As Christians, our entire hope hangs on the reality of who Christ is. We’ve discussed His divine and human natures, His real physical body, and the perfect life He lived. We all know this matters, but why?
The only perfect substitute
All aspects of Christ, from His two natures to His perfection, had to be just as they were for Him to be an acceptable sacrifice for our sins. God’s command for the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament was sufficient to cover the people’s sins for a time, but could never serve as a once-and-for-all appeasement (Hebrews 10:1). God is just, and thus He requires a just payment for sin.
To be in a good standing with God, we must live perfectly. Not because He’s some furrow-browed grump who doesn’t like people having fun, but because He understands the reality of sin and abhors it. In following our own desires, we’ve made ourselves enemies of God (James 4:4).
The price of our law-breaking is impossible for us to pay. Each crime we commit is like adding a life sentence. Nothing we do on our own will mend the relationship we’ve broken. Even our attempts at good are just another way to feed our pride. The only way for God’s justice to be satisfied is for us to suffer the punishment we’re due (Romans 6:23).
To avoid this, a person must keep all of God’s commands. Lying, disobedience to parents, anger… any one of these is enough to demand punishment. As we know from experience, there’s simply no way we could have done it on our own.
But Christ, the son of God, did. He kept the law perfectly, never bringing the Father’s wrath upon Himself (John 8:29). God was able to look favorably upon Him, seeing no stains of sin. His perfect innocence is the only thing that made Christ able to take our guilt.
But what actually happened on the cross?
Christ’s entire life was pointing to the cross. For God’s perfect plan to be carried out, Christ had to suffer and die. Yet it wasn’t merely His physical death that somehow bought our freedom from sin. Christ took, quite literally, each of our sins upon Himself and accepted the wrath of God that we deserved (1 Peter 2:24).
Christ’s humanity and perfection made this possible. The reason an animal offering was never sufficient is because it wasn’t an equal trade. An animal was taking the punishment for a human. It suspended a person’s sentence, but it never completely removed sins (Hebrews 10:4).
For God’s perfect wrath to be satisfied, a proper sacrifice had to be made. Yet this sacrifice couldn’t be any human, but instead one whom didn’t need to pay for their own sins. Had Christ sinned even once, He would have to pay for Himself and would be completely unable to stand as our substitute.
Yet because God became like us, with all our weaknesses and limitations, He was able to stand in our place and satisfy God’s requirements for justice (Hebrews 2:17). God looked at Christ as though He’d committed every act of lying, adultery, hatred, cruelty… the Father looked at His perfect son as though He were a vile, sin-loving creature like the rest of us. And in that moment, God took every ounce of wrath we deserve and poured it out on Christ.
Gospel – the good news of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection
We don’t pay off a credit card and continue making payments. We don’t serve time in prison, then go back to serve it a second time. It would be unjust for us to still be punished for what’s been paid for. In pouring out His wrath on Christ, God has none left for us. Our sins aren’t magically erased, but they’re absolutely paid in full.
Yet the impossible wonder of the cross doesn’t stop there. Christ didn’t just take our putrid sin from us. He replaced it with His righteousness, allowing God to look at us as though we’d lived His perfect life (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are no longer strangers and enemies of God, but we’ve been adopted into His own family (John 1:12).
Of course, our hope isn’t just in Christ’s death. He didn’t just go to the grave, but conquered it as only God could. Rising on the third day of His death, our savior finished God’s plan of salvation (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). And in the one able to conquer sin and death, whose people are given to Him by the Father, we find our hope and security in an eternal life spent with our God (Romans 8:38-39).
The gravity of salvation
When we spend years in the church, it’s easy to forget what we were saved from. We sing songs and read our Bibles, but we too easily become comfortable. We forget the incredible privilege of calling Him “our savior.” Yet when we remember what we were and all the depravity we repented from, the very reality of Christ’s love and sacrifice fills us with awestruck wonder.
The truth of who we are makes it no surprise that we can do nothing to earn salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9). Christ didn’t come because we just needed a little help, or because we’re just so awesome that He wanted us as friends (Romans 5:8). Christ had to come rescue an undeserving people who were little more than corpses, unable to conjure any form of good on their own (Ephesians 2:1).
When we talk about asking Jesus to save us from our sins, that’s not a statement we use lightly. In those few words are thousands of crimes against a holy God, wiped away by the blood of Christ. An eternity spent in Hell completely reversed in a single moment. It’s the shared experience of God’s former enemies, now called sons and daughters.
Faith in Christ seems like such a simple thing. And in a way, it is. Salvation requires no work on our part, and praise God for that! Yet it’s not as simple and impersonal as saying a few words and receiving a “get out of Hell free” card. It’s an acknowledgement of our broken condition, a recognition that we can’t save ourselves, and the humility to cry out to the only person who can (John 14:6).
