We will talk about our sinful nature and the grace and mercy God rained on us to live a life free of sin.
Yesterday, we saw the painful history of humanity, how Adam and Eve’s sin led to rebellion and darkness and how God in his infinite love and mercy sent his Son to take away our darkness. Well today we are going to explore this exact phenomena What does it mean that Jesus died for us? Why doesn’t God just forgive us? These are the hard questions we must ask to truly understand God and Christianity.
It’s such a simple question, why did God have to send Jesus to save us? If he loves us, why doesn’t He just forgive us? Well to understand the reason for this question, we first have to understand what or who we are talking about when we say God and his attributes:
Now that we have explored a glimpse of God's attributes, it is important to acknowledge that our understanding is merely a fraction of the comprehensive nature of the divine. In fact, entire books have been dedicated to delving into the depths of a single attribute of the perfect God. However, let us now shift our focus to the concept of sin and its significance.
Sin in its dictionary definition means a violation of moral laws, principles, or commands. In the simplest sense, it just means doing that which is wrong. In that definition, I hope all of you who are reading this admit that you are a sinner. Even the most righteous of people have to admit that they have done and constantly do, perhaps many times per day, that which is wrong. Things that are wrong are clear in nature. God has put in us a moral law so that we would follow it. For the skeptics out there just think, in whatever relativistic way you may see right and wrong, there are undeniable wrongs. You cannot say in any situation that raping an innocent 6-year-old child is ever justifiable. There’s no cultural norm, there’s nothing that can make you ever say, yeah that’s morally okay.
Just to prove a point lets look at just a few of the commandments of God
Now the point is clear, we are all sinners, we all perform the wrong thing, we all have transgressed against the moral law and intern transgressed against the almighty God.
Okayyy, we’re all sinners. So what? So what we broke the moral law, the law that God put in us? What does that have anything to do with us? You listed above that God is merciful, why doesn’t He just let us live however we want, and forgive us?
Well herein lies the understanding of sin. We saw that we have broken the moral law, right? So let’s see what happens on Earth. Here in our judicial system what happens to someone who broke the law? Well its simple, he must pay right? If you withhold paying taxes to the government, you have now incurred a debt. You may pay that through a huge fine or maybe jail time. Whatever the case, you have now a debt you owe the government.
Why doesn’t our government just let the accountable people go? Don’t they care about people? Well it simply doesn’t work that way right, it just wouldn’t be fair to just release someone without them paying their due. Let’s say someone robbed your house clean and killed a family member of yours. Then the judge heard the robber’s case and saw that the robber was very sorry about what he had done and told the robber that he was forgiven and that he may leave. That’s ludicrous, that’s insane, that is the pinnacle of injustice, wouldn’t you think?
It’s the same exact thing with God. We have transgressed against everyone imaginable, we have broken the moral law both against God and our fellow humans. And this causes God to have this humongous dilemma between his two attributes, his everlasting love for us against his righteousness and his infinite mercy against his perfect justice.
As we saw in yesterday’s post, the wages of sin is death. That’s the fair thing to do, that’s the debt that God put on sin, whomever sins must pay in death! But then He loves us so much and He can’t see us perish so what’s He going to do? Just think about it the eternal God baffled between his two attributes. He wants to be just but the just thing would be for us to die. And He can’t do that because He loves us with a deep intensity beyond our contemplation. So what should He do?
How would it be fair for me to die for my sins if I’m a good person? I may have lied and may have done wrong and transgressed against the moral law, but I still try my best to do good, I give to the poor, I help the needy.
Well to understand this, let’s go back to our previous example of our justice system. Let’s say you ran a red light and you were caught by the traffic and was put forth to a judge. And when the judge asks you about how you’d plead, you answer “Look I ran the red light, but I was in a hurry, I had this big meeting. But also I’m a good person you know, I do , you can check.”
Now it doesn’t matter whether you’re Mother Teresa or not. The judge will look at you so weirdly asking what that has to do with anything, It’s unrelated! If you only broke one of the laws of the constitution but you have obeyed every other law, you are still guilty. You still have a debt you have to pay, whatever that punishment may be. So it’s good that you’re a good person but you still have gone against the moral law. You are still a sinner who deserves the punishment put for a sinner.
To reiterate, its not a problem of forgiveness; God doesn’t have a problem with forgiving you. Lets look at an example… lets say you parked your car at a cafe shop, and another car scratched your car and broke your rear-view mirror. And the person was very apologetic and was incredibly sorry, he was almost down to tears that that had happened. And looking at that, you forgave the person. Now it doesn’t matter if you forgave him or not, there’s still something there, there’s a debt incurred.
You forgave him but that’s only half of the story, there’s still a scratched car and a broken rear-view mirror someone has to fix. Either the person that caused the damage has to pay or you have to pay or someone has to pay. Now we saw we’ve incurred a debt, we need to pay a price. We need to pay with our life, we deserve to die.
In the above example, in the end you saw there was a debt incurred and someone had to pay it, either the guy who damaged your car or you? Here lies the grandness of God’s love, here lies his everlasting love. God’s solution was to pay the price himself. He paid off our debt, taking on what we rightfully deserved, so that none of us would face the death punishment.
But how was that fair? Well why can’t anyone just die on behalf of everyone’s sin, why did it have to be God himself? Well it’s simple, everyone has a debt to pay. Someone among us can’t just come up and say that they would take the sins of all other people without already paying their own debts. Everyone has a debt to pay, we simply are not without blemish, we can’t save anyone, we need to be saved ourselves. But Jesus knew no sin, He never had any debt to pay. He was perfect in every way. And since He didn’t have a debt to pay himself, He paid our debt. He took away what we deserved and took it all on Himself so that all of us may not be condemned. Oh! What love was demonstrated on the cross.
Imagine this, a God who loved people who hated him, we despised him, for God’s sake we put him on a freaking cross. We bruised every single body part of him, while insulting and mocking Him. He didn’t care, all He could say was “Father forgive them for they do not know what they’re doing!” He knew even after He went through all that, we’d still insult, disobey and go against Him and the moral law. Still knowing that we’d go against Him and even looking at the pain and suffering that was to be on Him, His love surmounted that, He became the lamb of God, He became the ship upon which our iniquity laid upon.
God has done His part, in fact He has done more than his part, He has done it all! He played his role and demonstrated His love abundantly. He has paid the price of our debts of Sin and has given us eternal life as a free gift. Oh! What wonderful news, oh what joyous news it is to know that the eternal God loves you and wants to spend eternity with you.
But you have to open the gift, He wont force you to open it if you don’t want to. He loves you too much than to force you to live with Him for eternity, you have to choose that for you! But it’s simple to open the gift, so what are you waiting for, just open it already! I promise you’ll love it more than anything, you’ll cherish it more than any other possession. It’ll give you more joy and peace than anything else.
Opening the gift is one prayer away, just one request away. God is here beside you eager to hold you in His arms. Go run into Him!
“But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” — 1 John 1:9
“’For the mountains may disappear and the hills may become dust, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. I will make peace with you, and it will never end.’ says the Lord, who has mercy on you.” — Isaiah 54:10
"Let the wicked forsake their way and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them turn to the Lord, and He will be gracious to them; and to our God, for He is merciful." — Isaiah 55:7
"If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved — for it is with the heart that one believes and is justified, and with the mouth that one professes and is saved." — Romans 10:9-10
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." — Revelation 3:20
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." — Matthew 11:28