The Gospel For Sinners

God is straightforward in what He says about you and your condition before Him. God says in Romans chapter 1 that He has revealed Himself to everyone through His creation to the extent that every single human being is without excuse before Him. Now, this does not mean that you are necessarily a liar if you say that you don’t believe in God even after you read this. But what God continues to explain in that same chapter is that what you do is suppress this truth of God that is within you.

Picture someone holding a beach ball underwater. That is the type of suppression of truth that is going on in your life, but it is such a default state of mind that it is usually something you are doing subconsciously in your unbelief, ingratitude, and rebellion against Him.

So not only are you without excuse before God, but you are also, because of your natural state, completely damned, storing up wrath for yourself, and deserving the full wrath of God. You might be thinking, “Whoa, whoa, whoa this is outlandish. Maybe these Christians are using hyperbole here, but that seems a bit much, I am not the worst person in the world.”

Sure, you are probably not the worst person in the world. Children of God are not claiming to be among the best people in the world either, but we will get to that later. You probably think that you are generally good, as most people do. However, when you hold any single human being up to the perfect, righteous, and holy standard of the One True God, no human being can ever come even close to meeting His standard of goodness.

Your standard is based on what you see and know, but God, who sees all and knows all, in Himself defines what goodness is. He is good, and every departure from Him and His ways is evil. 

Because God is perfectly just, righteous, and holy, He commanded His created image-bearers (humans) to also be just, righteous, and holy, thereby binding every human being to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience to God. He promised eternal life to all who fulfill that obedience, and death to all who disobey. But after the sin of mankind’s first parents, Adam and Eve, all humans (you and me equally) fell from the original state of righteousness and from communion with God into a state of sin and misery, to the extent that

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 

God says that all have sinned. Romans 3:23 [Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God.] If anyone claims not to have sinned, God says they are lying, which is a sin. 1 John 1:8. So all have sinned. Romans 5:12

Every sin brings guilt on the sinner, which therefore binds us to the wrath of God and the curse of the law. In short, every sin committed merits the wrath of God on that sinner. Since we have sinned against an infinite Being, so too our guilt is infinite, thereby meriting eternal wrath. This is why there is hell. Hell is a place in which God punishes unforgiven sins with eternal conscious torment, in which unforgiven sinners will be drowned in the lake of fire forever.

The Bible rightly warns us that hell is indeed a place of eternal conscious torment with no possibility of escape once damned to it, for Revelation 14:11 says concerning those whom God sends to hell, “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” Again, Jude 1:7 describes hell as “punishment of eternal fire.” Thus, hell is a place of eternal conscious torment, in which you will be subjected to the pain of the lake of fire day and night, morning and evening, forever and ever, without any hope of escape, without any hope of ceasing, without any hope of stopping.

We often hear people respond to this truth with false ideas about God, like: 

“Sure, the Bible talks a lot about hell, but surely, Jesus is kind and won’t send me to hell. Surely, Jesus is loving and won’t damn people to hell” The God that is wrathful that is described in the Bible is surely just a God from some bygone era. I don’t think I need to heed the warning about the wrath of this God. Surely, Jesus is different.”?

To this objection, the Bible paints a completely different picture of Jesus than the one you have in your mind. Jesus Christ is the God of the Bible, and He also warned us concerning God’s wrath that is to come. He warns us that He Himself will be the Judge in the coming judgment. It is Jesus who will send people to hell. In Matthew 13, Jesus said,

“The Son of Man (that is, Jesus) will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.”

In Matthew 25:41, Jesus said to the wicked, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” And in verse 46, He said, “these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” In Luke 13:27, Jesus said to those whom He damned to hell in the final judgment, “Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

“Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

What then? Is all hope lost for you? Should you say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die [and be damned]?” Certainly not! This is not the end of your story! Not all hope is lost! 

God, not wanting to see his creatures perish and be lost forever in hell, sent his only begotten Son, God the Son, truly God and truly man, to save sinners from the wrath of God. God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, who is Jesus Christ, took on a human nature and human flesh in order to save us from our sins. He took on humanity to accomplish two things for you and me:

1. Only God could become a substitute performer of righteousness on behalf of those who would believe in Him, because He alone could perfectly uphold or fulfill the law of God and satisfy God’s requirement of righteousness, living a perfectly righteous and holy life on behalf of all who would believe in him.
2. He had to become the substitute sacrifice of sin on behalf of those who would believe in him. He died a death that you and I deserve on behalf of those who would believe in him, satisfying the wrath of God that would otherwise be borne by his people. 

First, in order to save us from our sins, Jesus not only has to die on our behalf, but He also has to live on our behalf. Remember that God, being a righteous God, still demands from us “personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience,” and gives us eternal death for our disobedience and promises eternal life upon fulfilling it. Because none of us has or even can actually render perfect and exact obedience to God’s law, we need a substitute performer of our righteousness if we are to receive eternal life.

Thus, God the Son came into this world, taking human nature to himself, to be the substitute performer of righteousness on behalf of everyone who would trust in Him so that everyone who would believe in Him would receive a righteous standing before God, not on account of their own righteousness, but on account of a righteousness that is not their own, an alien righteousness, even the very righteousness of Christ. As the Apostle Paul puts it,

“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Again Paul says concerning the righteousness of Christ, which is “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

This is good news! This means that you don’t have to be righteous in and of yourself to have a righteous standing before God! Why? Because you can be clothed in Jesus’s righteousness if you were to believe. This means that you don’t have to conjure your own false righteousness in order to be counted as just before the judgment seat of God! Why? Because someone else can be your righteousness! Someone else can render perfect obedience to the law of God on your behalf! And that person is Christ! Or as John Wesley puts it,

“Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, My beauty are, my glorious dress; Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.”

