"The Cross: Jesus on dIsplay Part 2"

Read Romans 3:21-27 (NASB)

Listen to what he says in this passage. He says in Romans 3:24, “Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in His Son.” So first of all, His goal is to justify us. When you received the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, God, at that moment, wiped all your sin away, declared you righteous, a child of God. Now, what was His method of doing that? His method of doing that is, again, found in verse 24, “Being justified as a gift,” something He gives us, can’t work for it, “by His grace,” His unmerited love and favor toward us, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

I want to look at two words: redemption and propitiation. Redemption, now watch this, redemption is a word that means a ransom. A ransom is an amount paid for someone else’s release. Jesus said, “I came to give My life a ransom for many.” He says, “I came to be the price paid for someone else’s release.”

So what happens when you and I are saved? When you and I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, here’s what we do. We agree with God the Father that the death of His Son is adequate, sufficient payment for our sin, and the moment we accept Him as our personal Savior, we are released from the penalty of sin. That means we become the child of God. Sin no longer has a hold upon us.

It doesn’t mean we won’t sin, it doesn’t mean we won’t commit acts of sin, but the death penalty of sin is rendered null and void forever in our lives. Now, somebody says, “Well now, if redemption means a price paid and Jesus Christ died, who did He pay this price to?”

It was the satisfaction of the requirement of God, that is, God being holy, the only way for this holy God to deal with sinful man and render Him forgiven of His sin and declared righteous is something had to happen. It was an act. It was an act that transpired that satisfied the requirements of God, which meant in order for God to remain holy and at the same time save unholy people, something had to happen. A substitute had to be given, and that substitute was the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, let’s move a step forward. The next word is propitiation. What in the world does that mean? It simply means a sacrifice, that is, notice how he says it. He says in verse 25, “Whom God publicly displayed.” That is when Jesus Christ was hanging upon the cross, He was a public display of the grace of God, and He was a sacrifice. He was a gift given, listen, a gift given on your behalf and my behalf in order that, separated from God by our sins, He could bring us back in the fellowship with Him, bring us into relationship with Him, and at the same time, God remain this holy, just God that He is.

Now, so when He says that you and I were redeemed, he says, for example, in Ephesians 1:7 he says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace.”

It was the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that made it possible for you and me to be made acceptable in the eyes of God. Now, this propitiation, notice here, what is this all about?

Well, propitiation is a gift or a sacrifice offered to avert the wrath, the judgment, and the condemnation of God, and at the same time, enable God to remain holy and accept the sinner.

And so propitiation is a sacrificial gift that is a substitute, that is, that therein lies the price that is paid. So when Jesus Christ went to the cross, that wasn’t just a good man dying for our sin, that was God in the flesh, in the person of His Son, paying our sin debt in full, offering himself as a sacrifice, a substitute, the only sufficient, adequate sacrifice. Let’s look at 1 John 2:1-2
“My little children, I’m writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins we have an Advocate,” someone to stand in our place and plead our cause, “with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself ” that is Christ “is the propitiation,” the sacrificial “gift for our sins and not for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” Christ died for everybody.

1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (or the sacrificial gift) for our sins.”

Jesus came for the purpose of dying, not living. His life, His ministry was short-lived, only three years approximately, and so He came primarily not to live but to die. He came as the sacrificial gift. He came as the atonement. He came to be the one who paid our sin debt in full.

So let’s think about how this works for just a moment. When we say that Jesus Christ is a sacrificial payment for our sin, that He is the sacrificial gift, what are we saying? Well, when you look at this passage of scripture and you realize that God says that the only way to deal with sin is death and the shedding of blood.

If that’s the only way to deal with it, then how did God choose to deal with our sin? How did He choose to reconcile His holiness and His love? How can a holy God reach down to sinful man, redeem him, make him new out of His love, and at the same time, remain true to Himself? God’s expensive solution to this conflict was His only begotten Son who died on the cross.

Now, when he says He was a sacrificial gift, I want us to think about something for a moment. Let’s go back to the Old Testament, and you recall in the Old Testament, on the ark of the covenant, which was placed in the holy of holies, there was a mercy seat, and the high priests would go in once a year having killed the animal and taken the blood and sprinkling it on the mercy seat, and that atoned for His sins, paid for his sins and the sins of the whole nation of Israel. And so they did that once a year.

That was symbolical of a substitute, a lamb that would be slain, and blood that would be spilled for the forgiveness of man’s sin. For example, when an individual would come to confess their sins, they brought a little lamb, gave it to the priest, put their hands on the head of the lamb, confessed their sin, and the priest cut the lamb’s throat, took the blood, sprinkled it on the altar, symbolical of what? Of atonement, of payment for that person’s sins.

Now, listen carefully. That person was not forgiven of their sin because that blood was shed. If that had been true, God the Father would never have sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die on the cross, and we’d still be cutting lamb’s throats and shedding the blood of animals. But you recall he says in Hebrews that the blood of goats, bulls, sheep, none of this could atone for man’s sin. These animals and their sacrificial death, this was a picture, this was a foreshadowing.

