What is The Gospel? Part 3

God’s Answer: Section Two

The second piece of God’s plan to redeem His people was completed through Jesus Christ; the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. We have established that God is a just judge who will punish sin, that God has set aside a people for Himself, and that we are incapable of paying our sins without death. Christ is the bridge, Christ is the Savior, for there is no other name by which men can be saved. God sent His son to be the sacrificial lamb. As with Abraham and Isaac, Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, but he had faith that God would provide the sacrifice. God always provides the sacrifice. 

Why does Christ have to die to pay for my sins? God demands payment for sins, we cannot pay, someone must pay because the “wages of sin is death.” We do not have the power to take on the outpour of God’s righteous wrath for our sins and still stand. The sins of a man are too great for that man. Most of us, for a good part of our lives, have clawed and fought tooth and nail for every last ounce of pleasure and sin we want in our lives. We have sacrificed just about anything we could fathom to achieve the ends we desire, to set upon the throne of our own lives. The main sin of humanity is the sin of idolatry, we see the light of God in the world, and we hate God, for He is righteous, and our deeds are unclean. If Christ, the Lamb, does not wash you white from His blood, then you will never be clean, and the slavery of sin will forever be your pride. If I have not made that clear, forgive me, but the truth is that sinners are at home in their sin, they desire their jail cell, and only by the effectual calling of the Lord God will they ever see the cage that is their home.

This is where the love of God is shown, He decreed before the creation of the world that His son, Christ, would pay the penalty of our sins. We believers call this the Atonement, you may also hear it referred to as the propitiation for our sins. There are many different theological concepts of this, but I propose to you that Particular Redemption is the truth of the Bible, but this is neither here nor there for our discussion. The importance is to be placed on Christ’s work and not man’s theological treatises. Upon the Roman cross, the sins of God’s people were imparted to Christ, this is why we have the famous verse from Matthew 27:46, “Eli, Eli lema sabachthani?”. This is Christ saying, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”, in this moment we are seeing the actual spiritual anguish of Christ as the sins of man are putting a barrier between Him and the Father. As God is Holy and cannot be in fellowship with the stench of sin, when Christ took on our sin, He became separated from God. The pain of separation for Christ made the pain of the cross pale in comparison, for the perfect Son to be separated from the love of His righteous Father, we cannot comprehend. In this moment, as God divinely decreed, the wrath of God was poured out, fully, without hesitation; without deviation. The entirety of God’s wrath was emptied on Christ, and Christ drank the cup. 

This is the imputation of our sins to Him and the ransom for our souls, this is what He bore on the Cross, this was the death of death as John Owen would call it. As Christ bore His final breath and gave up His spirit, sin had been defeated. The defeat of sin means eternal life for the believer, God’s wrath was finished, and the ransom paid. There is now no more condemnation of sin for the people of God. Sin was not just defeated because Christ died, but because Christ LIVES. Christ rose from the grave, three days later just as the prophecies foretold. Death couldn’t defeat Him, and the grave couldn’t hold Him, that’s my King. It is the single most historically attested fact from the time, that Christ conquered death.

I want you to understand this, very clearly, listen. Sin has been defeated, every sin that God’s people have committed, every sin they are committing and will commit has been paid for. For the people of God, there is no more penalty of sin, Christ paid it all, and as the famous hymn goes, “Jesus paid it, all to thee I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow”.  This means that sin is no longer your master, sin no longer holds you in chains, and there is freedom in Christ! My friend, there is true freedom, repent and take hold of the faith, take hold of your freedom!

Romans 5:5-9

“And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might dare to die. But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” 

Part four will focus on “Our Hope” and how the perfect work of Christ holds us until the last days.

To Christ be the Glory.