Christ is risen! He defeated death and the grave and rose like He never died. But why did Jesus have to die in the first place? Heck, why did God save us?
Salvation is free, and God gave it to us out of love. No amount of money or work we can put down will ever suffice as enough payment for salvation.
But do you know what EXACTLY it cost God (in the person of Jesus) to bring that salvation to us? Why did God do so much?
Read till the end, and pray as you read – as you are led.
Why Did God Even Have to Save Us?
Before we understand why God saved us, we must first understand the origin of everything related to God and man. Let’s see why we, as human beings, came into existence.
When we understand why we exist in the first place, we can answer the question, “Why did God save us?”
Why Did God Create Man?
First, God made heaven and earth – not merely to flex His creation muscles. He made them so as to make a convenient environment for the man He would eventually create to live on. Otherwise, why did God tell man to have dominion over everything He created?
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
Genesis 1:26 NKJV
So, man was God’s reason for creating everything He created. But why man? Why did God bother creating man? Wasn’t He having ‘a good life’ with His angels up above? Why did God have to create a man He would later need to save?
God created man because He wanted man to bear His image and be after His likeness (reread the scripture above). God wanted to reveal His glory and have other beings live in and experience it. And in God’s infinite wisdom, He thought man was in the best of His creations to share in His glory. So, God made man to have a replica of His government in another part of His sphere.
But Man Fell
Since God created man to bear and reveal His glory and have dominion over the earth He made, it was compulsory for man to first be under God’s dominion and rulership.
An ideal analogy would be an ambassador sent by his home country to another country as a representative. As a matter of necessity, the ambassador must first operate under the jurisdiction of his home country before he can ever execute on behalf of his country.
Should this ambassador decide to no longer take instructions from his home country and instead take command from a third party, he would lose his ambassadorship.
In the same way, when man decided to take instruction from the devil, as against the instructions of the God whose glory he was created to bear, he automatically lost the power to bear that glory. He could no longer become the exact replica of God who was supposed to rule the earth. He was now governed by another master – the devil.
Remember that God already gave man dominion over the earth right after He created them: Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Genesis 1:28.
God gave man that dominion right away because the earth could not be left on autopilot; someone had to keep it under control.
But then, what do you think would happen to this dominion after man came under the authority of another?
Of course, man’s new master would be in charge of it. The devil took that dominion. Instead of man ruling and expressing God’s glory on the earth, the devil was in charge of the earth God so powerfully created for His glory.
This is what we call the fall of man. He left the position of glory God created Him to come into, handing the reins to the devil. All because he chose the devil’s words over God’s Words.
Now What?
Since man was now in a fallen state, he was no longer worthy to host God’s presence. You know why? As the devil took over, his weapon – sin – also took over. And yes, because man disobeyed God (and rejected His glory), he gave sin (the devil’s weapon) authority to work in and through him.
God would never tolerate sin, not even from the man He initially created for His glory. So man, full of sin, could not in the slightest way accommodate the glory of God.
But God would not back down from His desire for man to bear and express His glory on earth. No. All through the scriptures, and for thousands of years, God kept talking about how He would restore man to his place of glory again.
God even swore and will not change His plans: I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness, And shall not return, That to Me every knee shall bow, Every tongue shall take an oath. Isaiah 45:23 NKJV. So, sin had to be taken care of.
But first, man had to understand how unworthy he had become to be in right standing with God. So, the commandments and laws were given. Then, there was a temporary solution for the sin man carried in him.
But only the chief priest went into the second part of the tent. Once a year he entered and brought blood that he offered for himself and for the things that the people did wrong unintentionally. Hebrews 9:7 GW
The blood of animals had to be continually shed for man to present himself before God. But even that did not make man worthy enough to be a host to God’s presence (which is the only way man could bear God’s glory and rule as God’s replica on earth).
There had to be a complete blotting out of the nature of sin from man so that he could bear the presence of God in himself.
Man Could Not Save Himself
The thing is, what God required for man to be able to bear His presence and glory was impossible with human beings. The wages of sin is death, so to completely blot out man’s sin, there has to be death for that sin. But if man himself dies, how would he still bear God’s presence if he can no longer be on the earth?
Unfortunately, another human being could not pay the cost for man’s sin because every man (human being) inherited the rulership of sin from the first created man – Adam.
So, even if another human being were to die to pay for sin, the payment would be polluted and not enough to deal with the sin problem that kept human beings from bearing God’s glory.
The only payment that would be accepted as worthy would have to come from someone who was not polluted with the rulership of sin. Only God met that standard.
So God Became Flesh to Save Man
Let’s just say God loved the man He made a lot too much and was desperate to have human beings host His presence and rule over the earth. This love was so much that He gave Himself as payment for man’s sin since man himself could not pay what he owed.
God became flesh in Jesus Christ so He could die the death that became the payment for sin so man could finally be worthy enough to host His presence and fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory.
God Made the Payment to Save Us
Consequently, God, reincarnated as man, had to go through what every human goes through—without the pollution of sin—to complete the requirement for the sacrifice needed to save us. He lived like every one of us, showing us His nature and teaching us of His kingdom.
Eventually, the time came for the payment to be made. God, in the person of Jesus, suffered humiliation, took stripes, was spat on, whipped, pierced, and eventually crucified like a criminal to save us so we could be free from the dominion of sin (and the devil) and become carriers of His image and glory.
Every stripe Jesus endured was a testament of God’s love for us and how far He would go to save us from sin. Every drop of blood He shed a token of our redemption and a witness to God’s longing to have us as His and His alone.
As Jesus hung on that cross, He was laden with the unbearable weight of the sin of the entire world. Even God could not behold Himself with that much iniquity. When Jesus said, ‘It is finished,’ the wrath of God was fully satisfied, and sin was finally judged in His Son.
Up until Jesus’s death, death was the greatest demonstration of power man had witnessed—no one could resist it. But by the time Jesus died, God dealt the final judgment on that which limited us from being His and the carriers of His glory.
When Jesus rose, He defeated death and expended the greatest demonstration of power ever known to the universe. And His resurrection became the public announcement of our freedom and induction into the family of God.
Now, anyone who believes in the sacrifice of Christ:
- Is forgiven of every sin because Christ bore his sin,
- Becomes eligible and bears the Spirit of God through which he can manifest the glory of God,
- Becomes qualified to share a relationship with God,
- Is guaranteed eternal life,
- Is free from the hold of death and the devil
- Is expected to replicate God’s image, knowledge, and glory on the earth.
We, who now belong to God, are to live on earth as though God Himself were living here. This is why we were created in the first place and the answer to the question, ‘Why did God save us?’
Happy Easter!
