In the story of Abraham leading his son up Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him at the request of God, Abraham knew that he would return with his Son. God the Father knew the same when he sent his Son to the cross. One of the main differences between those two stories, though, is that there was a substitute for Isaac, but there was no substitute for Jesus.
A lot of pastors have preached that Jesus could have abandoned the cross and left us to fend for ourselves. Partly, that statement is true, but only in part. Jesus himself says in Matthew 26:53, “Or do you think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will provide me here and now with more than twelve legions of angels?” But go on just one verse further and Jesus says, “How, then, would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way?”
So why did Jesus have no other option but to go the cross? Here are two primary reasons.
1. The Promise of God
The first reason is the promise of God. A promise that God made way back in the book of Genesis after Adam and Eve sinned. To the serpent God said, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” This was God promising vengeance on the serpent for the role He played in the fall of mankind. It was also the first instance in scripture that we see in scripture of God promising to send a savior into the world. That promise alone is enough because God is not a man that He should or the son of the man that He would change his mind (Num 23:19). In other words, God is faithful to do all that He says He will do. In fact, the story of Abraham is a great picture of that faithfulness. God had promised Abraham a son. And though Abraham and his wife were very old and childless, he faithfully fulfilled the promise that he made to them. God’s promise to send Jesus into the world gave Jesus no other option but to go to the cross, because if He were to choose to not go to the cross, then He would make God a liar. And if God were to tell even just one lie, He would cease to be God because God doesn’t lie.
2. The Love of God
Another reason I believe Jesus to have had no other option is because of the love of God. In John 3:16, Jesus tells Nicodemus that God sent Him, Jesus into the world to die because of the love that He had for the world. God loved the world in such a way that He was willing to send His Son into the world to save the world. The word that Jesus uses for love is the word agape. Agape love is considered to be the highest form of love. Not because it involves the most emotion, in fact, agape love is the type of love that isn’t contingent on emotion. Agape love is the type of love that says, “it doesn’t matter how I feel, I love you and that’s not changing.” For that reason, Jesus had no option but to go to cross because his sacrifice was the only possible sacrifice sufficient to save humanity from sin.
This post is written by Shaq Hardy, and is published as a companion to Unit 3, Session 3 of The Gospel Project for Adults Vol. 1 (Fall 2021): From Creation to Chaos.
