Morning Sermon - 1st November 2026 - Why the Cross Was Necessary

We turn in our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10 please, Hebrews chapter 10.

We're just going to take time to read the first 18 verses of this chapter.

So it's Hebrews chapter 10 and reading from verse one to the end of verse 18.

For since the law was but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near.

Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshippers having once been cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins.

But in these sacrifices there's a reminder of sins every year for it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Consequently, when Christ came into the world he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me and burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.

Then I said behold I have come to do your will o God as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.

When he said above you have neither desired nor taken pleasure sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

These are offered according to the law.

Then he added behold I have come to do your will.

He does away with the first in order to establish the second and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins he sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified and the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days declares the Lord and I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds and then he adds I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.

Where there is forgiveness of these there is no longer any offering for sin.

Amen.

We know God will bless his word to our hearts.

Now did Jesus really have to die And the more we understand his death by crucifixion the harder perhaps it is to take it in.

Crucifixion was meant to be slow.

It was meant to be painful.

The Romans were experts at it.

It was reserved for the lowest of the low and one privilege of course of a Roman citizen was that they would never ever die by crucifixion.

And the suffering Jesus endured before the cross and then during those hours kneeled to the cross is almost beyond imagination.

Many of us would rather not imagine at all what happened and so the question presses us, how could a loving God require such suffering in order that sinners might be saved?

Did it have to be that particular way?

Well some scholars have concluded that God could not and didn't require such a thing.

Whatever happened at the cross they say it wasn't necessary.

It wasn't God's will.

They say either the Bible is wrong in explaining the suffering of Jesus as if it were a horrible accident rather than God's plan.

Or theologians have quite simply misunderstood what the Bible is actually saying.

And some go further.

One, former evangelical Steve Chalk has called the idea that God punished sin so that sinners might be forgiven.

He's called it cosmic child abuse.

And how should we answer views like these?

Is it unthinkable that God would punish Jesus so that we could be saved?

Could God have provided salvation by some other means?

And as always we must turn to the Bible.

We believe the Bible is God breathed.

We believe in its truth and therefore if we come to the Bible in the light of these questions we seek the answers and we will find the answers.

And we've been thinking in recent weeks about such a wondrous salvation.

That's kind of been the theme of what we've been looking at and why Christ had to be both man and God in order to save us.

But this morning we want to think about why atonement was the only way.

Why atonement was the only way and as we think of that heading this morning why atonement is the only way or was the only way there are two things that I want us to think about.

Number one I want us to think about the nature of God and then number two the necessity of the atonement.

So let's consider first of all the nature of God.

The nature of God and to understand any biblical truth we have to start at the right place.

And mistakes and even heresies often begin because people start in the wrong place.

And as we think about salvation as we think about Christ and about atonement for sinners like you and me we must begin with God Himself.

Our doctrine of the atonement is rooted in the nature of God and we can sum up the whole matter in one sentence, There is an atonement because God is the kind of God He is.

There is an atonement because God is the kind of God He is.

He's not a human idea.

It's not a human idea.

It's it's not an invention.

It's not a misunderstanding of Bible writers.

It's rooted in who God actually is.

And because of the kind of God He is we have an atonement by the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And remember also that God revealed Himself in the Bible as Trinity Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

One God in three persons and within the Trinity the persons are always in perfect harmony.

And there's never conflict among them about any of the works of God.

And that matters here.

We must never suggest that there was a tension between the Trinity over salvation as if a loving son was placating an angry father or as if a father wanted to punish the son and the son, well, he stepped in and said, well, I'll deal with this issue.

And that would imply perhaps conflict within the Godhead.

And there's no such thing.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in harmony about what is necessary for your salvation and for my salvation for the salvation of sinners.

And the plan of salvation flows of course from Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And Scripture especially attributes the planning to the Father but each of the Trinity is fully involved in every aspect of salvation.

And the atonement flows from the will of God and Paul makes mention of this in Ephesians chapter one verse 11 as the one who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Everything including the salvation of sinners is worked out according to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So Christ's suffering is the will of the Father.

It is the will of the Son and it is the will of the Holy Spirit.

There's no conflict of any kind between or within the Trinity.

And what then in the nature of God helps us understand the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What is it about God that helps us understand His suffering?

What is there about His nature?

Well there are two things, God's love and God's righteousness.

