The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ—You Don’t Need It, Unless . . .

The message of salvation is a beautiful thing—if you’re a Christian.

If you’re not, it can be a frustrating, laughable or even offensive thing. The apostle Paul had plenty of experience with that: “For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23, New English Translation).

I can’t count the number of times I’ve come across online posts that ask variations of this same core question:

“Why should I care about a sacrifice I didn’t ask for that claims to be payment for a debt I don’t believe in?”

From a non-Christian perspective, it must seem kind of crazy to hear someone tell you that two millennia ago, the Son of God sacrificed Himself on your behalf to pay the penalty you’ve incurred for breaking His laws, and so you should respond by completely changing the way you’re living your life.

Paul was right. That sounds like pure foolishness—to be told that there are rules you’ve broken (rules you didn’t know and never agreed to follow) and that now your life must be radically altered because someone paid the penalty before you were even aware of the problem.

Many people respond to that claim with some amount of incredulity. They didn’t ask for it, they don’t want it—they’re not even convinced they need it.

A life without the sacrifice

From a physical perspective, no one needs the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to make it through this life.

We are more than capable of living out the remainder of our lives without giving God a second thought—at the end of which, we will do what all living things eventually do.

We will die.

Some versions of Christianity will threaten nonbelievers with vivid descriptions of an ever-burning hell or an eternity of isolation from God, but that’s not what the Bible says. It says “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

When we sin—when we knowingly or unknowingly violate God’s law (1 John 3:4)—we earn what billions upon billions before us have earned:

Death.

And in this state of sinfulness, life works exactly how humans have come to expect it to work. We live for a certain period of time (maybe long, maybe short), and our lives are filled with good things and bad things (maybe more of one and less of the other), we spend some time trying to find some purpose or meaning or lasting value in the whole ordeal, and then we die.

Without Christ’s sacrifice, that’s it. The end.

And if that’s all you want out of your existence—if you just want to appear as the briefest of blips on a timeline of events you were powerless to influence—if you want to disappear from the story as quickly as you appeared in it—if you don’t want to understand why you’re here—then the skeptics are right.

If you are concerned only with the here and now, you can ignore God. You can dismiss His rules. And you can brush off the sacrifice of a Man who lived 2,000 years before you were even born.

The conflict between flesh and God

But life is meant to be something more than a cosmic blip—and that’s why the sacrifice matters.

It matters if you’ve looked at your life and said, “No, wait a minute—this can’t be all there is to it. There has to be a purpose. There has to be a reason.”

Because there is.

There is a reason. There is a purpose. The God who created the entire universe—who set the stars in the sky and set the earth spinning in the inky void of space—also created you for a reason.

But there’s a problem.

That God has rules. Expectations. Standards for how we live our lives.

They’re not an arbitrary list of dos and don’ts—they’re the foundational building blocks for what it means to live a fulfilling life. God’s laws are designed to improve our lives and our character. They have clear, tangible benefits. When we ignore them or disobey them, we actively make life worse for ourselves—and for those around us.

The rules aren’t the problem. We’re the problem. “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7, New International Version).

In our default condition, we don’t mesh with God’s rules. Worse than that—we’re inherently hostile toward them.

Which means we’re going to break those laws. Sometimes (oftentimes) without even making a concerted effort to break them.

It’s just going to happen.

A lot.

And if sin is what happens when we break God’s law—and if our fleshly human minds are naturally inclined to break that law—and if the penalty for breaking that law is death—

Well, you see the problem.

In this scenario, if God has a purpose for us, it doesn’t matter, because we’ve shot ourselves in the foot from day one. We’re going to die, and we’re going to stay dead. That’s what we’ve earned.

A beautiful future—just out of reach

This is the moment when the value of the sacrifice starts to come into focus.

You have a purpose for existing. God the Father and Jesus Christ want you to live forever as a member of Their divine family. They want to bring you into a future with no more death or sorrow or crying or pain (Revelation 21:4). They want to share a productive, exciting eternity with you.

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).

But your own actions have cut you off from that future, and you’re powerless to claw your way into it.

The cost of sin is a life. And from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), Jesus and the Father resolved to pay that cost on our behalf.

“The goodness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4)—because of Christ’s sacrifice, repentance can lead to forgiveness, and forgiveness can lead to salvation.

A plan that includes everyone

But again, all this will make a difference only if you want your life to have meaning and purpose. You’re free to ignore it entirely—as long as you’re content with a life completely disconnected from the reason for its own existence.

I don’t think anyone is truly okay with missing out on that.

But there’s another facet to this whole plan, and it’s one we can’t afford to ignore:

Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44).

The only reason things start clicking in our minds—the only reason we come to appreciate the preciousness of the sacrifice we didn’t ask for that pays the penalty for rules we weren’t even trying to break—is because God the Father personally chooses to help us understand.

We can’t will ourselves to understand the future God has in store for us. Only God can help us see it—and help us want it. Which also means there are billions who have lived and died without having been given that understanding by God.

But they didn’t die without hope.

God’s plan is huge and comprehensive. In this article, we are only briefly touching on concepts with an incredible depth and breadth. If you want to dive deeper, you can do that by downloading four of our Journeys: “Knowing God,” “The Problem of Evil,” “The Plan of God” and “The People of God.”

But for now, suffice it to say that God is a fair, merciful and loving God, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He has a plan to give everyone the opportunity to join His family—including those who died without understanding their potential in His plan.

The truth of the matter

The message of salvation is a beautiful thing—if you’re a Christian. “To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24, NET Bible).

To others, it’s often a stumbling block or else just plain foolishness—for now.

And that’s okay. God is patient, and He’ll help everyone to see the truth of the matter at the right time and in the right way.

The truth is, you don’t need the sacrifice of Jesus Christ—unless you want to be part of the future God has planned.

And behind that truth is another, equally important truth:

You do want to be part of that future.