One Word!

As I have been looking at Romans 4 in a relatively new light, I have also been digging into this doctrine of "penal substitution." In a more common way, I have to sum those two words up as "Jesus was literally, in His Body and during His death, the absolute and perfect substitution for sin, so that I do not have to receive or endure the wrath of God that is due me." We live in a culture that says "I deserve to have....", "i deserve....", quite frankly, the ONLY thing any of us deserve is to be consumed by the very wrath of God!

When we say "I am going to heaven because I believe Jesus died for my sins", what an awesome and beautiful statement that is! However, in my mind it changes things a bit when I see that the reason I can go to heaven and have a relationship with God right now, is because Jesus (when He died on the cross) satisfied the wrath of God on my behalf!

Now the reason that I titled today's blog "one word" is because I am now in Romans 5 and the word that stood out to me this morning was "with" in verse 1. From the ESV, it reads "Therefore, since we have been justified (made free, innocent or righteous) by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (added parenthesis). Yes there are verses that speak of the peace of God, or peace from God, but ever so significant is this peace with God. The peace is the result of (Romans 4) being "counted as" righteous!

We enjoy the peace with God because we are free from the very wrath that we deserve! The greatest beauty of it all is that this freedom is offered to us not through works, not through donations or church attendance, but "by faith." We cannot earn it nor do we deserve it! It is all God! He not only made a way through the perfect sacrifice of Christ and His substitutionary death, but He gives us the faith to accept the offer of being free from His wrath!

Think about it a bit deeper than "Christ died for my sins so I can go to heaven", yes this is true, but really meditate on the fact that 1 Peter 2:24 says that Jesus Christ himself, sinless perfection, God in flesh, bore my sins and your sins IN HIS BODY as He was hanging on a cross. Take it one step deeper and savor that truth!