Cross: God Dies

Tom Shrader works through Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5, and Ephesians 2 to explain why Christ's death on the cross was the only possible solution to humanity's sin problem. He unpacks three key terms—propitiation, justification, and redemption—showing how Jesus satisfied God's wrath, secured a legal declaration of righteousness for believers, and set them free from sin's bondage. The teaching calls both longtime churchgoers and first-time visitors to recognize the depth of their sin and the completeness of what God accomplished through Christ on the cross.

“Every sin that's ever been committed will be paid for in one of two ways: either by Jesus on the cross, stamped paid in full, or by the one who commits that sin on their own for all eternity, never paid in full.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Doctrine

Recorded: 2011 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 57 min

Themes: cross, sin, forgiveness, wrath of god, salvation, redemption, grace, atonement, new believer, first-time churchgoer, struggling with guilt, doubting salvation, longtime churchgoer, feeling unworthy, seeker, questioning faith

Scripture: Romans 5:1, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Romans 5:12, Romans 6:23, Romans 1:18, Romans 3:23-26, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:18, 2 Corinthians 5:20, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Ephesians 2:1-4, John 3:16, John 10:11, 1 John 2:1-2, 1 John 4:10, Galatians 1:5, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 3:13, Galatians 5:1, Titus 2:14, Matthew 20:28, 1 Corinthians 6, Romans 8

Theological Themes: propitiation, justification, redemption, substitutionary atonement, imputed righteousness, reconciliation, soteriology, being made right with god

Full Transcript

Introduction and Series Context

If you have a Bible, open it to the book of Romans. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you a copy that you're welcome to take with you. It's page 612.

If you're a Seinfeld fan, you're familiar with the summer of George. This was to be the summer of Tom. This was going to be the ultimate summer for Susan and me to be away. We were supposed to be in Flagstaff, but we ended up staying in town. Susan had some problems — they're non-cancer problems — and those of you who followed the saga know we are in our tenth day with no air conditioning in the house. We moved out finally, and we've got a part that's supposed to be done today.

Since I was in town, I said if I'm going to be in town, I'm going to teach. I want to build up frequent teaching miles so that when fall gets here, I can be away when I work it out. I'll be teaching here for at least this week and the next two weeks, and in August every other week is my schedule. As it turns out, we'll be in town more this summer than any summer we've had. We make plans, and God knows what He's doing.

So pray for Susan. She's in a lot of pain, and the doctor's answer is that they don't know the cause. We know it's not cancer — at least it doesn't appear to be cancer-related. We're like you, like everybody else. We have the same issues.

About This Series

I'm really getting into this series. Every week, more and more, I just enjoy this opportunity to work in a way that's sequential and logical through the scriptures. It's all flowing out of Scripture, and I found something from Jim Boyce that I've put in the lesson today that I want to use toward the end — something I found genuinely fascinating.

This is week eight of this series. The topics are listed in the circle on your bulletin, starting clockwise at about 1 o'clock. If you're following along in the book Mark Driscoll wrote called Doctrine, you know where we are — we're on the cross. We've sold over 1,000 copies of that book, and that's just great, reflecting how many people are tracking along with us through video and study guides.

Within these eight weeks, there is a mini-series of three weeks covering the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection. We're drawing some hard lines in each one, though you'll see them overlap. None of them are necessarily stand-alones, even though we're treating them that way. They just come together.

Who This Message Is For

I'm really excited for those of you who are here visiting, especially if the whole Christian thing is new to you. I'm also excited if you're a religious person — maybe you're part of a denomination, or you've always been a church girl or a church guy — and yet you may have never come to Christ in repentance and faith, may never have really understood the cross.

We had a meeting the other day where we were talking about just all these people. Many of you look familiar, but it is amazing how many of you are simply new. What we find oftentimes is that not only are you new to Redemption Church, you're new to this whole idea. So you came in at a great time.

If you could pick one Sunday out of the twenty-year history of Redemption Church — East Valley, then Redemption — to be here, you picked the right one. This is the one. Because if you get today right, everything else falls into place. You miss today, and the rest of life isn't going to matter much. I'm very confident in that, not because it comes from me, but because it comes from the Word, and it is true.

