By Greg Gilbert

Excerpted from this article at 9 Marks.

THE GOSPEL

Christ

The coup de grace came ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully man. He fulfilled that tiny flicker of hope God gave to Adam, and realized all that God promised to the chosen nation of Israel—the great prophet, the highest priest, the most exalted king.

He was the Savior, who brought life to that which was dead. And he did it by dying. Actually, he did it by living, then dying, then living again.

Here’s how Jesus himself described his work:

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

But how? Paul says it like this:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13-14).

And again,

“God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

In that one moment on the cross at Calvary, all the horrible weight of the sin of God’s people was placed on Jesus’ shoulders. And the curse that God pronounced in Eden and the curse of the law promised through Moses—the sentence of death—struck. Jesus cried out in agony as his Father turned his back and forsook him. And then he died.

Jesus did not suffer for his own sin; he didn’t have any. He suffered for his people’s sin. They should have died, not him. And yet he died for them, in their place. Just as Isaiah prophesied so many centuries before,

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:4-5).

My transgressions, his wounds.
My iniquities, his chastisement.
My sin, his sorrow.
His punishment, my peace.
His stripes, my healing.
His grief, my joy.
His death, my life.

If doctrines were springs, this one—the penal substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross—would be one of the most frequently stretched, twisted, and disconnected of them all. People are uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus being punished for someone else’s sin. More than one author has called the idea “divine child abuse.” And yet to toss this doctrine of substitution aside is to cut out the heart of the gospel. To be sure, there are other pictures in Scripture of what Christ accomplished with his death: ransom, example, reconciliation, and victory, to name a few. And yet the story of the Gospel demands this idea of substitution, too. You can’t leave it out, or else you litter the landscape of Scripture with unanswered questions. Why the sacrifices? What did that shedding of blood accomplish? How can God have mercy on sinners without destroying justice? What can it mean that God forgives iniquity and transgression and sin, and yet by no means clears the guilty (Ex. 34:7)? How can a righteous and holy God justify the ungodly (Rom. 4:5)? He can because in Christ, mercy and justice were reconciled. The curse was executed, and we were freed.

And then Christ rose. If any doubt remained whether sin was defeated and death destroyed, that doubt was erased when the angel said to the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” (Luke 24:5-6).

If Christ had remained in the tomb, humanity would remain without hope. Death would have washed over him just like every other human. Every claim he made while living would have sunk into nothingness. But when breath entered his lungs again, when resurrection life electrified his glorified body, everything Jesus claimed was fully, finally, irrevocably, and unquestionably vindicated.

Once again, the whole of the Christian faith stands or falls on the doctrine of the resurrection. Disconnect this, re-imagine it to be anything less than the whole person of Jesus, body and all, rising from the dead in resurrection life, and everything is lost. If the resurrection did not happen and Jesus’ desiccated bones lie somewhere in a lost grave, then the entire Christian faith crashes to the ground. But if it did happen and he is alive, then the whole thing stands. And it stands unassailable. Indestructible. Unconquerable. Forever.

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September 2006
Greg Gilbert

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