Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Why Did Jesus HAVE TO Die? The Biblical Answer That Changes Everything with John MacArthur and Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Why was Jesus' death necessary? In this powerful explanation, Pastor John MacArthur wits down with Jonny Ardavanis and breaks down the biblical foundation for Christ's sacrifice and answers the crucial question: "Why does sin require death?"🔑 KEY TOPICS COVERED: • Why God designed sin to result in death • How Jesus became our substitute on the cross • The significance of Christ's resurrection and ascension • Why animal sacrifices in the Old Testament weren't enough • How one person could absorb punishment for all believers📖 SCRIPTURE REFERENCES: • "The wages of sin is death" - Romans 6:23 • The tree of knowledge of good and evil - Genesis 2:17 • Christ's substitutionary atonement • "It is finished" - John 19:30This teaching explains the heart of the Gospel - how God can be both just and merciful, punishing sin while offering redemption through Christ's perfect sacrifice.

Pastor John, many people understand that Jesus died, but my question is twofold initially. Why did he have to die, and why does my sin necessitate death? Well, the Bible is clear that the wages of sin is death, the soul that sinned it shall die. And at the very beginning, when God created everything, he basically, He basically said, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you're going to die. So God ordained that sin would be punished by death. There's no other way to explain that. I mean, that was God's design, that those who sin will die.

And also that every sin will be punished because God is absolutely holy. Every sin has to be punished. Well, when Adam led the human race and Eve led the human race in to sin and everybody was born a sinner. How do they escape that? Are they all just going to die both physically and eternally separated from God forever in hell? No, God designed that he would redeem them by providing a substitute. That's why even in the Old Testament, an animal was brought and sacrificed on the altar through all the history of Judaism. Every single day, in the morning and evening every day for centuries, millennia, they were killing animals and killing animals and

killing animals. That was a demonstration that sin produces death, bloodshed. But none of those animals could take away sin. None of them. They were pictures of what men deserved to cause them to cry out to God and ask for forgiveness. One sacrifice was sufficient and one alone. And that's when God put all the sins of all the people who would ever believe on his son on the cross and he paid for them in full. People say, so he died in our place? Yeah, he died as our substitute. God literally punished his son for the sins of all the people in human history who would ever believe in him. You say, well, how could one person absorb that much punishment and satisfy the wrath of God. After all, some people, all the rest of the people who go to hell have to stay there forever

and they still haven't paid in full. So how does one individual, Jesus Christ, absorb all the sort of eternal punishment for all whoever believed? The only answer to that is he was a cosmic person. He had no limits to his person, therefore he had no limits to his atonement in the sense that he was able to carry the full punishment for all who would ever believe. But again, this is God's design that sin will produce death. This is because God wants us to understand how serious sin is. It kills you. It kills you physically.

It kills you spiritually. And it can kill you eternally. And then God, in grace, says, I'm going to place my son on the cross in your place and put my wrath on him for your sins. It's as if he lived your life. But why the resurrection? Because that is clearly God validating the sacrifice of Christ. The Father raises him from the dead.

And in doing that, he is saying, I accept that sacrifice. That satisfies me. That propitiates me. That satisfies the wrath and justice of God. So that's how God can be just and holy and be the justifier of sinners. Every sin will be punished. Every sin. Either the sinner will suffer forever for that sin, or Christ will bear the full punishment for that sin.

All sin is punished, either in our own lives, eternally, or in Christ on the cross. So he had to die because sin required death, and God raised him from the dead to say, I accept the fullness of that sacrifice. Jesus said it is finished. Well, and Paul says if Jesus isn't a risen save, than our faith is in vain. Yeah, that means that God didn't accept a sacrifice. God raised him from the dead

because God was affirming him as having completed that sacrifice. And then it wasn't just the resurrection. People overlooked this. The ascension, God took him to heaven and seated him on his throne at his right hand. Yeah, other people had been resurrected from the grave to your own point.

Yeah, but nobody's ascended to heaven to take the throne of Christ. The wonderful news is, believers, someday, when we all go to glory, will sit with him on his throne because we'll be in Christ, joint heirs of all that he possesses. So good, so good. Thank you, Pastor John.