Why Did Jesus Have to Die? with Yannick Christos-Wahab
Today we get to hear from Yannick Christos-Wahab about why Jesus came to die. This episode was inspired by a conversation I personally shared with a friend who asked, “Why did it have to be Jesus? How can Jesus actually pay the debt I owe because of my sin?” This is such an important question for us to really know and understand, and Yannick is going to help answer it. So you’ll know a bit more about him, Yannick is from Nigeria, and was born and raised in London, where he is now a pastor at Stockwell Baptist Church. He is a husband and father, and he also co-authored a book called The Cross in Four Words published by The Good Book Company. We pray this episode encourages you to linger long on the cross of Christ!
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Why is it imperative that we keep the cross of Christ central in Christianity? How is Christ crucified the center of everything?
Why is the message of the cross a stumbling block to many? And yet, how does this message have the power to save people from all nations when they turn to Jesus?
Why Jesus? Why not someone else? Why did it have to be Jesus who died for our sins?
What compelled Jesus to go to his death? Did he actually want to die? Or was he just submitting to the Father’s will?
What did Jesus’ death accomplish?
How does the death of Christ bring freedom, forgiveness, and justice?
I think all of our listeners would agree that we're all sinners and that the wages of our sin is death, but how does Christ's death actually pay the debt we owe? How is it that this man can be our substitute? How is it that he can "swap places" with us?
What is atonement? How does Christ reconcile us to himself on the cross?
What are some examples of how the cross saturates the pages of Scripture? Are there passages that you've found particularly helpful in seeking to grow in your understanding of what Jesus did for us?
How does marveling at the cross of Christ change us? How might we do that more and more?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“It takes intentionality to keep the cross central… we can get so familiar with it that we lose sight of its centrality.”
“If the Bible is the story about how God is bringing us back to himself, then at the heart of the story of the Bible is the gospel, and at the heart of the gospel is the cross.”
“At the heart of the good news of Jesus is the cross.”
“The cross is a stumbling block, fundamentally because it’s an attack on our pride. It really does attack our ego. The cross is the end to any idea that we can save ourselves. The cross puts an end to any idea that we’re broken, but we just need a little bit of help.”
“If we say that Jesus, the Son of God, ends up on the cross, the question then is why is he on the cross? And if the answer to that is what the Bible says it is - our sin - then the cross of Jesus Christ tells us something about how serious our problem is. The solution tells us the depth of the problem. If it takes God dying to deal with the issue of our sin, then our sin cannot be a light issue. It can’t just be that we’re misguided or misdirected. It must be that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. The cross demonstrates that we are really really sinful.”
“We’re broken, but we’re also sinful. And our sin is to that extent that it takes God to die for our sin.”
“God has saved us in such a way that it doesn’t privilege our intelligence, it doesn’t privilege our power, it doesn’t privilege our social status, for us to be saved we must believe that Jesus died on the cross.”
“God in his great wisdom gives us Jesus, who is the God-man. As man he can take our place. He really can take our place because he really is one of us; he really does become human. He’s 100% human. And yet it’s because he’s fully God that in his death he can really take the punishment for our sins. No one else could do that, no one else could take that punishment for us.”
“Jesus is perfect, which means when he dies his death isn’t for his own sin, which means his death can be for our sin.”
“It’s because of who Jesus is that his death can mean what it means for us.”
“The Bible is very clear that Jesus dies of his own will. Jesus dies willingly because he loves us.”
“Jesus dies for us because he loves us.”
“The cross is the will of Jesus Christ because he loves us as sinners. Even in our sin and in our muck, Jesus set his love on us, and that’s what drove him to the cross. Sometimes we think the cross happened so that God can love us, so that Jesus can love us. But that's not how the Bible tells the story of the cross. The cross happened because God already loved us. And he loved us even at the point of our sin.
“Jesus actually defeats death through his own death.”
“Jesus in our place, he dies, and in that death he puts an end to that life of slavery to sin, such that if you’re a believer you can know that the life of being a slave to sin, being in bondage to sin, that life is gone. And in his resurrection Jesus offers us a new life where we can be slaves to righteousness.”
“We’re no longer slaves to sin because of the cross of Christ.”
“The punishment that our sins deserve, Jesus takes upon himself at the cross, so that for those who are trusting in Jesus, there would be no condemnation.”
“God in his mercy, provides his son Jesus, who comes. And Jesus takes that punishment so that we can be forgiven, so that we don't have to bear that punishment. God is just in forgiving us because God really has dealt with sin, and he’s dealt with it through Jesus Christ.”
“The cross allows us to see that God is both just and the justifier.”
“What you see in the cross is that the cross provides this means of justification. A means by which we can stand before God on the final day and even though we’re guilty, we can receive the verdict of ‘innocent’ because Jesus has taken the verdict of guilty in our place.”
“We cannot lose sight of the fact that God did not have to, but that God in his mercy has done this.”
“We have freedom, forgiveness, and justice in the cross. And that’s something that we are marveling at now, and that we’ll be marveling at for all of eternity.”
“The cross is at the heart of the mystery of what God has done for us in Christ.”
“When it comes to the fundamental thing of being right with God, all the things that we have mean absolutely nothing. The fruit of that is humility - we don’t put stock in anything we have.”
“Cross people are humble people. There’s nothing about you that commends you to God.”
“There is nothing about us that commends us to God apart from the cross of Christ.”
“Even our good works as Christians, even those good works aren’t the reason why we’re standing justified before God. It’s all about the mercy of God at the cross.”
“Even our striving for holiness must be rooted in the cross.”
“The more we drink of the cross, the more like Jesus Christ we will be, the more humble we will be, and the more motivated we will be to fight sin.”
RESOURCES
Why God Became Man, by Anselm of Canterbury
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, by John Owen
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What does it mean to you that Jesus came to die for the sins of humanity on a cross?
How might dwelling on your sin lead you to marvel more at the cross?
What Scriptures lead you to a deeper understanding of what Christ has done on the cross? Perhaps consider memorizing one of those passages.
How might you, even today, spend time marveling at what Christ has done on the cross on your behalf?
What are you going to do or implement as a result of what you’ve learned this week?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
Affiliate links used are used where appropriate. Thank you for supporting the products that support Journeywomen!
FOR MORE OF JOURNEYWOMEN
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook
Support the podcast by writing a review
