In Romans 3, the Apostle Paul speaks of the death of Christ as revealing the righteousness of God. How is that? How could Jesus dying on a Roman cross possibly have anything to do with God being righteous? It did serve to prove that man was unrighteous by carrying out the cruel crucifixion of the One utterly undeserving of such an end. But how did Jesus Christ on the Cross demonstrate the righteousness of God? Herein lies one of the most critical yet least understood aspects of biblical Christianity. It’s all about sin, justice, and the death that justice demands because of sin. It’s a very ugly and distasteful business, and, for the most part, it’s very rationale is completely lost on most of humanity, even here in the western world. People just don’t get it. But God is an absolutely just, holy, and righteous Being.
But wait! Isn’t He also loving and forgiving? Indeed, He is. That’s why Christ was on that Cross where He did not deserve to be. He was there because He, of all humanity, was the only One qualified to be there. Only He who knew no sin was eligible to make the payment in full for those who were sinners; that is, for the sins of the whole world, every last person in it, all of whom were unlike Christ in that in Adam all sin and all die. It was the death, the substitution of this utterly worthy, holy One that balanced the scales of God’s justice. Christ dying for man’s sin is the very thing that enables God to forgive man’s sin because more than adequate payment was made by the crucified Christ. This is the reason Paul could say that in the death of Christ therein was the righteousness of God revealed. Christ was on the Cross because God is righteous, and Christ was on the Cross because Christ was righteous. The main reason man just does not comprehend the necessity of the sin debt of humanity being paid is because He has a flawed sense of justice. He expects his fellow man to give and receive justice, but somehow God should overlook the need for the same. Man is unaware or ignores the fact that it is God Himself who is the very Originator of the concept of justice, and He surely will not, then, be One who abrogates the very principle of justice He has Himself instituted. No, justice is served, and God’s character and righteousness remain unsullied because His own Son, Jesus Christ, met all the demands God’s righteousness required.
This is why it is such good news and called the “Gospel”. Christ died for sin. God is satisfied with the righteous payment made by His willing Son. The way of access to God, then, is clearly open and available to all who will embrace Christ and His payment as their own substitute. Man merely needs to respond to God’s righteousness and the payment Christ made to satisfy that righteousness by exercising his trust and faith in who Jesus Christ is and what He did.
CC-06-08
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