Jesus Did Not Have To Be Crucified

Maybe you've heard or seen the question "Why did Jesus have to be crucified?" get asked.  The question presupposes an untrue premise: that Jesus had to be crucified.  Yes, Jesus had to die in order to receive the wages of sin on our behalf, but in terms of the soteriological importance of his death the exact method is irrelevant, secondary at best.

There is nothing about crucifixion or any other mode of death that required Jesus to die by it as opposed to some other way.  Not once does the Bible even suggest such a thing.  Crucifixion was simply the depraved standard execution format the Romans imposed on non-citizens, and the Romans were in power when Jesus came to the earth.  It is not as if there was one execution method and one alone that could bring about God's redemptive plan.  I did not say that Jesus did not have to die in order to redeem sinners--only that he did not have to be crucified.

There are miscellaneous ideas that some Christians assume are in the Bible, though they are nowhere to be found in Scripture (or are even outright contradicted by it), and this is simply one of them.  Not a single verse in the Torah, gospels, or anywhere else teaches that the Messiah would need to die by crucifixion for the gospel to take effect.  There is the content of Psalm 22 that uses language describing crucifixion, but even a detailed, explicit prophecy about Jesus' death would only mean that the prophecy describes a then-future event, not that the future event by necessity had to occur in just that way.  If it were going to happen differently, then an accurate prophecy would be different in a matching way, but this does not mean that the event could not have not happened in the way predicted.

Evangelicals might, in theological confusion or assumption-riddled excitement, also say that "Jesus took the cross we deserve" or that "The thieves crucified alongside Christ deserved their crucifixions."  Both claims are objectively Biblically false, just like the claim that Jesus had to by via crucifixion.  There are multiple unbiblical beliefs about Jesus' crucifixion that one might encounter.  Then there's also the fact that the concept of Jesus dying on behalf of human sinners is not as Biblically obvious as some seem to think.  Actually, it is not obvious at all in the majority of Scripture (a relatively minuscule amount of the Bible's teachings are obvious upon an initial read).

Christians need to be specific, accurate, and consistent in their claims, and in my experience often at least one of the three gets minimized or dropped by the average Christian.  Benevolent intentions, respect for traditions, and emotional excitement are no justification for fallacies and extra-Biblical or unbiblical ideas.  If truth matters as a whole, then each part of it matters too.