The Deeper Problem Behind Every Symptom

You come in today thinking your problem is that you like sex too much, or drugs too much, or you drink too much, or you're too greedy, or you lie, or you're jealous. All of those are symptoms of a deeper problem, and that problem is sin. Today you'll find the terms and phrases we use regularly, because this is the heart of the gospel — the cross.

If you're in the conference center, you've already had your time of music worship and communion, and here you will have it as well. If you listen closely and sing these songs honestly today, it will be an amazing day for you as you begin to feel God's grace and mercy wash all over you.

Romans 5: The Heart of the Gospel

We're in Romans 5, where Paul says in verse 1 that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. I have circled verses 6, 8, and 10 in my Bible, because about once a month we land here for this reminder.

Verse 6: "For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners,

The Human Condition: Born into Sin

Christ died for us. As verse 10 tells us, "For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." So while we were helpless in verse 6, while we were sinners in verse 8, while we were enemies in verse 10 — that is the condition we are in naturally.

We have talked about the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and how everything flows from that. We then looked at God's story, this idea of creation. We saw, as I taught that week, that we are made in the image of God. It is not that we are little gods. There are attributes that God has which have been communicated to us, and we imperfectly represent them — love, for example.

But in the garden, when Adam sinned, he shattered that image, so that all of us — not just some of us — are affected. Look at chapter 5, verse 12: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world" — that is Adam — "and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all have sinned." How do we know that sin is universal? We all die. That is the theme we see over and over again: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And right there in chapter 6, verse 23: "The wages of sin is death." Death means separation, and we see it all around us.

An Illustration from Social Media

My daughter came to me some time ago and said I needed to be on Facebook. I asked why in the world I would want to be, and she said that given the position I am in, I just needed to be. Then someone came along and said I needed to tweet. I had seen some of these tweets and thought, "I'm dropping my kids off at school" — who possibly cares? I'm at the mall, so what? If you have a heart attack, tweet that — I need to know that, maybe.

So I now have 800 friends I do not even know, which seems strange. I went on the other day and came across a message from a young man who used to attend here — a good guy. He said he was sure I had seen a certain video, since I talk all the time about the sinfulness of man, about how we are born as sinners, how you never have to teach your kids to lie — you have to teach them to tell the truth. You never have to teach them to steal — you have to teach them not to.

I had not seen the video he mentioned, so I showed it to my wife Susan. My instinct was to show it here on Sunday, though periodically my instincts are not perfect. I asked Susan whether she thought it would be all right, and she said our daughter Sarah would like it. It illustrates the sinfulness of man, so I want you to watch the person in the video. She is repeatedly told not to do something, and every time she does it anyway. Watch especially when she is given a choice of two things to drink from and told no — watch the look on her face as she pursues what she wants.

Finley and the Nature of Sin

Finley, the little girl in that video, is the perfect representative of each of us. That was the entire point of that illustration.

About 80 years ago, the state of Minnesota was facing some crime issues, so the governor formed what was called the Minnesota Crime Commission and asked them to present their conclusions. Here is what they reported back:

> Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it — his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty, has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children — not just certain children, but all children — are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to act on their impulsive actions to satisfy what they want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.

Sin on Display in the Headlines

Last week I went to USA Today and illustrated sin from the sports section alone. But these next headlines come from the broader paper. The first involves Norway, where 92 people —

The Problem of Sin

The prevailing problem in our country and all around us is sin. It manifests itself in so many different ways. I spent probably a dozen hours this week with physicians, hospitals, and scans, and in the course of those conversations I had a great exchange with a doctor I really enjoy dealing with. We were talking about the healthcare system, and she said it is so out of control, so broken. As we began to list out the problems, what she described was sin at every level — sin among the physicians, sin among the patients, sin among the insurance companies.

It is not just medicine. The housing crisis is another great example: greed on the lenders' part, greed on the borrowers' part, the illusion that everyone should own a home they cannot afford. Retail costs run ten to twelve percent higher because of employee theft. It goes on and on. Sin is expensive in human terms, but it is ultimately expensive for our salvation. We have a huge problem, and while the symptoms are many, the cause is our sin.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" — and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). But the same verse continues: "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."

Review: God Saves Sinners

Last week we talked about the incarnation. We said that Jesus — God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the Son submits to the Father and comes to earth for a specific reason: to save His people from their sin. He came down, as Luke 1:68 says, to redeem His people. Jesus Himself says in John 10:11, "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." Titus 2:14 tells us He gave Himself for us to redeem us. We will look at 2 Corinthians 5 in a moment, where we see He reconciled us to Himself. Galatians 3:13 tells us He redeemed us.

