During our tour of Matthew's account of Jesus' life, suffering, death, and resurrection; we have discovered much.  In Matthew, Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law and to establish His kingdom that begins here on earth and grows for all eternity.  When He begins His ministry, Jesus explains that He has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  Since Adam broke the first covenant God made with man, all who are in Adam by ordinary means have been imputed with Adam's sin.  How is that fair, right, or just you ask?  This question arises from even a biblical principal: a son or a father may not be put to death for the sin of the other.  The answer is that God does this through imputation.  He imputes Adam's sin of disbelieving God upon all who are born of a man and a woman.  By default, we are guilty before God, and unless He makes us right before Him, we will remain under His just condemnation.  How does He make us right before Him?  Also by imputation!  He imputes the righteousness of Christ to all whom He has graciously chosen to believe in Him.

The details of how God does this are amazing and overwhelm our thinking at every turn, but God is both just and the justifier of the ungodly.  He is just and merciful, and He dispenses His justice and His mercy according to the steadfast love He has had within Himself for all His elect from all eternity.  The great imputational exchange happens at the cross.  God the Father places all the sins of all His saints for all time upon His Son, Who willingly volunteered from all eternity and kept His promise when He prayed, "Not My will but Yours be done." 

According to God's covenant with Adam, there has to be a death for the violation of that covenant.  According to the covenant of grace, that death can be the death of another, so for about 1,500 years (from the time of the Exodus to the death of Christ) there was a daily reminder of the necessity of an atoning death in order for us to be made right with God.  From the moment Adam and Eve received animal skin coverings for their nakedness and shame to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, that death was an animal sacrifice.  Of course, these animal sacrifices could never atone for sin, so where did the atonement God promised come from?  It came from the atonement Christ accomplished once for all on the cross.  All the animal sacrifices were pointing to the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on a hill, outside the city, hanging on a dead tree, planted on a hill of death.  The moment that Christ died, the veil was torn in two, and the animal sacrifices should have ceased instantaneously, but they carried on for another generation until Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70 and then completed the job in AD 73 at Masada. 

How does Christ save?  By just imputation wherein His death is counted as the death of all the sins of all His saints, and He only had to die once, for the One Who has been granted to have life in Himself cannot stay dead, nor can He justly die again, for to have life is to have perfect righteousness, for the wages of sin is death.  Spiritually speaking and from God's justice, the only reason anyone dies (yes, there are many physical causes of death) is that death is the only just punishment for sin.  Further, because Christ's blood is too precious to spill even a single drop, God the Holy Spirit has been making sure that all those for whom Christ died live again to God and so are counted righteous with the righteousness of Christ. 

How did this death come to pass?  Through the greatest injustices every perpetrated.  Christ suffered injustice at the hands of Judas, the mob that came to arrest Him, His own disciples, the chief priests and scribes, the crowds of Jerusalem, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers who were unwitting pawns in the drama that unfolded nearly 2,000 years ago.  Jesus' testimony that He is the Messiah was rejected as false because none of those trying Him believed Him.  Jesus' testimony that He is the King of the Jews brought about a false death sentence because neither the crowds nor Pilate believed Him.  Yet, all these things happened because of God's good will.  His plan was to use the injustice to bring about His just and righteous end of glorifying Himself by the salvation of His people from His Own wrath.  Jesus was the only sacrifice that God would accept in exchange for the wrath that all the sins of all His saints deserves.  God imputed our sins upon Christ and Christ's righteousness upon us by grace alone through faith alone.  The greatest sacrifice ever made was the sacrifice of the righteous for the unrighteous as the mystery of God's justly justifying the ungodly was and is revealed in the cross and empty tomb.

The cross is not the end of the story of the atonement, however.  If Jesus had stayed dead, there would have been nothing special about it.  Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15 that without the resurrection there is no forgiveness of sins.  Without the death, there is no satisfaction of God's wrath.  Without the resurrection, there is no eternal life, for that would have meant that Jesus was an ordinary man who simply deserved death because He was a sinner, but the only truly and perfectly righteous man ever to walk the planet was unjustly murdered so that He could give up His spirit and provide for all His saints everywhere the just payment for the sins of His people to an absolutely perfect judge.  This is how the atonement works, and the atonement saves all who believe.



Believers are like those who entered Noah's ark to be delivered from God's wrathful outpouring of water to flood the entire earth.  We climb into the boat and are saved.  Peter uses this illustration to say that Noah and his wife and their three sons and their three wives were baptized through the flood waters.  What is baptism?  Baptism is a sprinkling or immersion in water into the name of Christ as a sign and seal of what happens when God saves His people from eternal destruction by washing them clean with the righteousness of Christ where His death is counted as theirs and His life is given graciously and freely to all upon whom He works His regenerative power.  It is the baptism of regeneration from and by the Holy Spirit that we then look to God with joy instead of consternation, delight rather than disdain. 

Now that the atonement has been accomplished and that we have received the great gift of life from the Holy Spirit and that Christ is constantly interceding for us, what do we have to fear?  Shall famine or sword or nakedness or wearing masks or not wearing masks or economic collapse or world domination separate us from the love of God which is for all who are in Christ Jesus?  Absolutely not!  Christ alone saves because Christ alone is worthy.  And all for whom He died are definitively saved.  Come and see Him in the fullness of His glory.

#comeandseeJesus

#comeandlivebyfaith

#loveandworshipHim

#SoliDeoGloria