Jesus Died on the Cross. It Matters.
I recently heard about heretical teaching from an evangelical pulpit. The preacher taught that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. He declared that God took Jesus’ place on the cross at the moment of death. So, God the Son didn’t die. God died instead, for Jesus and God are one in the same. Or so it was preached. My dad listened from the pews in unwelcome surprise. In horror, really, because all hope and life hangs on the fact that God’s Son died on the cross to satisfy the penalty of sin – to satisfy His Father’s righteousness. Jesus asked His Father if there was any other way to pay the penalty of sin, but He submitted to His Father’s plan. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 I was as shocked as my dad as he shared about this errancy. We both listed biblical truths that depend on the fact that Jesus, Himself, was crucified on that fateful cross.