They help us understand His nature and why Christ suffered the way Christ did.

Let's think of these.

First of all, God's love.

The atonement is rooted in God's love for undeserving sinners.

We all know John three sixteen For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

First John chapter four and verse 10 says the same thing in another way.

This is love.

Not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for us.

A propitiation.

A propitiation is a sacrifice that deals with the wrath of God.

And far from being a vindictive God who demands an unnecessary sacrifice the Father is filled with love for us and he sends the son and the son is filled with love for the father and for us and we're told in Galatians two twenty, the son of God who loved me gave himself for me.

That's what Paul says and the love of the spirit of course isn't named in these verses in the same way, but the harmony of the spirit tells us that the love of the Holy Spirit is involved as well.

And this is undeserved love.

And that's what grace is.

Grace is the undeserved love of God.

The love of the Father, the love of the Son, the love of the Holy Spirit for people like you and me in our sin who are utterly undeserving.

This is really grace.

It is God's deserved love and that's the first thing that we note about God when we think of his nature.

And then the second thing we think about God concerning his nature and when we think of the atonement and why Christ had to die is God's righteousness.

A holy and righteous God cannot receive sinners into fellowship with Himself unless their sin is dealt with.

There can be no fellowship between God and us unless the penalty due to our sins is paid.

And God can't ignore sin or sweep it under the carpet.

If He did, He wouldn't be a holy God.

He wouldn't be doing what He said He would do.

It would be almost as if God was winking at our sin pretending that it didn't happen.

And what sort of God would that make him who would treat sin in such a trivial way, who would do nothing about our sin?

And sin against the Holy God, we have to realize is a terrible thing.

And God cannot enter into fellowship with people who still bear their sin and guilt.

It must be dealt with.

And there are only two possibilities.

Either sinners like us bear the penalty ourselves in eternal punishment or a substitute bears it for us.

And those are the only two options.

And the only possible substitute is the Lord Jesus Christ, the God man perfectly equipped for the work.

He is the propitiation for our sins.

And this is a word of course that was used in Romans three and twenty five by Paul.

This word propitiation now some translations don't use it but it would be good if they did actually use it.

It's a precise word a sacrifice that deals with wrath.

It deals with the wrath of God.

And why did Jesus make propitiation?

Romans three twenty five tells us to demonstrate God's righteousness.

It's to show that God is righteous and that's why this was needed.

And in the next verse verse 26 it says that God might be the just and the justifier the one who has faith in Jesus.

And both are accomplished.

God is just because sin is punished and He is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus.

And salvation is available for sinners.

It's available to all who would trust in Christ and all who will trust in who God is through Jesus Christ.

He upholds the justice and the righteousness of God and at the same time provides justification for those who trust in Him.

So we must begin with the nature of God.

We must begin with His love.

We must begin with His righteousness if we're to understand why atonement was the only way, And that's the foundation on which everything else about the work of Christ and the atonement must be built.

And if we don't understand the nature of God, we will fall for for the idea that God didn't really have to do this, that it was wasn't necessary that it's unthinkable for Christ to be punished in such a way.

And if God is a loving God and God is a righteous God then atonement is necessary and the Bible makes it very clear that atonement is necessary because of who God is.

He is a God of love and He is a God of righteousness and to bring His love and righteousness together there must be atonement.

And that leads us to our second point, the necessity of atonement.

The necessity of atonement.

Why does it have to be this particular way?

Was there not another path God could have followed?

Well, there are two things that we have got to note here.

First of all, we need to realize that God is not obliged to save any sinner.

God is not obliged to save any of us.

We must keep that in mind because it's important that we keep it in mind.

It might inflate our ego to think that we were someone special, but nothing outside of God compels him to save a single sinner.

If God had condemned every sinner to eternal punishment, no one could turn around and say, well that's unfair.

It would have been utterly fair.

It would have been perfectly just.

And he owes salvation to nobody.

He's not obliged to save anybody.

And yet in his vast overflowing love he's decided to save a multitude of sinners to do what he is not obliged to do.

And still the question remains, could he not have done it some other way?

Was there not an easier way, one that didn't involve the agonies of the cross for the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?

And as of maybe intimated, some Orthodox godly scholars have suggested that God could have forgiven sin without an atonement.

