There are several ways to answer the question of why Jesus had to die; many that involve the idea of Him being the perfect Sacrifice. I’ve heard several sermons on this topic from that perspective. I feel like we already covered that, so today I’m going to come at it from a different angle the angle of divorce.
God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), but He does allow it. Matthew 5:32, “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Matthew 19:9, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The nation of Israel was the bride of Yahweh. He married them. You can read the poetic version of that story in Ezekiel 16. It’s a tragic story of a “Cinderella” people who once they became royalty then used their wiles to commit adultery/ idolatry and thumb their nose at their rescuer husband. Eventually God divorced Israel.
In Jeremiah 3:8, God says, “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.” Verse 20 says, “But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you, Israel, have been unfaithful to me,’ declares the Lord.” Isaiah 50:1, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away?'”
Other scriptures also speak about God divorcing Israel, but these are the most blatant. The law stated that unfaithful wives could be divorced, so God divorced unfaithful Israel. But He still loved “her.” He wanted to remarry His people. But what does the law say about that? Deuteronomy 24:1-4, “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord.” That doesn’t sound promising.
There is a loophole; now we get to one reason Jesus had to die. What do we say in our wedding vows? “Till death do us part.” It was customary to stone an adulterous wife to death. Divorce was the nice way out. By just divorcing Israel, God did the “nice” thing, but then He did the “nicer” thing by taking her place and being put to death for her sins.
By dying in her place, He not only freed her to remarry but also in His new resurrected state, He is able to remarry as well, legally. Jeremiah 31:31-33, “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.'”
One of my favorite scriptures is in Hosea 2 after He talks about Israel’s adultery and everything she’d done wrong. In verses 14-16, He says, “I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. In that day…you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.'”
Wooing someone in the desert seems odd, but that’s the way God has chosen to do it, over and over. The Israelites in their 40 years of wandering were being wooed.
I have been wooed by God in a place that felt desert-like. Have you been or are you being wooed in the “desert”?
The culmination of this new wedding is seen in Revelation 19:7-8, “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”
Thank you Jesus, for wanting us back, and for making a way for that to happen by dying in our place, and coming back for us. We are eternally grateful!
