Why Did Jesus Have to Die? | S4 E1

Welcome back to The Extraordinary Story, a podcast about the life of Christ. Season Four will guide us through the final week of Jesus’ life as he approaches the ‘hour’ for which he came: death on a cross. But Tom Hoopes has done some thinking during the break, and returns with a fresh perspective to share with us about why all of this even matters in the first place.

In this episode:

Why does Jesus need to die at all? Is God just so angry at humanity that he needs to kill his Son to calm down? (Spoiler: He’s not.) We’ll learn about Tom Vander Woude’s heroic death and how it reveals a deep truth about Jesus’s sacrifice. In addition, we’ll get a glimpse at the big picture of salvation history, how Christianity changed (and changes) everything, and why the “Our Father” is God’s game plan to bring back Eden, forever.

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 2:55 - The death of Tom Vander Woude
• 6:32 - Tom Vander Woude’s life and death models Christ’s sacrifice
• 9:22 - What does Jesus’ death really accomplish?
• 10:14 - Is God the Father thirsty for blood?
• 11:30 - Jesus took our place in the sewage to push us out of it
• 13:49 - Christ experienced every type of suffering for us
• 15:49 - The “Our Father” prayer is a blueprint
• 18:35 - “Thy Kingdom Come” and the covenants in Scripture
• 18:58 - God plans to restore Eden
• 20:26 - The Gospel, revisited
• 21:54 - What is “The Sign of Jonah”?
• 24:05 - The explosive growth of early Christianity
• 25:27 - How Christianity radically reshaped the whole world
• 27:05 - The irony of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy
• 28:53 - Summary and conclusion

Learn More:

Tom Vander Woude’s Legacy: https://media.benedictine.edu/you-pull-ill-push-tom-vander-woudes-legacy

A Father’s Sacrifice (Focus on the Family): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im9_iAQhd5E