the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Hebrews 9:26
‘He appeared to put away sin’
Read Isaiah 53:1-8
In his life of obedience to the law of God Christ established righteousness for us. But that righteousness is not sufficient, in and of itself, to make us acceptable to God. Sin must be punished. Justice must be satisfied. Every guilty sinner must be put to death. The only way God could both punish us for sin and save us from sin was by the infinitely meritorious, voluntary and efficacious death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Substitute. For the accomplishment of our salvation Christ became ‘obedient unto death, even the death of the cross’.
God made his Son to be sin for us. Christ had no sin of his own. He had no original sin and no actual sin. He was ‘holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sin.’ Yet he was made sin. By divine imputation, all the sin of all God’s elect was laid upon Christ our Substitute. Christ ‘his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree’. This transfer of sin from us to our Substitute was so real and complete that the Son of God became sin for us! He even claimed our sin as his own, willingly assuming all responsibility for the sins of his people.
God the Son, being made sin, died as our Substitute. When God found sin on his Son, he cried out to his own holy law and inflexible justice: ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow... smite the shepherd!’ Then and there all the sin of all God’s elect was slain, annihilated forever and taken away. Justice, being fully satisfied, forever sheathed its dreadful sword. Wrath, being completely spent upon Christ, is altogether absorbed in Christ for all his people. In so far as God’s law and justice are concerned, all of God’s elect have died. We died in Christ our Substitute.
In Christ all who believe are completely justified. His precious blood has forever washed away our sins, so that we are justly pardoned and forgiven. His life of righteousness has been imputed to us, so that we are perfectly holy in God’s sight. In Christ we have all that God in his law demands for our acceptance, complete satisfaction for sin and perfect righteousness.
