Often I get questions regarding faith, Jesus, the Gospel etc. Sometimes I use these posts to answer questions should someone ask similar questions of you. Today I want to answer one specific question I was asked by a guy who’s very close to becoming a follower of Jesus. He’s trying to reconcile his disobedience with the forgiveness of God. His question How can God forgive me when I’ve done so much wrong? This question is the heart of the Gospel, another reason why Jesus is so important.

My answer: If God were not JUST, there’d be no demand for Jesus to suffer and die. If God were not the definition of LOVE, there’d be no willingness for Jesus to suffer and die. But God is both JUST and LOVING, therefore his love is willing to meet the demands of his justice.

Deuteronomy 6:5 says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might”. Jesus said this was the greatest commandment. Anything less than complete love for God is sin. When we think of sin we consider the things we do, those specific bad things each of us do and even those good things we know we should do but we don’t do…we call that stuff sin. While it may be easy to come up with a list of “sins”, whatever list we develop isn’t the issue. The sins we might list are merely symptoms of a much deeper crisis.

The root of all sin is…pride; pride ultimately exhibits itself in the “things” we do. Pride was the first sin of Lucifer in heaven, the root of Eve’s deception and Adam’s sin in the garden. Pride is the fruit of a dark seed planted in our hearts. The ultimate cause of sin is our lack of love for God. God says love me with everything you are, you have, you do. The crime we’ve committed is we love other things more than we love God.

Sin dishonors God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences. The result, all of those things we do or do not do is disobedient behavior. The Bible in Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. We glorify what we enjoy most and often it’s not God.

Sin’s not a small issue, because it’s not against a small god! The seriousness of an insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted. Think of the difference in reaction if one were to insult a homeless man compared to the reaction if one insulted the President of the United States. The Creator of the universe is infinitely worthy of respect, admiration and loyalty. Therefore, failure to love him is not trivial, it's treason. It defames God and destroys the plan he’s created for mankind.

Since God is just, he doesn’t sweep this crime under the rug but executes Holy wrath against it. Every sin ever committed against God will be punished to the maximum because this sin deserves to be punished on the sinner or someone in the sinner’s place. Romans 6:23 says; “the wages of sin is death…” There’s a holy curse hanging over all sin and humanity.

If God didn’t punish our lack of total devotion, that would be unjust. The demeaning of God throughout all creation and eternity would be endorsed. It’d say God’s not worthy of all worship, respect, love, and honor. But he does deserve all worship, respect, love, and honor, he’s the only one who deserves it!! If he didn’t justly punish our lack of obedience to this truth, a lie would reign at the core of reality.

There’s a curse hanging over all humanity but the love of God doesn’t rest with this curse. He’s not content to show continuous undiluted wrath, no matter how holy and just it is. Therefore God sent Jesus his Son to absorb this wrath and bear the curse for all who trust him. Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

God removed all the wrath through his plan of substitution. God substituted himself! The substitute, Jesus Christ, doesn’t just cancel, hold off or shield the wrath; he absorbs it and diverts it from us to himself. God’s wrath is just, and it was spent completely on Jesus.

In the Garden God killed animals and made clothes out of skins to cover Adam and Eve’s naked shame. Abraham killed the ram he sacrificed in place of Isaac his son. In Egypt the Passover lamb was killed to protect Jewish families from the judgment of the death angel. Millions of animals were slaughtered as sacrifices while Israel was under the system of the law. All of these sacrifices were symbols of the ultimate sacrifice of the one true Lamb of God, the substitute, Jesus Christ. He as the infinite God in human flesh absorbed, diverted and removed the infinite curse of sin and wrath from mankind.

The one sinned against, God, is infinite and eternal, therefore sin against him is infinite and eternal. This sin requires an infinite and eternal wrath or punishment to satisfy the requirement for justice. The punishment fits the crime. Jesus is infinite and eternal, as such he, if punished, could absorb an infinite eternal wrath. He’s the perfect choice to be the substitute for mankind.

If Jesus were to sin he’d have received for his own sin the same infinite and eternal wrath pronounced on all mankind. He would’ve been punished for his sin just as one human is punished for his own sin. A sinner can’t receive punishment for someone else’s sin because if he’s punished he’s receiving the payment for his own rebellion. Jesus loved God infinitely and completely, therefore he didn’t deserve punishment; yet in the plan of God, Jesus submitted himself, bore all of the infinite wrath and judgment God could bring to bear.

Because of who Jesus is, he could absorb all of the wrath and punishment for all the sin of all humanity. He didn’t deserve punishment as he loved God with all his heart, soul and might all of his days. God in delivering the punishment on Jesus could declare this act as satisfying his eternal right and requirement to be just. Jesus took all as it was poured out upon him, absorbed it and removed it from mankind, eternally. This provides a way for God to be infinitely just upon Jesus while infinitely merciful to us who should be punished.

Let us not trifle with God or trivialize his love. We’ll never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us. But when by grace, we waken to our unworthiness; then 1 John manifests reality in our hearts. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”