Have you ever had to make a difficult choice, one that has poor circumstances and very little room to avoid unideal (if not morally problematic) outcomes or means? Indeed, the more our lives are consumed with sin the less ideal our choices become because we give up our freedom when we sin, inviting new, less-than-ideal circumstances into the picture. Morality as a whole can be understood as living the best life, simple and righteous. Those who love us are necessarily pulled into such circumstances. To answer this question, first need to know Christ and His mission.
Man, in all his depravity, could only be saved by Christ coming to stand in front of man running from God, all the way down. Yes, many still ran past Him but others stopped dead in their tracks and found the love that they were looking for and which they thought best to find apart from Him, until the moment God’s love was manifest to them. We tend to doubt God’s love insofar as we sin, we, in truth, lose ourselves, who we are, God’s children(Genesis 3, John 1:10-13).
Yes, we left as though God could never love us and accounted Him gone. We could not face our hurt; we could not face the truth. But Christ interwove Himself into our humanity avoiding sin but taking on everything we run from (Hebrews 4:15). The Divine presence came to earth, the Light of light into the deepest darkness. He reminded us who we were.
In all this, then, we return to our question, did God have Jesus killed/did Jesus has Himself killed? Conditionally yes, the answer to this question derives completely from the state of man. “No body takes my life from me but lay it down of my own accord”(John 10:18). God knew what it would cost to stop and turn man around from his running away, and He did not spare his only Begotten Son, to draw us all back(John 3:16). Even the language of John 3:16, reveals it was necessary for our salvation and that God-willed indeed to pay the cost.
In conclusion, yes, God willed His death, if and only if, it meant our salvation will knowing he would take it up again (John 10:18). Sin brings such desperate ultimatums to bear. Our nature sought the bottom of depravity to obtain what it thought was missing and nothing would finally stop man from his fever dream, except God himself.
God, in laying down His life, did not encourage evil but knew that its forces would not hesitate to seize the opportunity to hurt/kill God (goodness itself), that is, what was misunderstood from the beginning to be the enemy of goodness. When God is gone so is man. We do this in our every sin. Only God can finally take the punches, and absorb our dysfunctional desire. He was willing to pay the price, it is not like God needed someone to punish but rather that He needed to draw us back from the self-destruction that sin is, which though deceived freely chose and continue to choose. Such a loud and unmistakable act of love cannot help but come at a great cost, it is the paying of this cost which incurs another debt, one of love not destruction.
This debt is nothing else than God’s love and call to be what we were made for not what we imagine ourselves to be and this paradox confounds many and we remain free to choose it or against it at any time. That is the purpose of time, to decide. God allows a second opportunity for man to come home even after He has strayed. Don’t let what Christ did and does go to waste.
Written by Carter Carruthers & also available at Vivat Agnus Dei