Easter Sunday comes up very early this year (on Sunday, March 27). In my own personal preparation for this important day I like to reflect upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. Here is fine quote on these subjects from the late Prof. John Murray who taught Systematic Theology for many years at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
“Our sins have separated us from God and we can know the dismal emptiness of being without God and without hope in the world…But there was only one, and there will not need to be another, who bore the full weight of the divine judgement upon sin and bore it so as to end it. The lost will eternally suffer in the satisfaction of justice. But they will never satisfy it. Christ satisfied justice. ‘The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isa. 53:6). He was made sin and he was made a curse. He bore our iniquities. He bore the unrelieved and unmitigated damnation of sin, and he finished it. That is the spectacle that confronts us in Gethsemane and on Calvary.” (Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 76-77)
Murray makes it clear that although the lost suffer, they can never fully satisfy God’s justice; only Jesus Christ has done that, and he did it by his sacrificial death on the Cross. In short, Jesus became our substitute–receiving the penalty for sin that we deserved. He accomplished in one sacrifice what all of humanity could never do. He became sin for us, so that we could become the righteousness of God. We receive this gracious gift by faith. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead signifies that God the Father accepted his vicarious sacrifice on our behalf. We certainly have much to praise God for!
— Pastor Marcus Serven