Second, not only did Jesus live on behalf of those who would believe in him, but He also died on their behalf. And why does He need to die, though He lived a righteous life? Because God is just and righteous.

The wrath that your sins have merited still needs to be paid and satisfied. Once a debt is incurred, it cannot be left unpaid. Thus, to save us from the wrath of God, someone else has to die on our behalf; someone else has to endure the wrath of God on our behalf. This is why Jesus must die on the cross. He died on the cross to satisfy the wrath of God on behalf of those who believe in Him so that those who trust in Him will no longer need to go to hell.

That is, Jesus came to earth not just to live but also to die. He came not just to be a teacher or preacher, but He came to die the death that all God’s people deserve. He came to be a substitute sacrifice on behalf of those who put their trust in him. That is why He had to come. The reason He had to take on humanity is because it was humans who sinned against God.

Therefore, if He were to take on God’s wrath on behalf of His people, He had to be punished as a man. Indeed, He had to be punished by having the wrath of God poured out on Him when He died on the cross. Since it was mankind that sinned against God, the sacrifice to satisfy God’s anger and justice must also necessarily be a man.

On the other hand, the reason it is important for us to know that He is God is because only God can fully satisfy God’s wrath. That is, only a Divine Person can fully bear the infinite wrath of God in its entirety. The wrath of God (hell) that would take you and me an eternity to satisfy (you will never be able to satisfy God’s wrath) only took Jesus a limited time to fully satisfy. Why? Because the person who died on the cross is a Divine person who is of infinite value. Thus, He is able to satisfy Divine justice that is also of infinite worth.

Those who are in Christ, therefore, do not need to worry about facing God’s wrath or hell anymore. Why? Because God’s wrath for them is no longer there. It is gone. It is completely expended on Jesus. This is why the Apostle Paul can say

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

This is great news for sinners who deserve hell! Those who believe in Jesus no longer have to face the wrath of God! Why? Because there is no more wrath!

The prophet Isaiah foresaw that it was necessary for the God-man to die to save his people from their sins, and prophesied,

“He [Jesus] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. … it was the will of the LORD to crush him; He has put Him to grief.”

And the good news of Jesus Christ does not end there, for scripture testifies that on the third day, He rose again bodily, proving that He had finished drinking all of God’s wrath on behalf of God’s people on the cross, and thereby proving that He now can stand as the righteousness of his people. As the Apostle Paul puts it,

“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, He was buried, He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

Having been resurrected from the dead, He has now ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. Why must He be resurrected bodily and ascend to heaven? Simply put, Jesus is now in heaven as proof before God that He has won everything good for the sake of those who would trust in him.

And what is the benefit that Christ has won for those who would place their faith in him? Forgiveness of sins, peace of conscience, righteous standing before God, and eternal life. 

If you have sinned against God, and you have, what must you do to receive such a great salvation? Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus! One receives the Lord Jesus by faith. Faith is the only instrument by which we are justified (counted righteous before God). It is not faith plus our work. It is not our affection for God that justifies us. It is not even our repentance that justifies us (though repentance necessarily accompanies faith). Faith alone justifies us, and faith is what God works in you. We have been saved not because of anything good that we have done, not because of any particularly good thing about us, at all. As Ephesians 2 says,

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

If you ask the question, “What must I do to be saved?” The answer is, “Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” That is, rely on Him alone, trust Him alone, and rest on Him alone.

What is required of you for Christ’s saving works to be applied to you is that you believe Him, that you trust Him. A simple trust in Him is all you need to be saved from the wrath that is to come and to receive eternal life with Him forever. Aside from that, you don’t have to do anything! You can just put your trust in Him and He will certainly save you from God’s wrath and give you eternal life! In John 6:37, Jesus said,

“Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

All who come to Him, regardless of past sins, regardless of your current condition, He will take in. He will take you in. This invitation is now open to you. Receive it, and do not reject it. Today is the day of salvation; you are not guaranteed tomorrow. 

Do you not hear his voice right now saying to you?

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Today He says to you,

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and He who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

God commands you, dear reader, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust in Him, to rely on Him, to have faith in Him, and promises that if you do, your sins will be counted or reckoned as His when He died on the cross, and so you will not have to face God’s wrath in the eternity to come. And not only that, if you have faith in Jesus, His perfect righteousness is counted or reckoned as yours. So, when we cast ourselves to the Lord Jesus, God struck his gavel in the courtroom of heaven and declared us not only innocent, but also as righteous, not on the basis of our righteousness, but on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone, a foreign righteousness, an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is outside of us, even the righteousness God. 

And so, we who have believed will always be righteous before God, wherever we are, whatever we do, whether we are eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, sitting, for the Lord Jesus himself is our righteousness. God the Father can always see that we are always righteous, because the Lord Jesus himself is always before him, interceding for us. As one of the church fathers puts it,

“O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous man, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

Or as another writer puts it,

“Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers, and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.
Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin
Thy blood alone O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.
Thy love to me O God, Not mine, O Lord, to Thee 
Can rid me of this dark unrest, And set my spirit free!”