Jesus - The Penal Substitute for Believers

         
                                              "He himself bore our sins in his body
                                               on the tree, so that we might die to sins
                                               and live for righteousness:  by his wounds
                                               you have been healed."
                                                                                  1 Peter 2:24


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          Jesus bore the sins of every believer, as their substitute, taking their sins on
     himself, and imputing his righteousness to them.
          He paid the penalty due them, canceling their debt, and satisfying God the
     Father's holy wrath against them because of their transgressions.

          In the book, In My Place Condemned He Stood:  Celebrating the Glory of
     Atonement, J.I. Packer illustrates why it is important to understand what Jesus'
     death on the cross actually accomplished for His people.


          Years ago Packer wrote " a nine point analysis of insights basic to personal religion
     that faith in Christ as one's penal substitute yields."


           1. "God condones nothing, but judges all sin as it deserves:  which Scripture
     affirms, and my conscience confirms, to be right.

           2. My sins merit ultimate penal suffering and rejection from God's presence
     (conscience also confirms this), and nothing I do can blot them out.

           3. The penalty due to me for my sins, whatever it was, was paid for me by
     Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in his death on the cross.

           4. Because this is so, I through faith in him am made 'the righteousness of God
     in him,' i.e., I am justified; pardon, acceptance, and sonship [to God] become mine.

           5. Christ's death for me is my sole ground of hope before God.
     'If he fulfilled not justice, I must; if he underwent not wrath, I must to eternity'
     (John Owen).

           6. My faith in Christ is God's own gift to me, given in virtue of Christ's death for
     me: i.e., the cross procured it.

           7. Christ's death for me guarantees my preservation to glory.

           8. Christ's death for me is the measure and pledge of the love of the Father and
     the Son to me.

           9. Christ's death for me calls and constrains me to trust, to worship, to love, and
     to serve."


         
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          Martin Luther once asked, perhaps the ultimate question:

                           "How may a weak, perverse, and guilty sinner
                             find a gracious God?"


          The answer is only through the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ,
     for those who believe in him.


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                              "Bearing shame and scoffing rude
                               In my place condemned he stood,
                               Sealed my pardon with his blood -
                              
                               Hallelujah!  What a Saviour!"