Why do we need salvation, Pt 3: The Cross is necessary

Ephesians 2:8-9                     8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Galatians 2:20                       20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Colossians 2:14                      13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.  He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

Isaiah 53:5                             5But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Deuteronomy 21:22,24         22If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole,….24Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.

In one way or another it seems likely that most people on the planet, even the most secular, have heard the name Jesus Christ.  It might even be true that people know that He died so that people who follow Him could have eternal life.  But I wonder if many people understand that Jesus had to die on a cross, that He had to be crucified.  It was prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus that the Messiah would die on a cross (pole).  But the magnificent reason for that death was not just that the Messiah would die, but the reason for it.

The punishment that brought us peace

When Isaiah wrote v53:5, he was describing something remarkable—something that looked forward hundreds of years to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Isaiah foresaw that the Messiah would take on Himself the penalty of sin, not His own sin, but ours.  This idea seems upside down to the natural mind.  Why should an innocent person suffer in place of the guilty?  Yet this is the core of salvation: the exchange of our sin for Christ’s righteousness.

Without the cross, humanity is left under the weight of sin and judgment.  Deuteronomy 21:22–23 adds to this by pointing out that “anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.”  To be executed in this way was the ultimate picture of disgrace and separation from God.  Yet Paul makes it clear in Galatians 3:13 that Jesus “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”  He deliberately stepped into the cursed position to remove the curse from us.  That is why the punishment He bore has real meaning—it is not symbolic, but substitutionary.

Think of it this way: if a penalty is deserved, justice requires payment.  God’s holiness demands that sin be punished, yet His love compels Him to rescue us.  The cross is the meeting place of justice and mercy.  Jesus did not merely sympathize with human suffering—He absorbed the wrath of God against sin.  This punishment became the very instrument through which we receive peace with God.  Paul echoes this in another verse:  “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1)

So, why do we need the cross for salvation?  Because only through it could the punishment rightly ours be carried by Another, producing peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God.  Without the cross, peace with God would remain unreachable, a dream without substance.

Saved by grace

The Ephesians passage pulls us into the truth that salvation is utterly dependent on grace.  Grace is God’s unearned favor, His willingness to save not because we deserve it but because of His love and mercy.

Why does this matter for the cross?  Because the cross is grace in action.  Grace cannot merely be declared; it has to be demonstrated.  Jesus’ death was the cost of grace, the price tag showing what it took to redeem sinful humanity.  If we could have earned salvation by being good enough, by following the law carefully enough, or by working hard enough, then the cross would have been unnecessary.  But Paul bluntly reminds us in Galatians 2:21, “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”

The cross strips away human boasting.  We cannot point to our church attendance, our good deeds, or our moral track record as proof of salvation.  Instead, salvation is God’s gift.  And here’s where it gets even better: Ephesians 2:10 says we are not just saved from something, but for something.  We are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”5  The cross transforms not only our standing before God but also our purpose in the world.  Salvation by grace means we can stop striving to earn God’s acceptance.  It is already given through Jesus’ finished work on the cross.  And this grace transforms us to live in gratitude, not fear.

Crucified with Christ

In Galatians 2:20 we see a deeply personal application of the cross.  It’s not just that Jesus died for sin in general—He died for me.  And in a mysterious yet real sense, when He was crucified, my old sinful self was crucified with Him.  This truth reshapes identity.  Many people live defined by failure, shame, or guilt.  Others are defined by success, achievements, or possessions.  Paul says that for the believer, those old markers of identity are gone.  What defines us now is the life of Christ in us.  The cross becomes not only an event in history but the very foundation of personal identity.

To be “crucified with Christ” also means a shift in control.  Life is no longer about self-rule but about surrender.  It is about saying, “Jesus, you take the lead.  You live through me.” That is why Paul emphasizes faith—living each day in trust that Christ’s presence is enough.

The need for the cross becomes clear here again.  Without the cross, there is no crucifixion of the old self.  Without the cross, sin remains the master.  But because of the cross, believers can genuinely say that the chains are broken.  Romans 6:6 echoes this: “our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

The cross frees us to live differently.  We are not trying harder to be good people; we are living as resurrected people.  The Spirit of Christ empowers us to forgive, to love, to endure trials, and to live in holiness—not because of human strength, but because the life of Christ is active within.

Dead in your sins…alive with Christ

This imagery in the Colossians verse is powerful.  Humanity apart from Christ is not merely weak or flawed; it is dead in sin.  Deadness implies total inability—there’s no self-rescue.  But God, through the cross, breathes life where there was death.  Forgiveness is not partial but complete.  The “charge of our legal indebtedness” refers to the record of sin, the moral debt owed to God.  On the cross, Jesus took that entire record and nailed it to the wood, publicly declaring it canceled.

This brings us back to Deuteronomy’s warning: cursed is everyone hung on a tree.  Jesus took the curse, bore the shame, and endured the condemnation so that we could be free.  His death destroyed the written code that condemned us, and His resurrection guaranteed new life.

So why do we need the cross for salvation?  Because without it, the record of sin remains against us, and death remains undefeated.  But with the cross, sin’s record is erased, and life in Christ begins.  As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Alive with Christ means more than just forgiven; it means transformed.  It means hope beyond the grave.  It means strength for today and eternal life tomorrow.  The cross is not just a rescue from punishment—it is an invitation into resurrection life.

What about me?

The cross is not optional; it is essential.  We need it because it carries the punishment that secures our peace with God.  We need it because it demonstrates grace and excludes boasting.  We need it because it crucifies the old self and gives us a new identity in Christ.  And we need it because it cancels sin’s debt and makes us alive with Christ.

The cross is the centerpiece of salvation history, the moment when God’s justice and mercy intersected.  To remove the cross is to remove salvation itself.  To embrace the cross is to embrace forgiveness, new life, and eternal hope.  This is why Christians cling to the cross—not as a piece of jewelry or a symbol of suffering alone, but as the very place where life begins.

Believer, before the Cross Jesus was praying in garden and was so stressed that he sweat drops of blood.  This has been proven to be possible physiologically.  Jesus realized that every sin ever committed or to be committed by every person would be laid on His shoulders.  Because of this sin He would be separated from intimacy with His Father—something that never, in all of time—had happened before.  He did this for you personally.  If no other person was alive on the planet except you, He still would have gone to the Cross.

My friend, this brings it home.  Jesus died so you would have eternal life.  Think about it.