It is incredible to realize that God loves mankind. He demonstrated the extent of that love by sending Christ to die for us (Romans 5:8). God’s offer of salvation is available to every member of the race. We all fell under the curse of sin and death when Adam sinned, but because of God’s passionate love for us, the debt for sin was paid in full. Christ came as a man, died in place of all mankind, and rose again. The key to God’s salvation is to believe the gospel revealed through the death and resurrection of Christ. That belief leads to God’s imputed righteousness, followed by justification. Once God declares us to be righteous, we become a new creation that includes life through Christ! The beauty is that God did it all. God loved us; God sent Christ; Christ died in place of mankind. God raised Him from the dead. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to lead us into an understanding of what God has accomplished. The Holy Spirit illuminates the truth and leads us to believe at which point we are made into a New Creation. The believer’s new identification in Christ provides ample assurance of full protection against any and all threats.
All that effort and protection is done for us, which completes the salvation of believers. The process of salvation, in no way, includes anything we could do ourselves. Belief is the opposite of doing something. We believe that God did it all! God chose us, redeemed us, justified and protects us. The way we receive this generous gift is through the believer’s new relationship with Christ, namely becoming one with Him. Nothing we could have done would save us because what we did was sin; what God did was everything else! The triumph was that God took the sum of mankind’s sin and imputed it to Christ. It is beautifully simple to understand, and belief is within reach of any of us.
God has clearly communicated his divine law of Substitutionary sacrifice. The sacrificial death of an innocent substitute results in forgiveness of sin and removal of guilt. We’ll clarify this idea by briefly reviewing three key highlights from God’s Word.
In the beginning, when Satan tempted Adam and Eve, God came and spoke to them. He told Satan that Eve’s offspring would crush his head. In light of the historical record of Christ’s death and resurrection, we are now able to understand what that statement meant. In context, it is clear that God was referring to the eventual coming of Christ who would disarm and defeat Satan (Colossians 2:15; Genesis 3:1-19; Revelation 20:1-10). Satan’s greatest achievement was the death of the human race, which he had just acquired by causing man to sin. When Christ came and died in place of mankind, that substitutionary sacrifice defeated Satan, and he lost all he had gained. Christ died in our place, and the guilt of our sin was forever removed. Christ’s redemption of mankind frees us from the penalty and power of sin. So as early as the Garden of Eden and immediately after the first sin, we have God’s Word that He would be providing redemption from sin and death for all mankind.
A second reassuring example can be discovered if we fast-forward a couple of thousand years or so to the time of Moses. By this time, God had chosen Israel as a Holy Nation. He used Moses to redeem them from their slavery in Egypt (Exodus 19:5-6). Part of the process of being set apart from the other nations included a complete set of rules known as the Law of Moses. This was God’s Law given through Moses to the Nation of Israel. It included the Ten Commandments plus much more. The section we’ll be looking at briefly can be found in Leviticus 16. Two goats would be chosen for use in the ritual imputation of sin. The sin of the people would be transferred to these two goats. One goat would be sacrificed which demonstrates the penalty of sin. The other was led to the desert and released, never to return again. This sacred ritual confirmed the previous message which promised the forgiveness and removal of sin. This is a fundamental concept that God established and confirmed each year (while the Law was in effect) to teach people this concept of Substitutionary sacrifice. Sin can be paid for by the death of an innocent substitute who suffers the penalty of death followed simultaneously by the removal of guilt.
The third revelation comes from the Prophet Isaiah who explained that Christ would be the one who would be the substitutionary sacrifice for all mankind. The collective sin of humanity was imputed to this one Man who suffered death for us all! The Prophet made this revelation several hundred years before Jesus was born. “But he [Christ] was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
So we hear God communicating in the Garden of Eden that one would be born who would become our Savior. We hear God communicating through the Law of Moses that sin requires death, but that sin and guilt are removed once the sacrifice is completed. Additionally we hear God communicating through the Prophet Isaiah that Christ would be the one who would fulfill this requirement for the race. Every Christmas and Easter we are reminded that Christ did appear. He was miraculously born as a man, and eventually suffered death on the cross, followed by His Glorious Resurrection. In so doing, our sin was paid for and removed! Once removed, it will not be held against us any longer. What a beautiful revelation that has proven to be for those who believe!
Next Section: God is not Imputing Sin to Man Anymore
Table of Contents: The Last Adam
Text for this post has been borrowed from my Kindle eBook The Last Adam (Book 1 of the Grace and Knowledge Series), by Brother Woody Brohm. Copyright 2012.
I’ve included the full text of the book on this blog and you are free to read the book in this format if you please. Just follow the Next Section Link or view the Table of Contents to skip to wherever you prefer.
All Scripture quoted from:
New International Version (NIV)
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