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1. What if Christ had not died on the cross?

Let’s imagine, just for a moment, the same beginning and middle but a different end to the Gospel stories.

The same manger and Magi. The same baptism and temptations. Jesus still teaches, heals, performs miracles, gathers disciples. He still speaks of the kingdom of God, challenges injustice and embodies love.

But when the moment of danger comes, when ‘the hour’ comes – he somehow escapes it. Sidesteps it. No arrest. No trial. No nails. No cross. No crown of thorns. No hill outside a city wall where the sky goes dark…

At first, that might seem like a relief. A better ending than the one we’ve got. No suffering. No brutality. No cry of abandonment. We might even prefer that version of the story.

Jesus just keeps teaching. Keeps healing. Keeps telling surprise stories that open people up.

But then we begin to notice what’s missing. Because if Christ had not died on the cross, then love would never have been shown to its fullest extent.

Unproven, unanswered

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says: “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13). Without the cross, those words remain an idea – beautiful and inspiring, but unproven.

The cross is where that kind of love is no longer theoretical. It becomes embodied, costly, undeniable.

Without the cross, suffering remains unanswered. We would still ask: Where is God in pain? Where is God in injustice? Where is God when the innocent suffer? And we might hear only silence in reply.

But the cross declares something radical: God does not stand at a distance from suffering – God enters into it. Not as observer, but as participant.

Without the cross, God might still be powerful – but would God be trustworthy? Without the cross, sin is never fully faced. We might still talk about forgiveness, but we would not see the depth of what needs forgiving.

Seriousness and depth

The cross reveals both the seriousness of human brokenness and the depth of divine mercy. It shows what happens when human violence meets divine love – and that divine love does not retaliate.

The cross is where words run out – where love is not spoken but spent.

And without the cross, discipleship changes. Jesus could still say “follow me,” but follow him where? If he avoids suffering, then perhaps we are invited to do the same. Faith would become a path of inspiration, not transformation. A way of living well – but not a way of dying to self…

So, perhaps the cross is not an unfortunate ending that could have been avoided. Perhaps it is the place where everything comes into focus. Where love is revealed as self-giving. Where God is shown to be with us in our deepest pain. Where the cost of grace is laid bare.

Without the cross, we might admire Jesus. But perhaps we would keep a safe distance from a love that never had to prove what it was worth?

2. What if Christ had died, but not been raised?

Now imagine another possibility. This time Jesus doesn’t walk away. He stays. He is taken, tried, nailed to wood, lifted into a sky that does not answer. He dies. But that’s it. That’s the end.

No stone rolled back, no empty tomb. No mistaken man in the garden. No resurrection appearances. No Easter morning. Only silence.

No getting into locked rooms. No opening-up Scripture to disheartened disciples dispiritedly walking home. No ‘feed my sheep’ conversation with Peter.

Was that enough?

In this version of the story, the cross still speaks.

Yes, it speaks of courage. Of sacrifice. Of love that refuses to give in to hatred.

It might inspire us deeply. But it would also raise a haunting question: Was that love enough? Because if Christ died but was not raised, then death has the final word.

The powers that crucified him – violence, fear, injustice – remain undefeated. The world keeps turning the same way. The cross becomes a tragedy, not a victory.

Living hope

In the First Epistle of Peter, we hear of a “living hope” (1:3). But without resurrection, hope is no longer living – it becomes memory. Something we look back on, not something that carries us forward.

Without the resurrection, God’s justice remains unresolved. The one who embodied truth and love is condemned and silenced – and nothing overturns that verdict. And we are left to wonder: is goodness ultimately fragile? Does love always lose?

Without the resurrection, our faith becomes admiration, not transformation. We might honour Jesus as a teacher, a prophet, a martyr. But we would not worship him as Lord of life. We would not say, as the early Christians did, that death itself has been defeated.

No horizon

And perhaps most painfully, without the resurrection, our grief has no horizon. We would still love and we would still lose. We would have no promise that loss is not the end.

But our claim – the dangerous, impossible, world-shifting claim – is that death did not get the last word. That the one who was broken did stand again. That the silence was not empty but waiting. Waiting.

So, the cross is not the end of love. And the grave is not the end of the story. And hope – hope is not memory. It is something alive. Something moving. Something that says: even here, even now, even in the places that look finished – this is not the end.

See more clearly

Thankfully, the real Christian story, the one that we know to be true, not the imaginary ones, does not end there. These two “what ifs” help us see more clearly what we believe.

Without the cross: we lose the depth of God’s love entering suffering. Without the resurrection: we lose the hope that suffering and death are not the end. But together – cross and resurrection – we are given a faith that is both honest and hopeful: Honest about pain. Hopeful about its transformation.

A faith that says: God is with us in suffering. And God will bring us through it into life. And this Good Friday, that is the hope that we hold. Not some shallow optimism – but a deep and living hope. Amen

‘What ifs?’ was delivered by Ian Banks at Christ Church, Walmersley on Good Friday, 3rd April 2026. It quoted from John 15:13 and 1 Peter 1:3.