This was the way God was saying that all sin must be punished with death, and blood must be applied, blood must be shed in order for sin to be forgiven. So, when we come to the cross, it is as if you and I come to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom John the Baptist identified as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

It’s as if you and I come to the cross. When we say we believe in Him, when we place our trust in Him. When we say, “Lord Jesus, I do believe You as my Savior,” it is as if you and I place our hands on the head of the Savior, confessing our sins and receiving Him as the ultimate Lamb of God that takes away our sin.

In faith, we confess our sin to Him, believing that He and He alone will pay our sin debt in full. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to us is the final act, the ultimate act of the forgiveness of our sin. We are expressing faith. It is not repentance that brings about forgiveness, it is not confession that brings about forgiveness, it is the death of the Son of God that brings about forgiveness, and that death is applied to my life, making you and me righteous the moment we confess Him as our Savior.

It is belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, confession of that belief in Him. When I confess that belief in Him, something happens in my heart that is so traumatic, I will turn from my sinfulness, but listen, turning from sin does not get me saved. Listen, if you could turn from your sin, and that would get you acceptable in the eyes of God, then your salvation would have been based on your walking away from sin.

The only way to deal with sin is death. The only way to deal with sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. He had to die to atone for our sin. Every single attempt on man’s part to make himself better and to do good and to be acceptable in the eyes of God and the struggle and the strain and the work at it, all of that He says is absolutely null and void.

The only source of forgiveness is the Son of God, stretched out on the cross, bleeding for your sins and mine. Propitiation, redemption, reconciliation, it’s all wrapped up in the cross. All forgiveness comes to the cross of Christ. Nobody else can die for your sin because they are sinners themselves. Their sin has to be atoned for by either placing it upon Christ, or we have it upon ourselves. For example, he says in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 24, he says that our sins, listen, that He bore our sins in His body on the cross. Jesus died, and when He died, He paid our sin debt in full.

Sheep blood can never pay for the sin of mankind. So look at this passage now, watch this. Romans 3:25 says, “Whom God displayed publicly as the propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in God’s merciful restraint He let the sins previously committed go unpunished;

Now what does this scripture mean. It means that when Jesus died on the cross, all the sin debt, all the sin debt of all humanity, past, present, and future, came down upon Him. He paid the price. Now, friend, none of this happens without Jesus. Here is the holiness of God and the mercy and the love and the goodness of God. How can these two come together? Here’s how they come together, because the substitutionary death of His Son paid the sin penalty. Now God who, in all of His holiness and righteousness, He can look down upon the sinful man and say, “I forgive you, I pardon you. My goodness and My love and My mercy will spring forth towards you for all eternity because your sin debt has been paid for. It has been covered once and for all in the blood of My Son, My spotless Son who is without blemish, who died in your place as your substitute.”

Now, my friend, listen, do you know who Jesus Christ is? He’s not only the Son of God, He’s the man who went to the cross and was substituted for you and me. You say, “Well, I didn’t live 2000 years ago.” Right. But had He not died for you and me 2000 years ago, when we stand in the presence of Almighty God, all our sin, all our life, our sinful nature included, we’d have to give an account.

But you know what? Here’s the grace of God. Some of us were saved early, some of us saved later, and we sin against God in spite of our will not to do so. Because we live in this sinful world and because we still have our five senses, we will sin against God. When we stand before Him amidst our trials and our failures and our mistakes and the things we’d like to erase and eradicate in our life, we stand before Him, He says, “Righteous, without blame, spotless, without blemish, like My Son.” And what will make us like His son? The blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed at Calvary, poured out for your sin and mine, renders us righteous in the eyes of Almighty God.

The cross displayed, listen, the cross says to us everything that comes to us is a gift of God, and it comes through the cross.
There are lots of ways Jesus could have died. Why did He die on the cross? Because you see, he says in this passage, in Romans 3, “Whom Christ–whom God displayed publicly.” Listen, how did He display Him?

You see, in order for God to put the final touches on His universal offer of grace to the man, what did He do? He nailed Him to a tree.

He didn’t let Him get stoned to death, stabbed to death, javelined to death. He nailed Him to a tree. Why did God the Father nail Him to a tree, stretching His arms as far as they would go? Why didn’t he die some other way?

Remember what Jesus said John 3:14 when he’s talking to Nicodemus? He said, “Nicodemus, you remember what the Old Testament says? That even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And what did Jesus say? “And if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.”

Can you tell me any other way Jesus Christ could have died, that could have–listen–that could have given this message so powerfully as this? All the world is invited. Everybody is included. The sin debt of all men, women, boys, and girls is paid right here in the death of Jesus. The cross was His way of saying to the whole world, “Everything you need is yours if you’re willing to come.”