As Christians, Jesus Christ should be the most treasured, the most prized, the most savored reality in our existence Jesus was able to pay for the sins of the world and declare His people righteous because of his death on the cross. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). The great Puritan John Owen writes concerning Christ:

“That which we affirm is that our sins were so transferred on Christ as that thereby he became responsible to God and liable to punishment in the justice of God for them. He was perfectly innocent in himself; but took our guilt on him, or our liability to punishment for sin. He may be said to be the greatest debtor in the world, who never borrowed nor owed one farthing on his own account, if he became guarantor for the greatest debt of others . . .”[1]

It was not enough for Jesus to simply die on the cross; He had to die as one who was free of all sin and impurity. This meant that Jesus had to live every moment of His life in perfect submission to His Father. This does not mean, however, that Jesus was not tempted. The Bible tells us that Jesus was “tempted in every way yet without sin” (Hebrew 4:15). Jesus was the only man that ever lived who never fell short of God’s glory. No other man or woman in history has been able (or ever will be able) to live for God’s glory to the degree that Jesus lived for His Father’s. Every motive, thought, attitude, and action of Jesus was perfectly righteous. Therefore, Jesus went to the cross as a perfect substitute. When He was nailed to the cross, the blood that ran from His body was completely pure and undefiled from sin and unrighteousness. As God poured out His wrath on the Son, His anger was appeased and His righteousness demands were eternally satisfied. Every person that believes in and trusts Christ for salvation has the privilege of having their sins forgiven and is able to receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (II Corinthians 5:21).

The dual aspect of this truth is rarely recognized or understood: God requires not only that our sins must be forgiven to enter heaven, but He also demands that participants of His eternal blessings must be 100% righteous. When we believe upon Christ, the righteousness of His life is given to us. This is what many of the Protestant reformers referred to as an “alien righteousness.” When we receive Christ we receive all that He lived and died for. We are able to receive what we could never produce on our own, namely the righteousness of God. This is why the Cross is so beautiful. Jesus, the Son of God, lived a perfectly righteous life and died a horrifically painful death so that we can have fellowship with God.

How often do you ponder this glorious reality? Are you guilty of living a Christless, crossless life? Maybe the cross is merely something that you valued when you first gave your life to Christ, but now it has become something that has faded into the background behind the so-called glories of the American dream? It is easy to allow the truths of the cross to pass us by in the busyness of life. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that the only thing that really matters is Christ, His cross, and the life that flows from it in a culture that is utterly God-hating. I encourage you to stop and ponder the cross. Ponder Jesus as your substitute. He is our sin-bearer and our righteousness. Without Him we are nothing.

Pastor Scott Adams

[1] John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith Through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ Explained, Confirmed and Vindicated, (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), p. 200. (original, 16–).

Tags: anger, blessing, blood, death, faith, family, guilt, heaven, history, mission, pain, salvation, sin, submission, trust, truth, woman

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.