What did Jesus pay?
Over the past two days, I’ve talked about how it is by looking at the Cross that we experience God’s love for us. Yesterday, we focused on our debt that was paid at the Cross. Today I want to focus on the price that Jesus paid. Yes, the debt and the price are really the same thing, but seen from different angles.
Let’s start with one of the most beautiful passages of the Old Testament.
Isaiah 53:5-6
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement (punishment) that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 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.
All that I talked about yesterday… all the sin and wickedness, all the wrath that our sin and wickedness deserve, the eternal punishment of hell… ALL of this was upon Jesus. He paid this debt for us.
Again, 1 John 4:9 In this was the love of God MANIFEST among us, that God sent his only Son into the world…10 In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Propitiation is the satisfaction of God’s righteous wrath that Jesus accomplished when he, as our substitute, experienced the wrath and punishment that we deserve to experience. This is something that many people are denying today: Although it is difficult to comprehend, Jesus bore the rejection of the Father that we deserve, so that we should not be rejected. Jesus was abandoned at the cross. Remember his cry from Psalm 22:1 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”
God’s righteous wrath against sin is revealed in two places: in Hell and at the Cross of Christ. In Hell, unrepentant sinners are forsaken eternally by God. At the Cross, the Father forsook his beloved Son.
All sin is judged either in Hell or at the cross. If we want to understand better what Jesus experienced at the Cross, we can look at Hell, because Jesus took our Hell upon himself. We might be tempted to think: “But how could what Jesus experienced have been as bad as the agony of an eternity in the Lake of Fire. He was only dead for a few days, but Hell is eternal.”
I confess that I don’t fully know the answer to that question, but the Bible is clear that the wages of my sin is eternal death, punishment in Hell, and Jesus really paid my penalty, and he paid it fully.
The pain and agony of death that Jesus experienced at the cross was more than just the physical pain of nails in his body, and the agony of crucifixion, (although we should never minimize that pain). I believe it is Jesus’ cry from Psalm 22:1 that brings us the closest to understanding what he went through for us. We can never comprehend the infinitely intimate love relationship that God the Father and God the Son eternally share. Their love for each other is immeasurable and infinite. And yet God the Son, incarnate in human flesh, cried out on the Cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!”
Imagine the pain that we as human beings experience when someone close to us dies. It is an excruciating agony. At times it feels as if it will smother us and kill us. But consider the difference between the pain of losing a close pet, and the pain of losing a child or a spouse. The greater the love, the greater the pain. The pain that Jesus experienced at the cross, was the pain of experiencing his infinite and perfect love relationship with the Father being broken, as God’s wrath for our sin was upon him.
The torment that Jesus went through for us was more intense and more agonizing then all the agonies of all condemned sinners in Hell together for all eternity. For even after an eternity in hell, their debt will still not be paid, but Jesus completely paid our debt, he completely experienced our hell.
Conclusion
Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) Paul said, “As often as you eat this bread, and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor. 11:26) When we remember, and when we proclaim the Lord’s death, meditating on what we have just seen that Jesus experienced, God reveals his love to us. He “demonstrates” his love in this: Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
I pray that from now on, during every passion week, and every time you celebrate the Lord’s Supper, you will remember that God loves you so much that Jesus took your hell upon himself. That was your debt, and that was what Jesus paid for you. How I pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal this truth to our hearts, and not just our minds. I pray, that we “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)
Nowadays, we don’t like to think about Hell; we are a bit ashamed of this doctrine and want to avoid it, but by avoiding it, we are robbing ourselves of a fuller understanding of what Jesus did for us on the cross, and by robbing ourselves of that fuller understanding, we don’t experience the love of God that we would if we would look at the cross and try to fathom what Jesus did for us, and when we don’t experience the love of God at the cross, we don’t overflow with love for one another (which takes us back to where I started, in Thursday’s post).