THREE PICTURES OF SIN

PSALM 51

Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight

(Psalm 51:4).

David confessed in Psalm 51 that ultimately his sin was against God alone. To be sure, David had wronged Uriah, Bathsheba, and, in fact, the entire nation of Israel. But what he had done was wrong only because it violated God’s standards, not because Uriah or Bathsheba did not like it. Ultimately, God was the offended party, for David’s actions violated God’s holy standard of righteousness.

The Bible provides us three dimensions of the kingdom of God, and therefore three dimensions of sin. We speak of the church as marked by three elements: persons (government), word, and sacrament. Sin is opposed to each of these, being enmity, debt, and crime.

First, sin is enmity. It is alienation between us and the persons of the Godhead. We are at war and need reconciliation. It is not just that we are at war with God; more importantly, God is at war with us. God must be reconciled before we can be. In the atonement Jesus plays the role of mediator, reconciling the broken relationship between us and God.

Second, sin is debt. It leaves us owing God because we have failed to perform what He requires. This dimension of sin focuses on the Word. God’s Word tells us what is required of us. We have not measured up. We are unprofitable servants, and we have incurred debts. Because we cannot pay these debts, we have been sold into slavery to sin. In the atonement Jesus becomes our surety. He backs up our debts. In fact, He pays them all. Jesus pays our debts and redeems us from slavery to sin.

Finally, sin is crime. It is an assault on God’s throne. It brings about His legal sentence of death. But Jesus died in our stead. In the atonement, He became our substitute. And in the sacraments, Christ communicates His life to us. Through Christ, God imparts His blessing to us, who deserve only His curse.

Because of our enmity with God, Jesus became the mediator to reconcile us. Because of our debt, Jesus became the surety to redeem us. Because of our crime, Jesus became the victim to substitute for us.

CORAM DEO

Lamentations 4–5

2 Kings 25:22–30

Meditate on these three dimensions of sin and redemption. As you go through your day, think of your sin in terms of enmity, debt, and crime. Then think through and thank God for Jesus’ role as mediator, surety, and victim to make right our relationship with our heavenly Father.

For further study: Isaiah 59:12–14 • Ezra 9:5–7 • John 6:43–51

wednesday

july

21

Christ Our Ransom

MARK 10:35–45

For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many

(Mark 10:45).

Today we want to expand on our triune picture of the atonement by focusing on three related concepts: ransom, expiation, and propitiation. The word ransom means basically the same thing as redemption. It focuses on the idea that Jesus paid the price to set us free from slavery. One question the church has wrestled with throughout its history is, To whom did Jesus pay this ransom?

Some have said that Jesus paid the price to Satan, for Satan holds humanity in bondage. This is fundamentally false. We can see this when we consider the Exodus from Egypt. Pharaoh held the people in bondage, but the Passover lamb was displayed before God. Pharaoh was paid nothing. It was God who had to be appeased. This means it was really God who held Israel in slavery. Pharaoh was just His taskmaster.

It is the same with Satan. Satan does not own sinful humanity. He is the taskmaster under God’s supervision. Job 1–2 show us that Satan can do nothing without God’s permission. If we are to be freed from slavery, God must be paid what we owe Him. When God is satisfied, He destroys Satan, setting us free from the evil overlord.

Ransom has to do with paying debts and setting us free. But how is the debt paid? Jesus did not pay money to God. He paid the debt by expiation and propitiation. These two words refer not to two different things but to two aspects of the death of Christ. Propitiation has to do with our personal alienation from God. Jesus propitiated, or appeased, His Father’s wrath, reconciling us to Him. Expiation has to do with our crime of rebellion. Jesus expiated our crime by dying in our place.

We can see that there is an order to these three aspects of Jesus’ work. Jesus’ death (1) paid for our crime, which also (2) paid our debt, and this double payment (3) satisfies the Father. In bigger words, then, Jesus’ (1) expiation provides (2) our ransom payment and (3) propitiates God’s wrath. The result is that we have (3) reconciliation with God and consequently (2) redemption from bondage to sin and (1) a new life under God.

CORAM DEO

Daniel 1–4

Do you fear Satan? He is a powerful being who seeks your suffering. Be comforted in knowing that he has no ultimate authority or power over you. Remember that he is only a creature, under the sovereign rule of your Redeemer. And give God thanks for planning and accomplishing your redemption.

