By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
"He mea whakatika utukore na tona aroha noa, i runga i ta Karaiti Ihu hokonga:"
"‘Ua ta‘uamiotonuina fua i latou i lona alofa tunoa, e ala i le togiola ‘ua ‘iā Keriso Iesu."
"...and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
Romans 3:24
Almost two decades ago, there was a controversy in the US over a Christian organisation in Africa. The organisation had been buying bonded servants.
In reality, they were captive slaves. Basically, the Christians were buying people out of their slavery and freeing them. They were redeeming them.
At the cross, God through Jesus redeemed us. He bought us out of captivity to sin and death, shedding his blood as the price for our freedom.
The Sydney Morning Herald had a fascinating article about movie stand-ins, the people who replace movie stars in dangerous scenes.
Glenn Duhigg, an ex-lawyer, worked as the stand-in for Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2. Glenn reckons, “It sounds very glamorous saying you’re the stand-in for Tom Cruise, but I don’t think many people realise the long hours and constant demands. It really deflates your ego very quickly. Whatever scene Tom was in, I would be the one standing out there for ages. I’d be standing in the weather, getting drenched in the rain or sun stroke out in the heat. I’d be the one taking the risks and doing the dangerous stuff. Then Tom would just walk on the set from his air-conditioned caravan once the scene was ready.”
On the cross, Christ was our stand-in. He endured the punishment from God for our sin in our place. He accepted God’s anger on himself instead of us.
God in Jesus rescued us by satisfying God’s anger against us at the cross.
That’s what we read in verse 25. “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood”. What does “sacrifice of atonement” mean? The phrase speaks of a sacrifice that satisfies the holy anger of God. Without this satisfaction, all people are justly destined for eternal punishment.
You see, our human predicament is not only sin but also God's anger upon sin (1:18).
We cannot be nice enough, we’ll never be moral enough, to erase the debt that we owe for the sin we’ve committed. We could never be sincere enough or devout enough to turn God’s anger away from our sin.
But God, in his undeserved love, has done for us what we could never do by ourselves. His Son stood in our place and paid the penalty for our sin with his own blood. He purchased us as his own and set us free.
