The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"How Serious?"
"The cross of Calvary most reveals both the unsearchable measure of God's love and the dark sinfulness of sin."
How serious is sin? This serious.
"He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).
Were unbelief and disobedience to God a lesser offense, we would expect to find a more minimal consequence as He worked to make our redemption possible. The person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ tell us plainly how horrid rebellion against God actually is. The One who "loved righteousness and hated iniquity" was "made… to be sin for us" (Hebrews 1:9). The mind stills and the heart bows in contemplation of such grace and its revelation of both God's love and sin's barbarity.
First, our Lord became human in order to serve as the only possible mediator between ourselves and God. This constitutes a sacrifice beyond all comprehension. What would an infinite, eternal Being experience when enrobed with finite, temporal humanity? We will never know. "Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh" (I Timothy 3:16). The incarnation of the Lord Jesus tells us much about the profound evil of sin, in light of the condescension our Lord willingly embraced to make possible His necessary human death for human unrighteousness (John 1:14). "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Timothy 2:5).
Of course, the cross of Calvary most reveals both the unsearchable measure of God's love and the dark sinfulness of sin. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" graces us in direct proportion to His righteous hatred of sin (John 3:16). To make salvation from sin possible, our Heavenly Father executed judgment on His beloved Son, again, "made to be sin for us." Sin had to be judged, and salvation offered in such a way that God can be both "just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). Through Christ and His sacrifice, God maintains His integrity, while freely bestowing His mercy on those who receive His grace in Christ. Yes, the cross tells us of a love that "passeth knowledge," and of "the wages of sin" that constitute a far more serious and consequential death than we fully realize (Ephesians 3:19; Romans 6:23).
We look to "the King of righteousness" in order to better perceive the horror of unrighteousness (Hebrews 7:2). The humanity He embraced for us and the cross He suffered for us tell us the deadly nature and consequence of sin, making such immeasurable grace necessary. At the highest cost to Himself, God loved us by judging sin in the only way possible to make our salvation available. We fall before Him in wonder, rejoicing in the light of grace that shines in the person and work of Christ for us, and also seeing more clearly the dark seriousness of sin exposed thereby.
"Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear."
(Isaiah 59:2)
"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
(Romans 5:20-21).
Weekly Memory Verse
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
(Psalm 23:6)
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