John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
God is love, because of which He has no pleasure in the death of anyone. More than anyone, God knew the hopelessness of man’s situation, which is why God authored the plan of salvation. The righteousness and justice of God demanded that all sin be accounted for, and so the only solution to the problem was for an appropriate substitutionary sacrifice to be offered before God, thus making atonement for the sins of mankind. Man is an eternal spirit being that lives in a mortal body and the life of that body is in its blood. When Adam committed sin in the Garden of Eden, sin and death entered his spirit and he was separated from the life of God. At the same time, sin and death also entered into Adam’s body and bloodstream. As we have already seen, all of mankind sins against God and so sin and death enter the spirits of all men and thus they become separated from the life of God. In a similar manner all men have Adam’s blood flowing through their veins, for all men are descended from Adam. Therefore all men have bodies that are contaminated with sin and death. And so all of mankind are sinful both in spirit and body, because of which the appropriate sacrifice that was needed was a man that was sinless both in spirit and body. The plan of salvation therefore, called for a man who could live a sinless life before God and then take upon Himself the sin of the whole world and incur the death of the world for their sin, and then ultimately suffer the punishment for the sins of the world. The problem however, was that there was no man that could do this, and so God did what no man could do, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And so it is that because God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son Jesus as the eternal sacrifice for the sin of mankind.
Jesus never committed sin
1 Peter 2:22-24 “Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth"; (23) who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; (24) who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness--by whose stripes you were healed.”
We have already established the fact, that only a sinless man could be accepted by God as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of mankind. The Lord Jesus was the only man that has ever lived who was able to meet that requirement, for from the moment Jesus was born into the earth until the day He died forty years later, Jesus lived His whole life never once committing any sin. The apostle Peter confirms that truth to us in the above quoted passage of scripture, when he tells us that our Lord Jesus never once committed any sin. Our Lord Jesus Himself challenged His adversaries while He was on the earth to convict Him of sin, and they could not (John 8:46). And so at the end of His life, Jesus was able to offer Himself to God as the sinless Lamb of God for the sin of the world. Another consequence of Jesus never committing any sin during His time in the flesh, is that Satan had no power over Him, which is why Jesus said at the end of His life that the ruler of this world had nothing in Him (John 14:30).
Jesus became sin
2 Corinthians 5:21 “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
When the time finally came for Jesus to go to the cross, the unthinkable happened. The above quoted passage of scripture teaches us that God the Father made the spotless Son of God, who for all eternity had never known any sin, to become sin, and He did that for us. So how did God make His Son become sin? He did so by taking the sins of the whole world and placing them onto His Son, for the previous scripture we quoted stated that Jesus bore our sins in His own body. We have no idea how traumatic this event would have been for the Lord Jesus, but we are given a brief insight when our Lord was praying in the garden of Gethsemane before He went to the cross. In agonising prayer that night Jesus asked the Father if there was any other way that could be found for the salvation of mankind, but nevertheless He submitted Himself to the will of the Father when He knew that there was no other way, for He said “nevertheless not My will but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Truly the saints are forever indebted to the spotless Son of God for the sacrifice that He made for us.
Michael E.B. Maher
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