This should be familiar territory. Go back to week one — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the eternal, triune God, one God in three separate persons. When it comes to salvation, we use a three-word sentence: God saves sinners. God is the subject, the noun, the actor. Saves is the predicate, the verb, the action. Sinners is the direct object, the recipient of the action.

God the Father, from the beginning of time, elected those He would save. The Son died on the cross — which is what we are going to look at today — and redeems them. Then at some point in that person's life, the Holy Spirit regenerates them and applies that redemption. That word saves may be new to you, or it may be so familiar you have lost its meaning. It means to deliver, to redeem, to buy back, to rescue. The wages of sin is death, and He saves us — redeems us, delivers us from the bondage of sin and the consequence of sin.

Sinners, as I described them, are people guilty before God — helpless, powerless, and hopeless in and of themselves, unable to do God's will. That is our natural condition. It is not just true of some. It is true of all of us. We are enemies. We are helpless. We are sinners separated from God. When man sinned, he was separated from God, and there is nothing man can do in and of himself or herself to reverse that situation, because sin demands payment.

The Justice and Holiness of God

A lot of what we talk about today is not very popular anymore. But God is a God who hates. We hear a great deal about God's love, but God also hates — for example, He hates sin. He is a holy God, and He is a just God, and He is a righteous God. So when Adam sinned and all of us were plunged into that situation, separated from God, there has to be a payment for that sin.

You will often hear the question: how could a loving God send someone to hell? But consider the other side: how can a just God let someone into heaven for a sin that has never been paid for? You cannot edit God. You cannot speak only of His love and ignore His justice, nor speak only of His justice and forget His love. We are going to talk about the cross today — bloody and messy — and yet it is a great picture of love and grace and mercy together.

Man's Inability to Save Himself

Man is incapable of saving himself. There is nothing you can do, nothing I can do, nothing we can do. We are aware of the symptoms — we sin, we know something is wrong, and so we say we will quit doing this or start doing that. But after a while we fail, and even when we succeed, our sacrifice is imperfect. I was in a small group years ago that got into a discussion about this —

The Central Question: Could God Have Saved Us Any Other Way?

There was a debate, and people ultimately broke over this question: Could God have saved man any other possible way than through Jesus? One group said yes — He's God, He can simply say, "You're forgiven." He's God, He can do whatever He wants to do. Then there was another group, the one I was in, the right group, that said no. That's what Jesus prayed the night before He died: "Father, if there's any other way, now's a good time to pull the chute for plan B." But there isn't another way, because a sacrifice has to be made, and any sacrifice we make, any act we perform on our own, is tainted with our sin. So there has to be the perfect sacrifice. The only solution is for God to become human and to remain God simultaneously.

2 Corinthians 5 and What It Means to Be In Christ

If you have a Bible from us, it's page 627. If you have your own Bible, it's 2 Corinthians chapter 5. It's a passage we will talk about more, because we're going to talk about the resurrection, then the church, then what all of this means. Let's put something solid in there that we know. Verse 17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." We know that phrase — "in Christ" — means to believe in Him, to trust in Him, to understand who He is.

So let's talk about what it means to be a Christian. It doesn't mean to join a certain church. It doesn't mean to act in a certain way. It's not what we do — it's what we believe. A Christian is somebody who understands that they are lost, that we are who God says we are, that Jesus is who God says He is, and that He accomplished what God said He came to do, which is to save His people from their sin.

Grace and the Pushback of Religious Man

What we're talking about now is grace and mercy. Any time you talk about grace, religious man pushes back. We were in a pastor's discussion here on campus, maybe two or three months ago, talking about getting better at preaching. I said the only way to get better at it is to do it — that's true of almost everything. And what I did, especially in the early days, was play a lot of away games. Go to a lot of environments that are not our environment. Here it's a pretty safe environment — you just declare the truth, stand there, and the chips fall where they may. But you get into some of those other situations, and it's tough.

When I began getting calls to speak, I accepted one from a church — I won't name it, though some of you would know it — that had decided to reach their community and neighborhoods. They planned an outreach dinner. The whole objective was to bring in a persuasive, influential speaker — that would be me — to declare the truth, and then have people who didn't know Christ respond under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I get there that night, ready to infiltrate the community, and there are two people: the man who organized it and his son. So I figured, well, maybe these guys don't know the gospel, and I just shared my testimony with them.