For further study: Psalms 32:1–2;130 • Ephesians 1:1–10

thursday

july

22

Justification by Faith

2 CORINTHIANS 5:16–6:2

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God

(2 Corinthians 5:21).

Our rebellion against God has produced in us what theologians call “total depravity. “This concept does not mean that we are as bad as we could possibly be, because we can always find something new to rebel against in the infinity of God. Rather, total depravity means that we are depraved at the core of our being and that our depravity affects every area of our life. It also means that we get worse and worse over time as our depravity works its way more and more into our hearts. Even when we do good deeds, we don’t do them with the right motivation, because we don’t do them in a context of love for God.

For God to save us, to deal with our depravity and bring us back into a right relationship with Himself, two things need to happen. First, somebody has to pay the price for our sins, and second, somebody has to provide God’s righteousness for us. Jesus did these two things for us, and we call this the doctrine of double imputation. To impute means “to count as and treat as.” Jesus’ perfect life was imputed to us, which means His righteousness was counted as ours and treated as ours by God. When we stand before God’s bar of justice, God can pronounce us just and righteous, because He will be looking at Jesus’ perfect life. At the same time, our sins were imputed to Jesus, which means that our sins were counted as Jesus’ and treated as Jesus’ by God.

The imputation of our sin to Jesus can make us innocent, but it cannot make us righteous. Righteousness is more than innocence; it is innocence matured into perfection. If all Jesus did was pay for our sins, we would be put back into the condition of Adam in the Garden. We might fall again. But Jesus not only pays for our sins, He also does the work Adam failed to do. That completed work is now imputed to us, which takes us beyond Adamic innocence into Melchizedekian maturity in Christ, so that we reign in Him (Romans 5:17).

Because of our depravity, there is nothing at all we can do to earn the right to this salvation. In our unrighteousness we want nothing to do with salvation. We must receive it as a free gift, trusting in God’s way of salvation by faith alone.

CORAM DEO

Daniel 5–9

If Jesus had died immediately after His baptism, His innocent life would have been ours. But Jesus had to wrestle with Satan and do the work Adam failed to do. His matured righteousness is given to us instead of His mere innocence. This is why we can never fall away. How does this provide you greater assurance?

For further study: Romans 1:21–24 • Galatians 3:23–25; 6:14–15

friday

july

23

Blessing and Curse

MATTHEW 27:45–51

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

(Matthew 27:46).

Biblical covenants established by God basically have five parts. First, God announces who He is. Second, He declares that He has redeemed His people from sin and given them a kingdom. Third, God sets out the laws He wants His people to obey. Fourth, God promises blessings for obedience and warns of curses for disobedience. Finally, God sends the people forth, commissioning them to extend His kingdom outward to all the world and down to all generations.

All five of these aspects are either stated or implied in God’s message to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2. God gave Adam a kingdom and His law, with warnings. Adam rebelled, and thus came under the curse of the covenant. Chapters like Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 expand on what it means to be under God’s curse.

The Aaronic benediction (Numbers 6:24–26) portrays blessing as receiving supreme favor from the hands of God. The fundamental idea of blessing is nearness to the presence of God—which means to be guarded and protected by God, to have a face-to-face relationship with God, and to have peace with God. The opposite of such blessing is the basic idea of God’s curse. Instead being guarded by God, we feel His wrath. Instead of facing us, He turns from us. Instead of peace there is war. To be cursed is to be cut off from the presence of God, which was symbolized on the Day of Atonement when the scapegoat was driven out of the camp into outer darkness (Leviticus 16).

Jesus became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). On the Cross He cried out because God had forsaken Him. In other words He went through hell on the Cross. If Jesus was not really forsaken on the Cross, then He did not really take the penalty of our sin.

This is a great mystery. How could Jesus, who had no sin in Himself, be cut off from God? In some mysterious sense, the relationship between God and Jesus was torn in two during the three hours of darkness on Golgotha. This mystery is the Good News, the Gospel itself. Through it the covenant bond between God and us is reestablished.

CORAM DEO

Daniel 10–12

WEEKEND

Ezekiel 1–7

Read Deuteronomy 28. All you have to do is read the newspaper to know that this passage is still relevant. Only when people are personally reconciled with God can these curses be turned to blessings. Political action by itself won’t do it. What specific things are you doing to advance the reconciliation of the world?

For further study: Psalm 11:4–7 • Prov. 10:6 • 1 Cor. 15:22–23

WEEKEND