Atheist Question #3: Why did God have to sacrifice Jesus instead of just forgiving humanity directly?

Can't we just let it slide?

This is Part 3 of our series on common objections to Christianity. You can find Part 2 here.

Today, we’re looking at the question of whether God really had to sacrifice Jesus. The atheist might ask, “Why did God have to sacrifice Jesus instead of just forgiving humanity directly?” This is a good question, and it’s one that all Christians should be able to answer (1 Peter 3:15, ESV: “…[be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…”).

Photo by Dillon Wanner on Unsplash

The Cry for Justice

You hear it all over these days, people calling out for “justice” in some form or another. Various advocacy groups will talk about “social justice,” “economic justice,” or even “housing justice.” As a society, we want justice for all sorts of wrongs, whether real or perceived.

Why is that? The desire for justice runs deeply in human beings. That’s true across time, location, and culture. Everybody, it seems, wants to see justice done. When we don’t get justice, we get angry. Sometimes, we threaten violence, with slogans like “No justice, no peace.”

This universal need to see justice comes from our being made in the image of God himself. As we discussed in Part 2 of this series about God sending people to hell, one of God’s key character traits is justice. We inherited our desire for justice from God’s desire for justice.

The Requirements of Justice

Imagine for a moment that your closest family member—maybe your mother, father, or one of your siblings—was murdered. Imagine that they catch somebody, John Doe, and they hold a trial. Witnesses are brought in and they testify that John Doe definitely killed your family member. There is plenty of corroborating evidence. No doubt about it, Mr. Doe did it.

Now, imagine that the jury comes back into the courtroom. The judge asks the foreman to read the verdict and the foreman says, “We find the defendant, John Doe, guilty of murder.”

After hearing the verdict, everybody in the courtroom now looks to the judge. The judge says, “The defendant has been found guilty of the crime of murder. I’ve decided to forgive the defendant of all charges. You are free to go, Mr. Doe.”

How would you feel at that point? Would you feel satisfied that justice had been served, or would you feel angry and unsatisfied?

If you’re a normal human being, you would certainly feel unsatisfied. It’s clear that John Doe is guilty, the jury agreed, and the judge just forgave the murderer and lets Doe walk. While Doe has been subject to a trial and a process of sorts, justice remains unsatisfied.

All of us feel this same sense of injustice deep in our souls. This is true across all human civilizations and cultures. We’re hard-wired for this.

God’s Perfect Sense of Justice

Now, if our human sense of justice can be violated with just a single unpunished murderer, imagine how God feels. He has a perfect sense of justice and he has a world of sinful people he needs to deal with. Paul makes clear in Romans 6:23 that according to God’s Law, “the wages of sin is death.” In order to satisfy God’s perfect sense of justice, every sinful person (and that means all of us) would have to die by being sentenced to eternity in hell (see part 2).

So, that’s part of the answer to the original question this article is focusing on, right there. Because the wages of sin is death and because sinners are guilty, somebody has to die in order to satisfy God’s perfect sense of justice. If that doesn’t happen, then God makes a mockery of his Law exactly the same way that a human judge who lets a murderer walk makes a mockery of human law. God’s integrity requires that justice be served. For this reason, he can’t just turn a blind eye toward everybody’s sins.

God’s Mercy

But fortunately for us all, God also has a deep sense of mercy. He created humans to be in relationship with him and that objective wouldn’t be served if he killed everyone in punishment for their sins. None of us would remain with him. So, God devised a rescue plan to save humanity. He would substitute the death of another for our deaths. But the person who died couldn’t be just anybody. In particular, it had to be somebody who was sinless, otherwise their death would just pay for their own sin.

So, Jesus comes to earth and lives an earthly life and yet does not sin. He’s put to death unjustly and God uses that death to pay the penalty for all of us. The fancy, five-dollar, seminary words for that are substitutionary atonement. In low places, we’d just say that Jesus paid the fine. And that payment of our fine is a free gift, accessible to everybody. God paid the fine that we never could and that allows us to be in relationship with him forever. Sounds like a great deal, right? In fact, it is!

But there’s one catch—you have to claim the free gift. While the free gift is available to everybody, in order to get it, you need to admit who God is (the creator of the universe), who you are (a sinner who is not God), and bend your knee to Jesus, acknowledging that he paid the fine for you. It’s simple and free, but it requires you to square your view of God and yourself with God’s truth about those things.

The Answer

So, ultimately, that’s the answer to the question this article is focused on: God had to sacrifice Jesus because it was the only way to simultaneously satisfy God’s two character traits of justice and mercy. Because of God’s sense of justice, he could not let our sin go unpunished. But because of God’s sense of mercy, he devised a way that somebody else could pay the penalty for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to.

If you’re not yet a Christian, I urge you to accept the free gift. Pray a simple prayer to God taking responsibility for your sin and accepting the free gift of Jesus’s sacrifice. Admit that God is God and you are not commit yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus for the rest of your (now eternal) life. It doesn’t have to be pretty or eloquent. It just has to be honest and true. If you want help with that, send me a message and I’ll help you with it.

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