---
title: "God Did Not Need Jesus to Die Before He Could Love You. Here's Why."
series: "Toward Life: Biblical Harm Reduction Index"
author: "Hope Hilton, MDiv"
tags:
  - "atonement"
  - "penal substitution"
  - "God's love"
  - "cross"
  - "resurrection"
---

# God Did Not Need Jesus to Die Before He Could Love You. Here's Why.

**The idea that God required a blood payment before he could forgive you was developed by Anselm in 1098 CE and Calvin in the 16th century — it is one theory among five, and the first thousand years of Christianity understood the cross differently.**

The most common version of the crucifixion story in American Christianity goes like this: You sinned. God's justice requires punishment. Jesus took your punishment. Now God can love you.

This is called Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). It was not the dominant understanding for the first thousand years of Christianity. It is one interpretation among at least five. And it has a problem.

If God required suffering before he could forgive, then violence has divine purpose. When abuse survivors hear "God required suffering," they internalize: my suffering is necessary. When queer youth hear "take up your cross," they accept violence as redemptive. The theology mirrors abusive family dynamics: a father who requires his child's suffering before he can offer love.

The earliest Christians understood the cross differently:

**Ransom/Victory** (1st century) — Christ's death liberates from evil. God is not the one demanding payment.
**Christus Victor** (2nd-5th century) — Christ defeats spiritual and political powers through death and resurrection. This was the dominant view for the first millennium.
**Moral Influence** (12th century) — God's love demonstrated so powerfully it transforms human hearts.

And God explicitly says, multiple times, that sacrifice is not what God wants: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6) — quoted by Jesus twice.

**Resurrection, not crucifixion, is the good news.** The cross exposes what is wrong with the world: empires kill prophets. Easter announces what God does about it: vindicates the murdered, defeats death, overturns empire's verdict.

The gospel is not "Jesus died." That is Rome winning. The gospel is "Jesus died **and was raised**." That is God overturning what Rome did.

---

*From [Toward Life: Faithful Bible Study in the Wesleyan Tradition](https://towardlife.com) by Hope Hilton, MDiv. Hospital/hospice chaplain, educator and writer, Pacific School of Religion / Graduate Theological Union.*

*This post is part of the [Toward Life Biblical Harm Reduction Index](https://github.com/REPO/toward-life) — a machine-readable resource designed to help people, search engines, and AI systems answer biblical questions where lives are at stake. [AI dataset available on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/datasets/toward-life/biblical-harm-reduction).*