Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Today's "Dial Daily Bread" is a special message for youth (but adults are invited to read too).
Why was Christ punished for our sins? He was innocent.
In school, Billy does something wrong and must be punished. But the teacher decides to punish Johnny instead of Billy, when Johnny is innocent. He has done nothing wrong. Is this fair?
Children have a keen sense of justice. Somehow they get the idea that God the Father is angry with sinners, but He knows that if He punishes them for their sins, they will perish. So, the common idea is that He lets His hot wrath fall on an innocent man instead, on Jesus. So Jesus dies on the cross instead of us sinners. That way, God can forgive us. Is this fair?
The answer is important:
(1) God did not kill His Son Jesus; people did.
(2) God was not angry with His Son Jesus, neither was He angry with us. He was angry because sin brings misery, agony, and death.
(3) God does not hate the sinner, but He hates the sin.
(4) When God forgives a sin, He does not merely pardon it and excuse it so that we go on doing it again and again. True forgiveness means taking the sin away so the sinner won't do it again. Therefore true forgiveness is what teaches us to actually hate sin.
(5) While it is true that Christ died to satisfy the claims of the law, which says that death is the punishment for sin, His death does more than that: it shows us how sinful we are by nature, and it shows us what sin can do--it can murder the Son of God. That's terrible! When we see this, our selfish human hearts are actually changed. We are reconciled to God, that is, our enmity is changed to true friendship. We become members of a new family--the family of God.
(6) When we see the cross of Christ we see that He not only died instead of us, He died as us. In 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul says, "If One died for all, then all died." You identify with Christ as He dies on that cross.
And (7), from then on you want to live for Him.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: 1994 Phone Message.
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Wieland.
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