Most of us accept the fact that if we believe in Jesus, there is no condemnation for us. But do we really believe that? If we truly believed that, wouldn’t our joy be overflowing uncontrollably? If we really believed that, wouldn’t that keep us from falling into things like depression? I don’t think most of us have really had a full revelation of the terror and horror that God has saved us from and the abundant LIFE that He has given us.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”- Ephesians 2:8. There is no way that we ever could have saved ourselves. All of us have gone astray, each of us seeking our own way through life in complete defiance to God. That sounds harsh, but it’s true. If you believe the bible, you must accept that. There is no person that is righteous or seeks after God (Romans 3). We all naturally sin, and enjoy sinning. We are born into the world doing things that God hates with no remorse. We all constantly seek to please ourselves and our own desires instead of submitting to God’s will and His desires. The penalty for what we have done is death; eternal death in Hell under the condemnation and wrath of God. That is what each and every one of us deserves for what we have done. All of us.
But we have a God who is merciful; merciful beyond our most capable comprehension. Instead of justifiably condemning all of mankind, He chose to work out a plan of salvation for us. In such astounding humility, God became a man. He wrapped Himself in human flesh and set out on a divine mission to save us from ourselves and from His wrath. Keep in mind, God is holy. His perfection and goodness is completely different than anything that we can imagine with our feeble minds. He cannot even look on sin because of the revolting disgust is causes Him. Yet, in the person of Jesus Christ, He became sin. And not only did He become sin, but God the Father poured out His wrath for sin on Jesus. Just try to imagine how that was for Him. He had experienced nothing but perfect joy and fellowship with God forever. Complete joy, complete happiness, complete fulfillment. For eternity the Father and Jesus found divine satisfaction in one another; needing nothing, wanting nothing, desiring nothing.
But God took every ounce of our sin, guilt and shame from us and heaped it upon the head of His Son. He looked upon Jesus Christ and saw Him for the first time as hideous, vile and disgusting; then turned His back on Him. At that moment in time, Jesus Christ became the most wretched and grotesque thing in the history of creation. Our sin had always caused separation between us and God, but on that Cross, our sin caused separation between the Father and His only begotten Son. God crushed Jesus under the weight of our evil and destroyed Him with His holy wrath. “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief”- Isaiah 53:10.
When Jesus cried out, “IT IS FINISHED!” (John 19:30), He died… and our sin died with Him in His flesh. Not just our sin, but also the wrath and condemnation God had for us, His chosen children. When we trust in Jesus Christ with our entire heart (literally), God can’t look on us with disgust and anger anymore. He has emptied His anger and hate for what we have done on Jesus as He hung on that cross. His wrath for us has been cancelled out completely and forever. There is nothing left for His adopted children but mercy and grace. He loves us intimately without the interruption of sin! “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us”- Psalm 103:12.
We can live free from the guilt and shame of our pasts. We can seek Him and approach Him boldly, and He will joyously accept us because of what He has done through Jesus on our behalf. Our ETERNAL LIFE has begun. Lord, I beg you to please, please give all of your children everywhere this revelation of your great love and mercy and the freedom Your children have in Christ.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”- Romans 8:1.