Others have argued that this is the route that God chose because it most glorified His name and brought the greatest benefits to those who are saved.

And that was the best way many of the reformers held to that particular view.

But secondly, we must conclude that the atonement is absolutely necessary.

The atonement is absolutely necessary.

It's hard to see what other course God might have followed that would have been consistent with His nature that we have looked at.

The best view because it's the consistent view of Scripture is that it is absolutely necessary that there be atonement.

It's not one option among several that God happened to choose.

It's the one consistent way that matches up that upholds His nature, His love, His righteousness.

No other way agrees with His nature.

Only the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross satisfies His love and satisfies His righteousness.

And you know there's a great deal of biblical material that we could examine.

We don't really have time to go into it in great detail this morning but there are a number of comments that I want to make.

Four comments in relation to this idea of the atonement being absolutely necessary.

Several key passages drive home the absolute necessity of the atoning death of Christ and I want to look at those very very quickly.

The first key passage to drive home the absolute necessity of the atoning death of Christ is Jesus' prayer in the Garden Of Gethsemane.

In Matthew chapter 26 in verse 39 he prays, My Father if it be possible let my cup pass from me.

And there Jesus contemplates the horror of the cross and he asks that if it were possible that the cup might pass that he might not have to walk that particular road.

And we know the outcome.

He was not spared the cross.

That outcome shows that it was not possible for salvation to be secured by any other means.

Jesus asked if it be possible.

And you know if it had been possible, His loving heavenly Father would have spared Him from the cross and taken away that particular cup?

Is it inconceivable that the Father would have refused the prayer of a son if salvation could have been provided in another route?

He prayed, If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

And it didn't.

And the conclusion must be that it was not possible.

There was no other way.

And in Gethsemane the Son of God showed his perfect submission to his Father's will.

The cross had to be endured.

Jesus' prayer in the Garden Of Gethsemane tells us that atonement is absolutely necessary.

But then the second key passage to drive home the absolute necessity of the atoning death of Christ is Jesus' words on the road to Emmaus.

Jesus' words on the road to Emmaus.

If you remember after the resurrection the two disciples meet Jesus.

At first they don't recognize Him.

They walk and eat together and Jesus speaks of what had taken place only a few hours earlier, His death on the cross.

We read in Luke's Gospel chapter 24 and verse 26, Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory?

And note what it says, Was it not necessary?

That's what Jesus said.

And in the next verse he speaks of the witness of the Old Testament to the necessity of that sacrifice.

The plan of redemption revealed throughout the Old Testament scriptures made it necessary for the Messiah to die for the sins of his people.

And Jesus understood that and it's striking in the gospel records how often he spoke of the divine necessity that was laid upon him to go to the cross to endure what the Father had planned.

In Matthew chapter 16 verse 21 we read the Son of Man must go.

He must be handed over.

He must be killed.

There is this divine necessity.

It was not Herod.

It was not Pilate.

It was not the scribes and the Pharisees who ultimately determined that Jesus would die.

It was God.

And drawing on the Old Testament revelation, the Savior said it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer.

And that was the great obstacle of course for many Jewish people.

A suffering dying Messiah was for many of them unthinkable until the Lord opened their eyes to actually see it.

He must go.

He was a man with a mission.

He must fulfill it.

Jesus' words on the road to Emmaus are so important.

And then the third key passage to drive home the absolute necessity of the atoning work of Christ is the holiness of God.

And we've already touched on this under the nature of God but we must return to it.

The holiness of God means that he cannot.

He cannot overlook sin.

Our sin is rebellion against Him.

It is covenant breaking.

It's rooted in Adam in the Garden of Eden.

We are Adam's descendants spiritually and we are born sinners.

We are covenant breakers.

We are rebels against God.

We want to put self in the place of God and the nature of the Holy God requires that sin be punished.

And Scripture tells us this again and again if you go back into the Old Testament to the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 34 and verse seven it says, He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.

If He did, He wouldn't be holy.

He would be a deceiver.

He would not be the God we thought that He was.

And Scripture often uses strong language for God's reaction to sin.

It says that God hates sin that He hates the very root of sin and that's why He hates sin because He is holy.

He can't stop being holy and He can't stop hating sin.

And if we think that's extreme, if we say, well sin's bad, but God to hate it seems over the top, then we haven't really understood the nature of sin.

