Why can't God just forgive everyone without Jesus dying?
We forgive people all the time without demanding that someone be killed first. If God is all-powerful and loving, he could simply declare everyone forgiven. Requiring the bloody death of an innocent man looks less like love and more like a primitive need for blood, or even 'divine child abuse'.
Real forgiveness is never free; someone always absorbs the cost of the wrong. When we forgive, we bear the loss ourselves instead of making the offender pay. On the cross God did exactly that, on a cosmic scale. Jesus is not a third party punished by an angry Father; he is God himself, freely bearing the cost of our sin. In this way God can forgive without pretending evil doesn't matter. He is 'just and the justifier' of those who trust Jesus (Romans 3:26).
What Scripture says
23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25God presented Him as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand. 26He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
God put Christ forward as a propitiation 'to show his righteousness', so he could be both just and the one who justifies.
4Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. 6We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.
The Servant is 'pierced for our transgressions'. The Lord lays on him the iniquity of us all.
19that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. 21God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
'In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.' The Father and Son act together, not against each other.
17The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father.”
Jesus lays down his life of his own accord. No one takes it from him.
45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
The Son of Man came 'to give his life as a ransom for many'.
22According to the law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The Old Testament sacrifices pointed to this.
13When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, 14having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross! 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
The record of debt is cancelled, nailed to the cross, and the powers of evil are disarmed.
9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. 10And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Love is defined by this: God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The case
Forgiveness always costs something
The objection assumes that forgiveness is free: we forgive people without anyone dying, so why can't God? But think about what forgiveness actually involves.
Suppose a friend borrows your car and crashes it, and has no insurance. You have two options. You can make them pay for the repair. Or you can forgive them, which means you pay for the repair. What you cannot do is make the damage disappear. Someone bears the cost.
The same is true of deeper wrongs. If someone betrays you or damages your reputation, you can seek revenge or you can forgive, but forgiving means absorbing the pain and loss yourself rather than paying it back. Tim Keller develops this point in The Reason for God (ch. 12): all real forgiveness is a form of costly suffering. Forgiveness is not cheap. It is the most expensive thing there is.
Sin is not a small debt
Our wrongs are not only against each other. Every act of cruelty, dishonesty and pride is also an offense against God, the source of all good, who made the people we harm (Psalm 51:4; Genesis 9:6). And sin is not just a list of misdeeds. It is a power that corrupts us and a relationship broken from our side.
Athanasius, the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, raised this exact question. Why didn't God simply call for repentance? He answered that repentance alone could not undo the corruption that sin had brought into human nature, nor would it honor God's own word that sin leads to death (On the Incarnation 7). Something more was needed: the Word himself had to take on human nature, die and rise again to renew it.
A God who looks the other way is not good
Imagine a judge who simply released every criminal brought before him, without any sentence and without any concern for the victims. We would not call him loving; we would call him corrupt. Scripture says God will "by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:7), and also that he is "merciful and gracious" (Exodus 34:6). How can both be true?
The cross is God's answer. Paul says God put Jesus forward as a sacrifice of atonement "to show his righteousness", so that God might be "just and the justifier" of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26). At the cross, God neither ignores sin nor punishes us for it. He takes it on himself.
The one who pays is God himself
This is the crucial point that the "divine child abuse" charge misses. Christianity does not teach that an angry God took out his frustration on an innocent bystander. It teaches that God became a man and bore the cost of our sin himself.
| Misunderstanding | What the New Testament teaches |
|---|---|
| The Father punishes an unwilling Son | The Son lays down his life freely (John 10:18) |
| God needed to be persuaded to love us | The cross flows from God's love (John 3:16; Romans 5:8) |
| A third party pays for others' wrongs | God himself, in Christ, reconciles the world (2 Corinthians 5:19) |
| The cross is mere violence | The cross exposes human violence and defeats evil (Colossians 2:15) |
The Old Testament sacrifices prepared for this. Day after day, and especially on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), Israel learned that sin brings death and that God provides a substitute. But the blood of animals could never fully take away sin (Hebrews 10:4). They were signposts to the one sacrifice that could.
