For the last two days we’ve been examining Greg Gilbert’s four questions from his book What Is The Gospel? So far we have seen that God is our creator; therefore, He has the right to tell us what to do and that we are accountable to Him. We have also seen that we have not obeyed Him and therefore we are under judgment. Today I want to take us to the Good News of the Gospel, but I want to encourage you to understand that you are not ready for the cure until you first see that you are sick.
Gilbert’s third question is, What is God’s solution to that problem? How has he acted to save us from it? I think we can sum up the answer with one verse, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Everything we need to know about the solution to our problem is found in this verse.
We see the solution to our problem offered to us. God must punish our sin and He can either punish us or He can punish someone else, but for someone to be able to pay the price that someone must be a perfect sacrifice. Not one son of Adam or daughter of Eve naturally born would qualify because they were born with a sin nature passed down to them from Adam, but the Gospels tell us that Jesus was not born of a natural union between a man and a woman—Jesus’ birth was the direct result of a supernatural conception…He was not the product of the union between Joseph and Mary; therefore, the sin nature was not passed down to Him.
Jesus had not sin because He was God in the flesh, but God took our sin and put it upon Him. God literally poured out the wrath that you and I deserved upon Jesus. This is called IMPUTATION. God took our sin and placed it upon Jesus. Some have scoffed at the idea of imputation or penal substitution and have had the audacity to call it Divine Child Abuse, but if you reject the imputation of our sin upon Jesus then you cannot hope to receive the imputation of Jesus’ righteousness to those who are His followers.
Paul deals with the extensively in Romans 5:12-21, but I would simply say this morning that the only way we can find forgiveness for our sin is to find it in the Person of Jesus Christ. God’s solution to our problem is the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The next question is how that imputation can be applied to us…and we will look at that tomorrow.
