1250. Christ's Death

Christ's Death

"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom_5:6).

God saw man's lost condition and in love, He gave Christ to die. Thus we approach our third step–the death of God's Son; we are to consider the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb kept up for the slaughter.

1. Christ's death was for the ungodly. The very man who said, "I know not the Lord" might have been saved had he received the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we have the idea that God, being angry at sin, and having shut the sinner out Of His presence, needs to be appeased by the sinner. In this belief the heathen in India have thrown thousands of babies into the Ganges, in order to appease an angry God.

There are people in our own land who are forever counting their beads saying their Ava Marias, or going through some other act of self-negation, in order to appease the wrath of an angry God.

We have heard the story of the man who had in anger driven his son from home. Years later the dying wife and mother as her last request, pled with her husband for the return of her son. The father wired the boy. He came and entering the room, he stood upon one side of the bed, and the unrelenting father stood upon the other side. Finally the mother took the hand of the father, and the hand of the son, and clasping them together between her two hands, she died. Over the dead body of wife and mother, the father and the son became reconciled.

This story in no way expresses the doctrine of expiation. Christ in dying did not reach up and take the hand of an angry God, and then reach down and take the hand of the sinner and thus make peace. It was God Himself Who reached down through the Crucified that He might get hold of the ungodly. The doctrine of expiation does not mean that either Jesus Christ or the sinner is seeking to reconcile God. It does mean that God, through the expiatory death of Christ, has made it possible to reconcile the sinner unto Himself.

Christ is our "Daysman." He is the One Who goes between God and the sinner and makes possible the sinner's approach to God. Christ said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." What we need to remember, however, is that Christ the "Daysman," was sent by the Father to do that very thing. The whole plan of redemption originated with God.

2. Christ's death was for sinners. In dying for sinners, Christ died a substitutionary death. Christ did more than throw a rope to a drowning man. He did more than risk His life that He might save another, Christ gave up His life. He died the Just for the unjust. He suffered for sins. God put upon Him the iniquity of us all. We studied a moment ago how God through Christ's death made approach possible for the ungodly. We now are studying how God through Christ's death made redemption possible for the sinners. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. This is the way sinners are saved.

3. Christ's death was for enemies. We have discussed the doctrine of expiation; we have discussed the doctrine of substitution; we now discuss the doctrine of reconciliation.

"Scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die." But Christ died for us when we were enemies. When we were enemies "we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." Christ is our reconciliation. The one who was an enemy is received over into God's family as a friend. The whole enmity of sin was slain when Christ went to the Cross.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR