Week 8 - Thursday

Jesus Christ Our Redeemer

being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. (Romans 3:24-25a)

Because every person sins and falls short of God's standard of righteousness, God could have chosen to condemn all mankind. But thank God He didn't do that. Instead God decided to provide a way for people to be saved. God designed a plan by which they could be justified. Justified is from the Greek word dikaioo, which means to declare something or someone to be right. Justification is given by God as a gift. By it's very definition, a gift is something that is unearned and unmerited by those who receive it. No one deserves it and there is nothing anyone can do to earn it. Justification is given freely by God. It is completely by His grace. The word grace (charis) means good will, loving-kindness and favor. Because God is good, loving and kind, He gives salvation freely to those who believe in Jesus. Just because salvation is a free gift though, doesn't mean it didn't cost anyone anything. Someone had to pay the price so unrighteous sinners could be right with God. The one who paid the price was Jesus Christ. It wasn't cheap either. The price for our redemption was His blood, because without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sin (Heb. 9:22).

Sin is a lot more serious than most people realize. It's so serious that the penalty for sin is death (Rom. 6:23). The reason all people die is because everyone has sinned. Many people have a hard time understanding how a loving God could be so harsh. Death seems like a rather severe penalty for something everyone has done. But because God is perfectly holy, He also has an intense hatred of sin. God is so holy and hates sin so much that He cannot allow anything but the most severe penalty of all for it. The first time you sinned, God could have taken your life but He didn't. Now you have not just sinned once, but countless times. If you were to die now your death would only pay the penalty for one of your sins. Even if you had died the first time you sinned, your death wouldn't have done anything to make you righteous. In order to be righteous, you would have had to have never sinned at all. Jesus was sinless though. He faced every temptation we do, but He never sinned (Heb. 4:14-15). That's why His death is able to pay the penalty for our sins. He didn't have any of His own to pay for. Because Jesus was a man, He could be our substitute and die for our sins. Because He was also God, He was able to live a sinless life. Have you ever wondered why God would allow His own Son to suffer a horrible death on a cross? God could have stopped it if He had wanted to. But God not only allowed it to happen, He planned it all ahead of time. Because of God's holiness and justice, someone pay the penalty for the sins of all the people who were going to be saved. God poured out His wrath, over all those sins, on Jesus Christ. He treated Jesus as if He was the one who had committed them all. That would be like if everytime anyone in the world bought something, it got charged to your credit card and then you had to pay the bill. God charged all the sins, of every person who would ever be saved, to Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross He paid the penalty for all of them. No ordinary death could have done that. It required an extraordinary sacrifice. It required the sacrifice of God's own Son. This didn't happen in some hidden place either. Jesus died on the cross publicly, on the hill of Calvary. He died as a propitiation for our sins. The word propitiation (hilasterion) means an appeasement or satisfaction. With the sacrifice of Christ, God is satisfied. God is satisfied that the penalty for all the sins that every believer would ever commit, has been paid in full. Jesus Christ opened the way for the salvation of all mankind. Now God calls people everywhere to put their faith in Jesus and receive forgiveness for their sins.

Readings for today: 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:8-9; 1 John 4:10; 1 John 2:2; Col. 1:20