God spared not His Own Son, but delivered Him up for us all! No wonder Jesus cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me!"
God did not rescue Christ from the suffering the wrath for our sin, for He "was delivered for our offenses."
Scripture is clear: God Himself crucified the Lord Jesus using the hands of wicked men. He was delivered to wicked men by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God! Those wicked men did whatever God's hand and counsel had before ordained they should do.
The text makes it clear, that what they did was utter rebellion against Christ, God's anointed One. Yet God had long before determined – indeed, it was by God's very hand! – what those murderers did to Jesus!
God sacrificed Jesus because He laid our crimes upon Jesus, and would punish Jesus in our place as our substitute. God made Christ sin for us, He who knew no sin! God made Christ a sin offering for our sins laid upon Him there. Then God poured out His wrath on Jesus instead of us, so that Christ's sacrifice appeased God's wrath against us.
In Galatians, this substitution is described by Paul as Christ being made a curse for us, to deliver us from the curse of the law.
The curse of the law was God's promised wrath against all those who break His commandments. Only God can place that curse upon a sinner, and it leads to destruction at God's hand.
That curse is no mere label for sinners. Rather it is wrath and punishment and death for the law breaker.
Paul warns that that curse comes upon all men, for no man can keep God's law perfectly.
At the cross, God cursed the Lord Jesus for us, and punished Him as though He were guilty for the sins His people do! |
