The Power
Sunday, April 5
Teaching Series: The Blood of Jesus
In Jesus’ death and resurrection, He overcame and conquered sin and death.
Problem – Certificate of Debt
Because of Adam and Eve’s choice in the Garden of Eden to disobey God’s one rule, all of humanity now faces a dilemma. We have a problem. We have something we don’t want – a sin-debt.
What is a sin-debt and just how is it paid? To answer these questions, the Bible makes comparisons with ancient judicial and financial traditions. Both use the concept of a Certificate of Debt.
JUDICIAL. In ancient Rome, a lawbreaker could not be brought to trial until formally charged with a written Certificate of Debt detailing the offense. If the accused was found guilty, the judge recorded the sentence on the certificate. The certificate, detailing both the offense and the required payment, was nailed to the door of the prison cell. There it remained until the sentence was paid, at which time it was taken down and presented to the authorities. They would write “cancelled” or “paid in full” across the charge and the prisoner was set free.
In the same way, the Bible teaches that every human is faced with a written charge – a Certificate of Debt – upon which are written the individual’s sins, whether big or small. Man is pictured as standing in a courtroom, found guilty of an offense against a holy God. The judge reads the verdict. According to the “law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2), the penalty to be paid is death. “The person who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:20).
FINANCIAL. Centuries ago in the Middle East, when one incurred a debt, an official IOU was drafted. That IOU was also called a Certificate of Debt. It stated the terms of the loan and what it would take to pay it in full.
In the same way, the Bible teaches that on the moral ledger, our sin incurs a debt – there is a price to be paid. Man is pictured standing before a loan officer holding a Certificate of Debt that has come due. The certificate states that “the wages [or payment] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
The consequence for sin is death. The question then remains: Is man able to pay that debt? The answer is a qualified yes. But since the Second Death exists for eternity, it is hard to call it paid since the Certificate of Debt nailed to Hell’s door has “Eternal Death” written on it. Sinful man is locked up forever – a person never stops paying. This is very bad news.
Paradox – Inherited Sin Nature
It has become popular to believe that children are born into the world as perfect infants, free of all sin. But what does the Bible teach? Are we really born with a sinless nature?
Not according to Kind David: “Look, I was guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Not according to Job: “Who can make a clean thing come from an unclean? No one!” (Job 14:4). Not according to our own life experiences: “Where do the conflicts and where do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, from your passions that battle inside you?” (James 4:1). We have to ask ourselves some tough questions. Did our parents have to teach us to lie and disobey, to be selfish, and quarrelsome? No. Our human nature does not need to be taught how to sin. We do such things naturally.
We often connect a list of crimes with the word sinner, but the Bible says it is more than that. Man has a sin nature. Sin is like a contagious disease. We can say that every human has a condition called the sin nature. The symptoms of that condition are acts of sin. The Bible says that Adam’s sin nature, along with all its symptoms and consequences, has spread to us all. Because Adam sinned, all of his children have inherited his sin nature. And because he died, all his offspring die.
So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)
Promise – Paid in Full
Man is born into this world condemned already (John 3:18). Down through history, every person carried a Certificate of Debt, a massive sin-debt that each one was accountable to pay. The only way that debt could be paid was with one’s own eternal death. Man was a debtor. We are as good as dead. We have no relationship with God, our bodies will eventually die and, after death, we will partake of the Second Death, punishment in the Lake of Fire.
But then Jesus came. He took care of our Certificate of Debt for us. The Bible says that “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The phrase “to be sin for us” has the idea of a sin-offering. God made Jesus, who had no sin, to be a sin-offering for us. When Jesus took our sin, God poured out on Him all the fury of His rightful anger on sin. Then Jesus was able to do something we could not do. He said, “It is finished.” If we paid our own sin-debt, we would have gone on and on paying – for eternity. But Jesus paid it all. The debt is paid in full.
The verse continues, “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). It’s in Him we find righteousness. It’s not ours. Jesus took our sin and gave us His righteousness. It’s the greatest of all exchanges. When we trust Him, God gives us His righteousness.
But the payment made by Jesus is only effective if one believes. “Everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The Bible says, “God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Romans 4:24).
The word “believe,” as used in the Bible, has a fuller meaning than we sometimes give it. The terms faith, belief, trust and confidence all means essentially the same. Genuine faith is built on fact – Jesus died in our place for our sin. Faith is not built on feeling forgiven. True biblical belief does not stop with mental assent to the truth. It includes a heart trust, a confidence in the facts expressed by a voluntary act of the will. We choose to believe. I believe that Jesus has paid my sin-debt. Through Jesus’ shed blood, we find a way to escape eternal death.
If you believe Jesus died in your place for your sin, then you can have complete confidence in the fact that your Certificate of Debt has been paid in full. “And even though you were dead in your transgressions … he nevertheless made you alive with him, having forgiven all your transgressions. He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14). Your sin-debt was nailed to the cross 2,000 years ago. Because of your trust in Him, God now says that your “sins and [your] lawless deeds I will remember no longer” (Hebrews 10:17-18). God’s forgiveness is total.
Jesus died, yes, but He didn’t stay dead. Jesus came back to life to prove that death had no power over Him. The resurrection was a powerful display that God’s just nature was satisfied with Jesus’ death on our behalf. The payment had been made and it had been accepted as sufficient. The grave could not hold Him in its clutches. He had victory over death. Jesus had broken sin’s grip, defeated Satan’s power and removed death’s terrible finality.
Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)
In whom are you placing your faith? In yourself, your religion, your ideas, your good works, or in the fact that Jesus died in your place to pay your sin-debt?
By faith, we believe that Jesus died in our place for our sin. By faith, we believe that Jesus paid our sin-debt. By faith, we believe that God’s justice was satisfied by that death. We believe that when He looks at us, He no longer sees our sin, but He sees us clothed in Jesus’ righteousness. By faith, we believe that God gives us the gift of eternal life. It’s all faith, but it’s not blind faith. It’s faith that is built on the facts we find in the Bible.
The Blood of Jesus series