Why did Jesus have to die?

(re: C. Khew's FB post on Dec 11: Why did Jesus have to die? If love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), why does sin require a sacrifice - isn’t the love of God enough?)

Heya, Vange shared smth with me about how Orthodoxy views salvation and Jesus’ death that’s different from the penal substitution view we’re used to, so I thought I’d share a bit of it (sorry vange if inaccurate pls feel free to add / correct!)

“A sinner is cut off from life because of turning away from God. Sin is a turning away from God but God is the sole giver of life, so sin results in death. Death begets more sin and we are sick in mind and body and spirit because of being cut off from life. Christ enters our humanity to raise up human nature with him to life and destroy the death and its hold on us and to heal all aforementioned sicknesses. Sin tends to be seen more as a sickness than a moral state.

My understanding of Jesus' finished work is he has taken on our nature and entered into death and destroyed it, and raised human nature up with himself, making a way for us to enter into true life upon our death. He makes a way by sitting beside the Father in heaven as God and Man, bringing human nature into heaven.”

I guess my personal, Protestant, off-the-top-of-my-head response (more an emotional one than a biblical one?) is... considering the terrible state of human nature, if God is just, there’s no way He can just wave his hand and say it’s okay. So many things about the world are *not okay*, and it would be ridiculous to pretend they’re right and fine, let humanity continue to ruin itself and run far away from its purpose. Don’t we all feel grieved and a desire for vengeance, to right the wrong, when something unjust is done? While vengeance is pointless, justice isn’t. But no amount of justice done upon us can atone for our fallenness; no amount of righteousness, either, can make up perfection. So God had to do it Himself, take on all the evil and the filth of the world, and say, “let it be as if it were all done by me. I take on the identity of their death; in exchange, they can take on my identity of life, where there is only perfection and completion.” The price has been paid by God himself because we never could, and the point of it all is to experience a fullness of life. If we were created for the purpose of communing with God, then that’s where we find our fullest human experience. Therefore the death of Christ was a necessary step for us to experience the fullness of life, which, because of our created purpose, is in an everlasting relationship with God.

I think reading your earlier comments about why the wages of sin had to be death.. Vange put it well: God, who is perfection, is the source and essence of life; we are hence cut off from life when we’re cut off from perfection. Sin is like a sickness because it takes away from life. Because of sin, death—the absence of life—enters like a corruption. Seen neutrally rather than with the horrible connotation we attach to it, it makes sense?