Death, forgiveness, and life

"The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).

There are two ways that the demands of divine justice can be met. As sinners, we can bear the eternal punishment for sin ourselves; or we can accept God's forgiveness and enjoy eternal life instead of death.

How does this forgiveness work? Does God simply wave a magic wand over sinners and say, "Okay, I forgive you. Your sins really don't matter after all?" Certainly not. That would make both justice and mercy trivial.

Just a few hours before His crucifixion Jesus was with His closest friends for a final meal together. They didn't know what was coming, but He did. It was time to lay some heavy theology on them – and us. Here's how He did it:

"And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:27, 28).

Death and forgiveness. His disciples knew the concept. They were familiar with the sacrificial rites that lay at the heart of the Jewish religion. The blood of lambs and goats and bullocks signified the price of forgiveness.

Those sacrifices had been repeated thousands upon thousands of times since the days of Moses. Every animal that died in that system of sacrifices pointed to Jesus, the Lamb of God. They were symbols. He was the reality. His blood was "poured out for many for forgiveness of sins."

Forgiveness is not free!

God can offer us forgiveness, but only because the full requirements of justice have been met in the blood of His Son. Let me put that another way: Forgiveness is available to us only because the penalty for sin has been paid for by the death of One who is Himself…God. (See John 1:1)

To understand what I just wrote requires an accurate concept of death. You may know someone who says that when you die you keep on living in another form. It would be easy to accept that idea if we cut ourselves loose from the holy Scriptures. But if we take the Bible as the source of truth about these things, we cannot accept the idea that "the wages of sin" is some other kind of life.

Living as a spirit in a spirit world does not satisfy the requirement of divine justice. Neither does living again in some reincarnated form. Death – nonexistence – the exact opposite of life – is the wages of sin.

Jesus carried the guilt of all mankind to the cross. In a supreme act of substitution, He took the place of every sinner – of all sinners who have ever lived. The death that He died was not simply a transition from one form life to another. It was the death that is the final punishment for sin. It was the death that you and I would die were it not for His saving act on the cross.

We can best understand the nature of that death by listening to His cry from the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (See Matthew 27:46.) Jesus experienced death as the ultimate separation from God– the source of life. That is how the price of our forgiveness was fully paid.

You can live forever, not because you have an immortal soul, but because the Son of God took the punishment for your sins.