C.S. Lewis and 'Mere Christianity' - Part 6: Why?

We all know the Biblical story of Jesus being crucified and dying on the cross. We've seen it re-enacted in numerous movies. But have you ever asked yourself why He died on the cross?  Or why would God sacrifice his only Son in that way?

C.S. Lewis tackles these and other questions in "Mere Christianity". Here's what he has to say:

"What do we mean when we talk of God 'helping us'? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think:  He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters; that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. 

Now, if we had not fallen (Adam/Eve sinning), that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could die perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all."