The Heart of the Gospel
1 John 2v2
6th March 2020
Last week we read:
1 John 2v1
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does
sin, we have one who speaks to the father in our defence - Jesus Christ the righteous
one.
John was tenderly reminding the people in his churches that it was his responsibility to urge them not to sin. But he was also reminding them that Jesus would plead for them before the Father if they did sin.
John next says:
1 John 2v2
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins
of the whole world.
John is a realist. He knows that we do still sin sometimes. He's already said in Chapter 1 verse 8, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves". If you're a Christian, you don't like to think of yourself as a sinner, but you know you are. You don't want to sin, but you know you do. Or you're suffering from a lack of self-awareness that probably requires prayer ministry.
We need a healthy balance in our understanding of sin and forgiveness. God will forgive our sin, but sin is a terrible thing. Sin is a terrible thing, but God will forgive us. We must never underestimate the terribleness of sin, and we must never underestimate the forgiveness of God.
When you sin, all is not lost, whatever that sin is. Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, through whom the universe was made, the Righteous One, in whom is no sin whatsoever, speaks to the father in [your] defence. Jesus is your advocate, your barrister, your defence lawyer in God's courtroom.
God is the judge of all the earth. And passages such as:
Romans 1:18a
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of people
Ephesians 5:6
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes
on those who are disobedient.
and many others, show us God’s wrath is very real.
Some people like to think that God is so nice and cuddly that He never has any such quality as wrath, but the Bible clearly teaches that God's wrath is real.
When we're angry it's almost invariably sinful anger. But there is such a thing as righteous anger. God’s wrath is righteous. It’s not capricious or selfish. God doesn't get angry because He's in a bad mood. God wrath is not emotional; it's judicial. Have you heard the expression, "the full wrath of the law"? God's wrath is what John Stott, in his commentary, calls "his settled, controlled, holy antagonism to all evil". But it’s real.
Jesus Christ, the only man who never sinned, is the counsel for the defence of all the sinners who have been saved through faith in His blood, as Hebrews 7:25-26 tells us, "he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need — one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."
How privileged we are! But that privilege is only experienced by those who have saving faith in Jesus's blood sacrifice.
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see
life, for God's wrath remains on him.
Jesus is our advocate in heaven. He stands before God, the judge of the whole earth, and pleads in our defence.
When Jesus pleads for us, he can't plead – as human barristers do – that we're not really guilty, that somebody else committed the sin. God knows who did it. He can't plead that it's not really sin; God knows it is. He can't plead that we didn't know it was wrong. In most cases, we're well aware that our actions are wrong, and we do them regardless. And, anyway, ignorance of the law is no defence.
Jesus pleads on the basis of His own sacrifice. John says not merely that Jesus made an atoning sacrifice for our sins; he says Jesus is that atoning sacrifice. He sacrificed himself.
He allowed Himself to be arrested, falsely convicted, tortured and crucified. The only person who never sinned suffered the most horrible of deaths. On the cross He bled and died. And before He died, God the Father withdrew His presence from Jesus. Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me" (Mark 15:34). Jesus truly paid the penalty for our sins: both physical death and separation from God. None of us can begin to imagine what it was like for the second Person of the Holy Trinity to be separated from the first Person. It was truly the ultimate sacrifice.
To quote John Stott again, "the father's provision for the sinning Christian is in His Son, who possesses a threefold qualification: his righteous character, his propitiatory death, and his heavenly advocacy. Each depends on the others. He could not be our advocate in heaven today is he had not died to be the propitiation for our sins; and his propitiation would not have been effective if in his life and character he had not been Jesus Christ the righteous one".
This is what we call the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. God is perfectly righteous, loving and just. Because He is just, there must be justice in His universe; there must be penalty for sins. Because He is loving, He wants us to be forgiven our sins, and restored in relationship with Him for ever. Because Jesus is righteous, His death is sufficient payment for our sins. Because we are unrighteous, no other penalty could be adequate. God made the only solution possible for our sins. He punished Jesus in our place. Jesus willingly died the death that we deserve. He experienced the separation from God that we deserve. And because God the Father is perfectly just, he will never punish us for our sins. The perfect judge will not demand that two people pay the penalty for the same crime.
It's called "Penal" because somebody has to pay the penalty for our sins; "Substitutionary" because Jesus substituted his own suffering and death for ours; and "Atonement" because the judicial wrath of God is appeased, and we are forgiven for ever.
This is the heart of the Gospel.
John 3:16
God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son that whosoever believes in
him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Jesus died in your place so you could live in His.
But this salvation though Christ's atoning sacrifice must be appropriated by faith.
John says:
1 John 2:2b
and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
We know from the whole council of Scripture that some people are forgiven and saved, and some are unforgiven and lost. We know that some will end their eternity in heaven and some will end in hell. But John says here that anybody in the whole world will be saved through Jesus's atoning sacrifice, if he will believe in the power of the cross and will repent his sinfulness. The offer of eternal life is available to everybody, anywhere in the world, in any age, at any time, in any circumstances.
Whatever a person has done, he will be forgiven, and he will enjoy eternal relationship with God, if he will turn from his sin and believe that Jesus died in his place to atone for his wrongdoing.
What about you?