Why it matters
The cross tells us two things at once. First, our sin is far more serious than we thought, serious enough to cost the life of God's Son. Second, we are far more loved than we dared hope, loved enough that he paid it. God showed his love in that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Forgiveness is free to us because it was infinitely costly to him.
Word study
greek · “propitiation, mercy seat, place of atonement” · Romans 3:25
In the Greek Old Testament this word names the 'mercy seat', the lid of the ark where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14-15). Paul presents Christ as the place where God's justice and mercy meet. Scholars debate whether to stress 'propitiation' (turning aside wrath) or 'expiation' (removing sin); many see both.
hebrew · “to make atonement, to cover, to ransom” · Leviticus 17:11
The key Old Testament verb for atonement. Leviticus 17:11 explains that life is in the blood, given on the altar to make atonement. The sacrificial system taught Israel that sin is deadly serious and that forgiveness comes through a life given in place of another.
“But what about…?”
Isn't it unjust to punish an innocent person for someone else's crime?
It would be if Jesus were an unwilling third party. But Christians believe Jesus is God the Son, who freely chose to take our place (John 10:18). It is not God punishing someone else; it is the Judge himself stepping down from the bench to bear the sentence. That is the opposite of injustice.
Isn't this 'divine child abuse'?
That charge assumes the Father and Son have separate wills, with one victimizing the other. The New Testament insists that 'in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself' (2 Corinthians 5:19). The Trinity acts as one. The cross is the self-giving of God, not a Father inflicting harm on an unwilling child.
Why did it have to be so violent?
The cross shows us what sin really is. Human sin, including religious hypocrisy, political cowardice and mob cruelty, is what crucified Jesus. At the cross the full weight of human evil met the full weight of divine love, and love won.
Couldn't God have chosen some other way?
Christians have debated whether the cross was strictly necessary or the most fitting way God chose. Jesus himself prayed, 'if it be possible, let this cup pass from me' (Matthew 26:39), and it did not pass. Scripture presents the cross as the way God's love, justice and wisdom are all fully displayed (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 1986The Cross of ChristJohn Stott
- book · 2015The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus ChristFleming Rutledge
- ancientOn the IncarnationAthanasius
- ancientCur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man)Anselm of Canterbury
- book · 2006The Nature of the Atonement: Four ViewsJames Beilby & Paul R. Eddy (eds.)
- book · 2008The Reason for God, ch. 12: 'The (True) Story of the Cross'Timothy Keller
Sources (4)
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 6–9: why repentance alone could not undo humanity's corruption
- Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (c. 1098)
- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (Dutton, 2008), ch. 12
- Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor (1931)
Related questions
How could a loving God send people to hell?
The Bible never pits God's love against his justice. A God who shrugged at cruelty, abuse and injustice would not be loving. Hell is God's final judgment on evil and, in a real sense, his granting of what people have chosen: life apart from him, the source of all good. Jesus spoke of judgment more than anyone, yet he also went to the cross so that no one has to face it. God does not want anyone to perish, and the way out has been opened at his own cost.
Can a really bad person just ask for forgiveness and go to heaven?
Yes, Christianity really does teach that anyone who truly repents and trusts Christ can be forgiven, even at the end of a terrible life. That is not because evil doesn't matter, but because Jesus paid its full cost on the cross. No one is let off: every sin is either paid for by Christ or answered for by the sinner. And real repentance isn't a magic formula; it is a change of heart that turns from evil. Grace offends us partly because it means our own goodness can't save us either.
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
A small set of facts is granted by nearly all historians who study the period, including skeptics: Jesus died by crucifixion; his disciples sincerely believed he appeared to them alive; the church persecutor Paul and the skeptic James were converted by what they believed were appearances; and the tomb was very likely found empty. Natural theories each explain one or two of these facts but fail on the rest. The resurrection explains all of them, and it is exactly what Jesus predicted.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.