“…you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins."
~ Matthew 1:21
If I were to ask you what did Jesus Christ do to save His people? what would you answer? Like most, you would probably say He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. And you would be exactly right. But He did more. In the next blogs we’ll consider six actions Jesus took to save His people:
1. As we have already seen, before He died for us, Jesus lived for those He came to save. By His righteous, sinless life, and perfect obedience to the will of His Father, Jesus earned the reward of righteousness. He is the only one who has, or ever could, since all other people not only act sinfully, but we are born in sin. By His sinless life, Jesus earned the reward of righteousness, which He gives to those He came to save. We not only need our sins forgiven, but we must be righteous to enter Heaven. We receive the righteousness required to enter Heaven from Jesus Christ—a righteousness He earned through living for us before He died for us.
2. Jesus died for those He came to save. On the cross, Jesus died for us. When He died on that ghastly Roman cross, He experienced something infinitely more than the torturous pain of crucifixion. He received the wrath of Holy God—the wrath that we deserve for the sins we have committed against God. It was the wrath that God had to pour out on sin—not because He is mean, harsh or bad—but because He is holy and righteous. Holiness demands holiness. We fail to be holy every day so we are guilty. Righteousness demands justice. God cannot not judge sin and guilt. God cannot look the other way. And the wrath we deserve for our sins against God is infinite and eternal. Why? What if we are not as bad as someone else? The answer is simple: Because God is infinitely and eternally holy, our failure deserves infinite and eternal wrath. It doesn’t matter how we stack up against other people. It matters only how we stack up against God, and compared to Him, we are infinitely and eternally guilty and therefore deserving of infinite and eternal wrath.
We are incensed when an imperfect human judge lets the guilty go free. God is not an imperfect human Judge. He is perfect in all His ways and He is the Judge of all the earth. Genesis 18:25 “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" When Jesus died for us, the just wrath of God was diverted onto, and intercepted by Jesus. He stepped in front of the wrath we deserve, so that those He came to save would never taste the wrath of God. Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath and drained it dry. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) Why? Because there is none left! Jesus absorbed it all—in the hours He hung on the cross, He absorbed an eternity of infinite wrath—in our place.
But that is not all Jesus did for us. Next time: Jesus rose for us!