Nothing about what happened on the cross was fair. Jesus Christ presented Himself before the Father and pled guilty to every sin we’ve ever committed. God treated His own Son as the greatest criminal in the universe, pouring out his righteous judgment and punishing Christ for our wrongdoing. And at the end of it all, wretched sinners like us are now treated as though we’d lived the perfect life of Jesus Christ. We get to live without any fear of judgment for any sin in our past or future.
The cross wasn’t fair, and it shows how incredible, merciful, and loving our God truly is.
Christ in the Old Testament
But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all to fall on Him. (Isaiah 53:5-6)
Isaiah points us forward to the coming Messiah. Israel was familiar with their sins being placed on a lamb whose blood would satisfy God. Yet they knew the blood of animals could never permanently take away their guilt. They were looking forward to the Savior would would take the punishment and death that they deserved, knowing that through His sacrifice their record would be wiped clean and their relationship with God would be healed.
Fulfilled in the New Testament
and He Himself brought our sins in His body up on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness; by His wounds you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)
For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Romans 5:6-10)
We may not often think about what actually happened on the cross. We know Christ died as a sacrifice and rose again. We know that trusting in Christ to pay for our sin is what saves us from God’s wrath. Yet if we had to sit down and explain it, we may not fully understand why Christ was the only One who could save us, and why the events on the cross should make us fall to our knees in worship.
God is perfectly good and powerful. Because of that, He cannot allow evil to go unpunished. Whenever we do anything that breaks His law, it goes on our criminal record. God doesn’t punish us right away, because every crime we commit deserves the death penalty. However, God promises that because He’s good He will punish the guilty. And all of us, no matter how good we may think we are, deserve that punishment.
God could never overlook evil, and out of love He sent Jesus Christ to take our Heavenly Father’s righteous judgment. At the cross, Christ took the criminal record of every single one of His people, erased our names, and put His name instead. As God looked upon Christ, He saw every single lie, angry word, lustful thought, theft, blasphemy, and any other crime we might ever commit. The Father saw His perfect Son and poured out the punishment for the millions of crimes He saw.
The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36)
A good and perfect judge will only punish crime once. When God punished Christ in our place, He considered our criminal record clean. Our debt to God was paid in full. By taking God’s wrath in our place, Christ made sure there was no wrath left for us.
Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
God demands perfection, and we all know we’re incapable of it. But when our perfect Savior took our evil upon Himself, He replaced it with His perfection. Christ didn’t just take our crimes upon Himself, but He put our names on His spotless record. When the Father looks at us, He sees the perfection of Jesus Christ.
Christ giving us His perfection doesn’t make us incapable of sin. God may see us as perfect, but out of love He still corrects us when we stray. Nothing we can do will ever bring the wrath of God upon us, but through the Holy Spirit we are still slowly killing the sin in our lives.
Understanding all of this, is there any doubt that we should hate sin? Those things we think will bring us some form of satisfaction are what Christ was punished for. Those areas where we feel like we have no control have no power over us because Christ has set us free.
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)
When we sin, we do it willingly. We choose to place more crimes on Jesus Christ. We allow the lies of the world to become more important to us than the beauty of our Savior.
Instead, let us never forget the horrible, unfair reality of the cross. Christ took our punishment so that we could live in righteousness. The sin that seems to offer life and satisfaction comes at the cost of death to our Savior. Instead, let us surrender everything to the One who died so that we can truly live.
