Why being a fairly good, but imperfect person, is not enough to save you from Judgement. Essential Beliefs, #40, the Atonement.
To understand Christian salvation, we must understand law and guilt. Most laws are good. They were created to bring order and safety to a society. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Reduce speed to 40 kph in a school zone. List all ingredients in foods for sale. Wear seatbelts when you drive. Don’t text and drive. Report all income. Pay your taxes.
And yet we find ourselves irked by restraints on our desire to do whatever we want. Why? We are insipient law-breakers. We glance in all directions to see if there are any police observing as we glance at our phones while driving. We race across the road just too late to catch the yellow light.
Thousands of years ago, God gave Moses the ten commandments. Ten simple laws to define moral life. Ten moral fenceposts to define the circle of moral freedom within which we can live blessed and guilt-free lives. These laws became the basis of God’s covenant with the nation Israel. God’s chosen people were to obey his laws and thus demonstrate to all humanity the dimensions of a flourishing society. They failed. They repeatedly broke God’s laws.
Actually, we have all broken God’s good laws. The ten commandments merely codified and clarified what was already written on our consciences. Whether we are from a jungle tribe distant from advanced societies or live in a modern city, we instinctively know it is wrong to steal, kill, or lie.
Yet, in spite of what we know, we break God’s laws. We are all law-breakers. We expect to face justice if we are caught stealing a car. But do we realize that God, the Judge of all the earth, will hold us accountable for breaking his laws? And he is much more aware than any human judge of our duplicity, self-righteousness, and pride. He sees every secret sin. “Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Romans 14:12). When? “Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). The penalty we face for sinning against what is good and true and blessed is not a slap on the wrist. It is not a short stay in purgatory. It is not breaking rocks in some celestial quarry. “The wages [debt due] of sin is death” (Romans 9:23). The Bible explains that the punishment of death means eternal separation from God in the agonies of hell.
But out of his infinite mercy and grace, God provided a way for our infinite debt to be paid. How? Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many” (9:28).
As prophesied in the Old Testament, the Son of God had to become man to atone for human debt. As man, he did what we had not done, he perfectly kept the law. “When the time was fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Gal. 4:4,5). Jesus, born under the law, born as a man, came to redeem us from our guilt as law breakers.
Without his atonement we are without hope. We cannot pay our debt to God by trying to keep the law. Nothing we do can approximate 100% obedience. 51% obedience is not good enough to erase the guilt incurred by breaking 49% of the law. Nor 75%, nor 95%. “All who rely on observing the law [to please God and be forgiven] are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’ Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law” (Gal. 3:10,11).
Fortunately, Christ paid our debt by suffering in our place. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’ He redeemed us in order that …by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Galatians 3:13,14). We are saved from hell by faith in Jesus’s death on the cross for me, faith in His resurrection, faith in the Gospel, faith in his atoning sacrifice. Faith that He alone can cancel my debt. Faith that through the Holy Spirit he gives, I can begin a new life, a God-entered life.
No wonder we sing, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” And, “Jesus keep me near the cross.”
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