We have not seen it for what it is.

If it is enmity against God our Creator whom we would worship, serve, and love, to be rebels instead is the gravest of sins.

And you know people often rank sins in their minds, the really terrible ones at the top and the lesser sins further down, and they console themselves that they've not done the things that well are at the top of the list.

But the fact is that every sinner, every one of us has committed the worst of sins.

We have lived in rebellion against God and to live as if he didn't exist or if he was existing we had we had no concern for the matter.

And that stands at the top of the list.

Every sinner is guilty of that particular sin and we we have not grasped the seriousness of sin or the perfect holiness of God if we find ourselves thinking that some things something less might have done in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

He cannot allow sin to go unpunished either in the sinner or in the substitute.

Sin must be punished.

The penalty must be paid and if he didn't punish sin it would deny the nature of himself that's revealed in Scripture.

We would have discovered that God was lying in the Bible and that is not possible.

So the holiness of God tells us that the atonement is necessary.

And the fourth key passage to drive home the absolute necessity of the atonement is the teaching of the book of Hebrews.

That's why I read to you from the book of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 10.

In fact the whole letter of Hebrews emphasizes Christ and the Messiah and how He had to suffer.

Hebrews draws thoroughly from the Old Testament and if you want to understand the Old Testament and how it points to Christ well then you move into the book of Hebrews.

And one thing Hebrews stresses is the insufficiency of the Old Testament sacrifices to take away sin and to cleanse the heart of a person made in the image of God.

No number of bulls or goats or rams or lambs could cleanse the heart of a sinner.

They were not meant to of course.

They were not designed to do that.

They were a temporary measure God provided until sacrifice would be offered that really cleanses the heart and really saves the sinner.

Hebrews chapter 10 and verse four, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins And that's the New Testament's verdict on the whole system of sacrifice under the law of Moses.

It's not designed to cleanse the heart.

It could never do that.

But it pointed to the sacrifice that really deals with the sin.

Those sacrifices spoke specifically of the Lord Jesus Christ and those Old Testament offerings chapter after chapter describing them are patterned after the sacrifice of Christ.

And we sometimes think it's the other way around as if Christ's sacrifice were patterned after the Old Testament offerings.

It's the reverse the Old Testament offerings are in fact patterned after what Christ would come and what Christ would accomplish.

His is the reality.

The Old Testament is the picture.

The Old Testament is the shadow.

The word used in Hebrews chapter 10, that's what we're told and the work of Christ is the reality that really provides the salvation, the blood of Christ.

And so as Hebrews chapter nine verse 23 says, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with those sacrifices but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices.

It's the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ that reaches the heart, that reaches our hearts, that provides salvation, that provides that cleansing that we need.

Only the blood of Christ could provide heart cleansing.

That heart cleansing that we need, it's not a matter of how many bulls and goats were offered.

The heart couldn't be changed or cleansed by that at all, but they pointed to an offering that would do that, the offering of Christ, the shedding of the blood.

And the whole burden of Hebrews is that the death of the Messiah is absolutely necessary to save us.

Nothing else would do that.

Not the offerings of the law of Moses not anything that we could offer not our good works not our effort only the blood of Jesus.

The teaching of the book of Hebrews tells us that atonement is absolutely necessary.

So put the evidence together.

We have looked at four of these, the prayer of Jesus in the garden, the words of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, the Holy God that reveals His character and the teaching of Hebrews.

All the biblical evidence shows that the death of Jesus Christ was absolutely necessary, the necessity of the atonement.

So in the coming weeks, God willing, we'll think about what exactly Jesus did when of course He went to the cross and what it did, what was accomplished for us and how we're saved through it and it's all the fruit of His infinite love, the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And you know it's a wonderful salvation isn't it?

There's no other way And such was the love of God for us that the atonement was provided in all its fullness, in all its completeness.

And there's the salvation and the challenge to you and to me today is if we are truly in Christ is to rejoice in the wonder of God's salvation for us.

And for those outside of Christ there is no other way.

There is no other way than the blood sprinkled away.

There is no other way than coming through Jesus Christ and what he accomplished for us on the cross of Calvary and coming and asking for his forgiveness and asking, for the ability to repent of your sin and the ability just to know His grace in your life to believe that He can save you.

And may God give you that experience and the grace to know.

Amen.