John 1:29 NLT
[29] “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
In our human justice systems, the individual who owes a debt to society for a crime committed must pay the debt. It is almost unheard of that the debtor’s debt is paid by an innocent person.
Therefore, it is difficult for us to understand how God’s justice works.
In the beginning, God created Adam to be His son, made in His image, to live in perfect harmony with the three persons in the Godhead.
Luke 3:38 NLT
[38] “Kenan was the son of Enosh. Enosh was the son of Seth. Seth was the son of Adam. Adam was the son of God.”
All Adam’s offspring, then, are God’s sons.
Acts of the Apostles 17:26 NLT
[26]”From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries….
[28] For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
As God’s offspring, then, every person is accountable to God.
Firstly, Adam’s choice to throw off God’s authority over himself and the entire human race that followed, was unilateral and illegal. He did not have the right to go it alone because he was God’s possession. So, Adam’s race owes God an unpayable debt for their rebellion.
Psalms 24:1 NLT
[1] “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.”
As Creator, God owns everything including all humans. He has the right to do whatever He likes with humanity. As a just God, He has the right to punish rebellion with His method of choice.
God had only one option, as a holy God who cannot tolerate sin, to banish guilty people from His presence forever in a place of eternal punishment where all that God is in His love and goodness is excluded.
Habakkuk 1:13 NLT
[13] “But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil.”
Since God’s essence is love, to lose His human family forever was intolerable. Humans are an essential part of His master plan for the universe. To obliterate the entire race would destroy His eternal plan for a human family just like His Son to reign with Him over the universe.
In a way incomprehensible to us, God is in the eternal “now” so that He views the entire expanse of time as now. His rescue plan for mankind forms part of His master plan. We can never know both God’s justice and His mercy without His plan to rescue people from their self-inflicted punishment. He formulated His plan to rescue fallen man before He even created the earth and its inhabitants. He saw the end from the beginning before the beginning of time.
1 Peter 1:20 NLT
[20] “God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.”
Revelation 13:8 NLT
[8] “And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.”
There was, is, and never will be a person on earth who has never sinned, i.e., never disobeyed God, not even in one tiny detail of His requirements for being His son.
Who, then, would be eligible to take the place of sinners, to receive the full punishment for all the guilty of all time so that the guilty could be exonerated and declared innocent?
1 Timothy 3:16 NLT
[16] “Without question, this is the great mystery of our faith: Christ was revealed in a human body and vindicated by the Spirit. He was seen by angels and announced to the nations. He was believed in throughout the world and taken to heaven in glory.”
This “mystery” is not an unsolved problem but a truth hidden until God’s chosen time to reveal it to His people.
Although God planned redemption before creation, He only hinted at His plan through His prophets in the Old Covenant. The clearest picture of His plan came through Isaiah.
Isaiah 52:13-15 NLT
[13] “See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. [14] But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. [15] And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about.”
Isaiah 53:2-6 NLT
[2] “My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. [3] He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. [4] Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! [5] But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. [6] All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.”
Yet, despite the clarity and detail of this prophetic vision, God’s own people rejected Him. The willfully blind will never recognise the truth.
God’s plan was so outrageous and so risky that it is unthinkable to those who cannot fathom His justice. Since no human on earth could qualify to pay the the debt for the world’s sin, He would come to earth Himself, as an ordinary person born in the normal way through the womb of a woman, but without a human father. He would live a perfect life, subject and obedient to the Father in everything, and then die as a sinner in the place of sinners.
Hebrews 2:16-17 NLT
[16] “We also know that the Son did not come to help angels; he came to help the descendants of Abraham. [17] Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people.”
Hebrews 9:14 NLT
[14] “Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.”
Romans 3:25-26 NLT
[25]”For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, [26] for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.”
The death of Jesus, the God-man, is a fact of history but how does it apply to and affect us, sinful humans?
The Old Covenant’s demands, i.e., that the people “do” and “live by” all the regulations about sacrifice and obedience to laws and rituals, were swept away and replaced by one simple response to what God has done through His rescue plan.
Romans 10:9 NLT
[9] “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 5:1-2 NLT
[1] “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. [2] Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”
It’s no longer “do” but “done”. It’s no longer “do” but “believe” because “it is finished!” Through Jesus, the Father is both just and the justifier of those who believe.