story of how both Jews and Gentiles all played a role in the killing of God’s own, and rather than be condemned for it as Cain was, instead we were redeemed and delivered from the suffering that Adam’s sin wrought. Because that was the meaning and purpose of Jesus’s life, to offer a shining beacon of light to humanity, only to get snuffed out by the very people he’s trying to teach and save.