Two People Who Proved I Had Explained Grace

On another occasion — I believe it was a Sunday — I was invited to speak at Westchester Nursing Home. The people there were old. Not old like many of you — truly old. I was in there preaching away, and apparently, when you can't hear well yourself, you assume no one else can either. So as I was explaining the gospel, a lady in about the fourth or fifth row — there were maybe fifteen people there — called out: "It can't be that easy." I had explained the gospel, and she said it wasn't that easy, that I was young and didn't understand. That's when I knew I had explained grace.

On another occasion, I was walking along one night with someone very important to me and explaining the gospel. This person stopped and said, "Wait a minute — are you telling me I could do this come-to-Jesus thing right now, believe in Him, and then kill somebody tonight and still go to heaven?" I said yes. "I could commit adultery and rob stores tomorrow and still go to heaven?" I said, well, we don't recommend that — but yes. And here's what I knew in that moment: I had explained grace. Natural man wants to slide works back in. Don't I need to do something? Surely I must need to do something.

What It Truly Means to Believe

Those of us who are Christians are those who believe we are who God says we are, that Jesus is who He said He is, that He came to do what He said He would do, and that if we believe in Him — not just mental assent, not just checking a box — we are saved. Jesus is a historic fact. He's in Encyclopedia Britannica, in Wikipedia. But to believe is more than acknowledging that He existed. To believe is to put your faith and trust in Him, so that if you were to die and stand before God and He asked, "Why should I let you into heaven?" your answer would be: "You shouldn't, based on anything I did. But You must, based on what Christ did."

That is what it means, in verse 17, to be in Christ. He is a new creature, the old things have passed away, and then Paul goes on to speak about this reconciliation.

The Great Exchange

"All these things" — all this salvation, all this deliverance — is from God, who reconciles us to Himself through Christ. He did it all, and now He gives us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. We beg you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Then there is verse 21, and it seems to me like that belongs somewhere else, because it doesn't seem like the close — it seems like something that should be introduced earlier. But since God wrote it, I know it's in the right place. 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

Let me take out the personal pronouns: God the Father made Him — Jesus — who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we, those who believe, might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. One author writes that this is one of the most magnificent verses in the whole Bible. It describes that miraculous transaction that took place upon the cross when Jesus, the sinless One — the One whose life was lived righteously, without failure, without fault, without evil, who never did wrong — was made to suffer for all the sins of you and me.

He took our place, and God agreed to it. It was something planned between them from all of eternity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God sent His Son into the world to do the very thing that made Him on the cross to be sin for us. It is not that Jesus sinned; He was treated and punished, and He experienced the wrath of God for our sin.

The author continues: we will never understand it, we will never know how much agony of heart and mind and spirit pressed upon Him, how the dark horrors of hell came upon His soul on that cross. We sing a song with the verse, "You'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross." It is this great exchange.

The Great Exchange in Poetry and Picture

My friend Larry Wright wrote a poem called "The Great Exchange." His grandson Justin Unger took those words and put them to a song — also called "The Great Exchange." You can search for Justin Unger and likely download it for 99 cents. It is a wonderful song.

I was watching MLB the other night, and they were counting down the nine worst trades in the history of Major League Baseball. Consider how good this trade is: we trade our filthy rags, our guilt and sin and bondage, for His righteousness. That is a good trade. That is a good exchange.

Jesus, on the cross, is treated as though He were guilty. He paid the price. We say this all the time: every sin that has ever been committed will be paid for in one of two ways. Either by Jesus on the cross — stamped paid in full — or by the one who commits that sin on their own, for all eternity, never paid in full. Those are the two options.

It has to be that way because a holy God demands payment. He is a just God. He does not simply say, "Life is tough, I understand, you made a mistake — we'll cross that one off." His righteousness demands payment. We are never going to fully comprehend it, we are never going to fully understand it, but we know that it is true. Jesus remained sinless. That is the agony of the cross.

The Horror of Crucifixion

Those of you reading along with us in the Driscoll book will notice that Driscoll spends a significant amount of time on the history of crucifixion and what it actually involved. As you read that and fill it in with other sources, you see how horrific it was — and it was not something unusual. It was a relatively common event.

If we were to look at this cross here, typically there were two separate pieces. When Jesus carried His cross, what He actually carried was the crossbar. They would then nail or hammer the two pieces together and drop the condemned man onto it. He would hang there literally naked, without any clothing, having already been beaten.

Frequently they crucified people at eye level, not elevated as we typically depict it, because the punishment was not only punitive — it was designed to be a deterrent. You would walk along and think twice about whatever crime you had been considering. They crucified women, when they did, backwards. Most often the bodies were not taken down to be buried. The birds, the dogs, and the wild animals would consume them until nothing remained but bones, which were then swept away. It was a horrific event.

The Scourging and the Deeper Agony

With Jesus, it was not just the crucifixion. It was the scourging that went with it. If you saw *The Passion of the Christ*, you got a sense of what that was like. They would take whips — pieces of leather embedded with bone, stone, and glass — and they would drive those into Jesus. They would not simply strike Him; they would pull down, literally laying His back open.

But here is what is so important for us to understand: the physical agony of the cross was not the deepest agony. There were thousands of people who died that kind of physical death.

The Wrath of God Against Sin

The agony of the cross is what Paul is writing about in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf." It is that moment when Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — that moment in time when He was separated from the Father. When the wrath of God fell on Him. I know it is not popular, but it is true: God is angry and will judge sin.

That is what Paul says at the beginning of Romans, in chapter 1, verse 18: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is made evident within them, evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood, so that we are without excuse." God is angry. God is wrathful. He is also a God of love. God is holy. God is just. And because He is all of these things, there has to be payment.

The wage of sin is death. Sin has entered the world, and what sin earns is separation from God. And here is the hope: there is nothing you can do about it — though you keep trying.

Trying to Earn What Cannot Be Earned

It is like me in the gym and on a diet. I am on my 477th diet. I have lost roughly 4,000 pounds. And yet, there is just that battle. Maybe you have a specific sin, and even in the middle of it you say, "Okay, God, this is the last time. Let me get through it and then I won't do it anymore." As a Christian, we are still often in that situation — we are sinning, but we are forgiven. We struggle. For the unbeliever, though, it is not a struggle in the same way. There may be some enjoyment, yet also a feeling that something is not right.

And so people say, "I am going to make it up." I see it all the time. I teach something during the week called Priority Living, and I meet people constantly who say, "I haven't been doing too well — I need to get back to your thing." Here is the truth: you doing my thing is not it. Until my thing is your thing, and it is a Jesus thing, it does not matter.

That is why I say to some of you here today: you are just checking off a box. You are thinking, "I endured an hour and a half of this, I dropped some money in the offering — I must be okay." You are trying to appease God. And you cannot. That is why Jesus came, lived, and died.

Atonement: What We Cannot Do for Ourselves

J.I. Packer writes this: "Scripture depicts all human beings as needing to atone for their sins but lacking the power or resources for doing so. We have offended our holy Creator, whose nature is to hate sin and to punish it. No acceptance by or fellowship with such a God can be expected unless atonement is made. Since there is sin in even our best actions, anything we do in hopes of making amends can only increase our guilt or worsen our situation. This makes it ruinous folly to seek to establish one's righteousness before God. It simply can't be done."

That is what I want especially those of you with well-worn, marked-up Bibles to hear: my fear is that you forget your own sin. I have two daughters, Sarah and Haley. Sarah was born three months before I became a Christian, and about six months before my wife Susan became a Christian. One of my biggest concerns for my kids was that they would never truly understand their sin — because if they did not understand their sin, could they really understand the depths of the love and grace and mercy of their Savior?

Both of our girls, at around age five or five and a half, each came downstairs on their own one night after being put to bed and said, "I asked Jesus into my heart." We took that and worked through what it meant. And in all the years since, we have certainly seen sin in them, but there has never been a crisis where they walked away from their faith. Yet one of my ongoing concerns has always been whether they fully understand how sinful they really are.

A Huge Sin Problem Requires a Huge Savior

Here is the point: if you have just a small sin, you only need a small Savior. If you are just a little bit of a bad person, you do not need a great God. But the problem is that the gap is a chasm — and it is a jump you cannot make. It is a task you are helpless, hopeless, and powerless to fix on your own. You have a huge sin problem, so you need a huge Savior.

This is what we are talking about when we speak of the atonement. Charles Spurgeon wrote: "The atonement is the brain and spinal cord of Christianity. Deny the substitutionary work of Jesus and you have denied all that is precious in the New Testament."

Propitiation, Justification, and Redemption

There is a triangle with Jesus on the left, God the Father at the top, and Christians on the right. At each side of the triangle you will find three terms: propitiation, justification, and redemption. There are also three arrows, and in every arrow you will see the arrows coming to the Christian, but never from them. From Jesus to the Father is propitiation. Consequently, from the Father to us is justification. And what Jesus presents to us is redemption.

Let us tackle the big word first: propitiation. It simply is the idea of satisfying the wrath of God. It presupposes that God is angry. It presupposes what we looked at in Romans chapter one, verse 18. Romans chapter three, verses 23 through 26: "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as our propitiation by His blood."

In 1 John chapter 2, verse 1: "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sin." He satisfies the wrath of God. Chapter 4, still in 1 John, verse 10: "And this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin."

When Christ died on the cross and said, "It is finished," what He is saying is that He came — and we saw last week that He came to save His people from their sin — He satisfied the wrath of God. Consequently, God declares us just. God through Christ has redeemed us.

Redemption: Loosed and Set Free

Redeemed means to loosen. It is an idea expressed in Matthew chapter 20, verse 28: "The Son of Man came not to serve but to be served, to give His life a ransom for many." It is the idea of releasing, of being set free. We have been set free from the bondage of sin. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5:1, you are not your own — you were bought at a price, and the freedom of Christ has set us free.

If you watch Pawn Stars, you have a picture of what goes on in a pawn shop. Almost always they will ask, "Do you want to pawn it or sell it?" Here is how pawning works: suppose someone brings in a guitar. The pawn shop takes the item, puts it in the back with your name on it, and gives you thirty to sixty days. If you come back, you pay a kind of interest, you present your ticket, and you redeem the item. You loosen it. In the same way, we have been redeemed.

Consequently, God declares us just. Justification is a legal term — a pronouncement concerning our relationship with God stating that we are completely forgiven and no longer liable for punishment. God deserves justice, and He gets it. He does not simply overlook our sin. He pours out His wrath. He owes us nothing, but gives us everything.

Justification by Grace Alone

In his book, Driscoll writes this: "Not only did Jesus take our sin — past, present, and future — on the cross, but He also gave us His perfect righteousness as a faultless, sinless person. That is why Paul says that Jesus alone is our righteousness. Therefore justification through the work of Jesus in our place for our sin on the cross is made possible only by grace from Jesus Christ alone, through faith in Jesus Christ alone, because of Jesus Christ alone."

Salvation is entirely, utterly, completely a work of God, where He demonstrates both His justice and His love. Jesus remains sinless but pays the price for our sin. Consequently, He is just and justifier, and we are declared righteous. And there is no other way.

The Result: Dead, Then Alive

Now let us look at the result of this. Turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Verse 1: "For you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." This is our history. This is our biography. Verse 3 continues: "Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath."

That is what we were. We all came into the world as sinners. We grew up to be big sinners. Our sin separated us from God. That is the problem — for every one of us. But then comes verse 4: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive."

That is the whole idea of what happens on the cross. I was dead; now I am alive. This is the great exchange — He trades His righteousness, taking punishment for our sin. And there is a point here that must not get lost, a point that is big and deserves more attention than we have time to give it today. It is found right there in Ephesians 2:4: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us..."

God's Love at the Center of the Cross

"Rich in His mercy because of the great love with which He loved us." In the midst of the blood and gore of crucifixion and all that goes with it, do not lose sight of the fact that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That is what is happening here. It is a picture of His great love.

I mentioned at the beginning that I found something in Boyce, and I love this. It goes to show you that we are saying the same thing every week — and that is simply the way it is. Boyce wrote this independently, perhaps twenty or thirty years ago, independent of what we have been following in Driscoll and the sequence we have been in. Boyce writes: "Although God's love is indeed important and great, we cannot really understand or appreciate it in our fallen state until we know some of the other things about Him and about ourselves. These things must necessarily be in something like a sequence."

See if this does not track where we have been. First, our creation in the image of God. Second, the fall — our sin. Third, the revelation of the wrath of God because of our sin. And fourth, redemption. If we do not have that sequence firmly in mind, we are unable to appreciate, let alone marvel at, the love with which He loves us.

The Bad News Before the Good News

If I just started at the cross without that sequence, the impact is lost. I listen to a great deal of Christian teaching, and I watched someone teaching last night who was promoting a film. Five times they used the word "positive" — a positive message, a positive film. But we have to get the bad news before the good news makes any sense. The gospel is good news. You may ask: the blood, the gore, all of this — that is good news? Yes, because without it, you are separated from Him with no hope.

If you are here today, I hope for two things. If you are a Christian, I want you to go back and remember how sinful, how lost you were, and how desperately you needed a Savior. Maybe you are sitting here thinking you just have a few little chinks in your armor, a few dents to knock out. No — you are a total disaster. You have no hope but God and His love.

The sequence matters. He made us in His image. We sinned and shattered that image. A holy God demands justice and righteousness. And God redeems His people. That is really good news. It is about His love poured out in fullness on the cross.

Four Passages on the Love of God

Let me read four passages of Scripture. John 3:16: "For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." The phrase "so loved" points to the enormity of His love — it is an eternal love.

It is what Paul speaks of at the very end of Romans 8, when he asks what can separate us from Christ's love for us and then lists everything: heights, death, angels, demons, things against us, things that seem to be for us, no created thing — which is anything other than God, including yourself. None of them can separate us from the love He has for us.

When my girls were small and I wanted to get their attention, I would pick them up and hold them out just like this. It must feel completely helpless — your feet just hanging there, nothing to grab onto. I think of God holding me like that. I am just flapping, there is nothing I can do, I cannot make it right. But Christ does, because God loves me. What can separate us as believers from that? Nothing.

Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." First John 4:10, which we read earlier: "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation" — to satisfy God's wrath for our sin. And Galatians 1:5: "To Him who loves us and has set us free from sin by His blood."

The Point of the Cross

That is the story of the cross. The story of the cross includes the agony and the gruesomeness, but the whole cause of it and the whole point of it must be kept together. The cause is our sin. The point is God redeeming His people.

So again, two things. If you are here today and everything we have discussed about what it means to be a Christian describes you, then I hope you understand the grace, the mercy, and the love that God has for you. In the midst of all the discussion of the wrath of God, it is possible to miss this love. God loves you with a perfect love. Look back and see that He has redeemed you.

Maybe you are here and you are confused or convicted — one of the two. You have heard this and you are not sure where you stand. Or you have heard this and you recognize yourself in it. Perhaps you thought your problem was a particular sin — say, sexual sin — but your real problem is that you are trying to find satisfaction in that sin, or in a drug, or in some other transgression, and you have decided to stop. But hear this: this is not about rehab. This is not about getting you to stop stealing, stop using drugs, stop the sexual sin. You can stop all of those things and still spend eternity in hell. You will be miserable here and miserable there — miserable all the way around.

This is not about rehab. It is about transformation. It is about coming to Christ in repentance and faith and understanding that my systemic problem is —

A Matter of Life and Death

Sin's only solution is Jesus. When this service is over, whether you are in the conference center or here in the chapel, there will be staff members available to meet with you. They can answer questions now or set up a time to meet with you later. You can also call us here at the church.

This is the most important issue you will ever have to deal with. This is more important than debt. This is more important than the Diamondbacks. This is more important than vacation. This is more important than anything you will ever face in your life. This is a matter of life and death.

If you are in the conference center, you have already had communion, and Paul will be back over there to close. Here in the chapel, Paul is going to come out and lead us in communion. You are going to sing some songs, and as I worshiped in the first hour, I was struck by how perfectly these things tie together. Let the songs you sing today be a genuine expression of a heart that has been changed or transformed.

If God is moving you right now — if for the very first time you are feeling something stirring inside — that is God moving you. You need to act on it and speak with the staff who will be at the front of the building right after the service.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You so much for this truth. For some of us, it may even be something we did not want to hear, but God, it is a story of love. It is a story of our failure, our sin, and Your love and Your redemption. God, I pray that as we come here in the chapel to a time of communion, or as those in the conference center prepare to leave, this would be a life-changing message. May Your Spirit take the Word, apply it to our hearts, and change our lives. We ask this in Your Son's precious name, amen.